C. Marvin Pate's "Apostle of the Last Days: The Life, Letters, and
Theology of Paul" is a book I wanted to really love. Eschatology really
is a key element in Paul's thinking and a book-by-book analysis of
Paul's eschatological thought would be wonderful to have.
Pate,
to be fair, delivers this. But the product delivered strikes me as
questionable. The reason why is because I feel that Pate relies too
heavily upon mirror-readings of Paul's argument. In other words, Pate
argues that Paul is responding to various eschatological groups that
offered differing perspectives on the end times. While that is no doubt
true in certain circumstances, Pate uses this as a model for every
single one of Paul's letters. I am not convinced and there are times
when I feel that Pate has to really stretch his argument.
What
also troubles me is the lack of care given to the editing of this book.
There are several pages in the introduction that repeated and there are a
few spelling and verse mistakes I found throughout. Finally, (and
perhaps this is just an issue of preference on my part), there is no
works cited or bibliography at the end. There were a few times I wanted
to find the exact work cited and was unable to.
However, do not
think that this work is useless. By no means! There are some treasures
here. I particularly like the synthesis of Paul's eschatological thought
with systematic theology (the last chapter). Also, his chapter on
Romans is really good.
So how do I summarize this work? It is a
book that is useful, beneficial but not perfect. It could have been
absolutely fantastic. I love the premise of it. In the end, however, it
fails to completely convince. Further, it strikes me as fairly rushed
and poorly edited.
For the price, I am not sure it is worth a
spot in your library. If you can find a good deal on the book, however,
pick it up. It does have some really good chapters.
*Thanks to Kregel Academic for providing a free review copy in exchange for a fair review.*
