2025.01.03 | Todd D. Still and David E. Wilhite. The Apologists and Paul. Pauline and Patristic Scholars in Debate. London: T&T Clark, 2024. Pp. xiv + 346. ISBN: 9780567715456.

Review by Jonathon Lookadoo, Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Many thanks to T&T Clark for providing a review copy.

The Apologists and Paul provides a wide-ranging analysis of how Paul’s letters were employed by that loosely defined group of early Christian writers known as the apologists. This volume is the fourth in the series, Pauline and Patristic Scholars in Debate, all of which have been co-edited by Todd Still and David Wilhite. Earlier compilations took up the use of Paul by Tertullian (2013), the Apostolic Fathers (2017), and Irenaeus (2020). While the volumes have not appeared in the same chronological order as the early Christian authors and texts that they study, the respective contributions to the series are characterized by far-reaching coverage of the respective figures in the titles (the Apostolic Fathers, Irenaeus, and Tertullian) as well as depth in the probative explorations of how Paul was utilized by his later interpreters. The most recent book is no exception. Although the composition of some essays was delayed due to restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting collection is marked by breadth in its discussion of the apologists as well as depth in its attention to the details of how Paul was employed. Along the way, several essays shed light on many pre-requisites that must be understood to appreciate each respective apologist.

Before launching haphazardly into the volume, however, Wilhite offers a substantive introduction that considers several topics with direct bearing on the chapters that follow. These include the challenges of adequately defining how the usage or influence of one author on another might be determined, on the need for such a volume in the face of the recent explosive interest in the reception of Paul, and the difficult matter of identifying what an apology is. The last issue is of particular importance for this volume, since the way in which one answers it enables contributors to place boundaries upon their work and readers to clarify their expectation. Wilhite argues that an apology “is not a literary genre per se, but it is a literary strategy” (p. 5). This literary strategy was employed to defend early Christians from accusations made by those outside the movement. Among the chief charges evident in ante-Nicene apologies were accusations of atheism as well as illicit activity. The scope of the volume is limited to those apologists who flourished prior to the Nicene period. These parameters are key to evaluating the contributions that follow.

Paul Foster opens discussions of the apologists with his careful study of the Pauline writings in Aristides’s Apology. Foster concludes that Aristides knew at least Romans and Colossians while his literary dependence on 1 Thessalonians and Hebrews cannot be established. Susan Wendel explores Justin’s reading of Gen 15:6 in dialogue with Paul. Wendel notes that Justin follows Paul by arguing that Christians are justified by the same faith as Abraham and by locating this declaration before Abraham’s circumcision. She notes, however, that Justin draws a closer relationship between faith and the righteous actions of Christ-believers than Paul. Jennifer Strawbridge considers the challenges of determining Pauline references in Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos, observing that, if Tatian uses Pauline texts, he integrates them into his arguments seamlessly. Tatian may also have drawn from texts or elements of Paul’s biography that related to Tatian’s own theology and self-understanding. After a fascinating discussion of the authorship of (Pseudo-)Athenagoras’s Legatio and De Resurrectione, David Rankin suggests that the respective works were composed by different authors. While both works likely allude to Paul’s letters, Rankin also notes Paul’s invisibility because the allusions are integrated into Athenagoras’s larger work. Alistair Stewart takes up the work of Jewish-Christian apologists—highlighting here Melito, Aristo, and Hegesippus. By Jewish-Christian, Stewart means that each was ethnically Jewish and a Christ-follower. Although there is no evidence for Pauline usage in the remains of their apologies, Stewart rejects a hostility hypothesis, while leaving open the possibility that they were either ignorant of or indifferent to Paul. Stuart Parsons provides a clear-sighted discussion of how references to Paul should be sought within Theophilus’s Ad Autolycum, paying particular attention to the work’s apologetic nature. He then finds allusions to several letters within this protreptic text.

Moving from the second century into apologists who lived into the third century, Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski explores Clement of Alexandria’s use of both Paul’s letters and his apostolic authority, noting points of overlap between Clement, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. Benjamin Haupt focuses on Tertullian’s Apology and examines the variety of ways that Tertullian cites Paul. Haupt concludes with a detailed look at the Latin terms that Tertullian used to designate Paul’s letters. Paul Hartog evaluates Minucius Felix’s critique of eloquence in dialogue with 1 Corinthians 1–2. Hartog illustrates clearly how both downplay rhetorical manipulation but rightly distinguishes Paul’s greater emphasis on the cross from Minucius Felix’s interest in philosophy and critical thinking. Turning to the complicated figure of Hippolytus, Wally Cirafesi reviews the use of Paul in De Antichristo. Cirafesi notes how Paul’s letters provide Hippolytus with a model for moral instruction and apocalyptic eschatology before making the intriguing proposal that Hippolytus depicts Paul as a prophet. James Papandrea examines Novatian’s exegesis of Philippians 2:6–11, arguing that Novatian elevated this Pauline text a central role in future christological debates by reflecting carefully on kenosis Christology. Writing at roughly the same time as Novatian, Dionysius of Alexandria cites Paul with varying levels of specificity. Lincoln Blumell argues that Dionysius also used Paul as an epistolary model as he wrote his letters so that the person of Paul proved important to the Alexandrian bishop in addition to Paul’s letters.

Moving west to Carthage, Edwina Murphy offers a multifaceted study of how Cyprian demonstrates his reception of Paul. While exegesis with attention to the context of Paul’s letters can be found in Cyprian’s work, Cyprian more often follows Paul by viewing Christ as a model, deploying similar imagery, and applying language from Paul’s letters directly to his audiences, to connect third-century North Africa to the first-century apostle. Michael Bland Simmons contributes a detailed sketch of Pauline reception in the works of Arnobius of Sicca and Lactantius. Although Arnobius’s knowledge of scriptural texts appears comparatively limited, perhaps due to a relatively recent conversion, Lactantius’s acquaintance of scripture is extensive. In particular, his citations of Paul’s letters indicate a familiarity that extends beyond awareness of Cyprian’s Testimonia alone. Elizabeth DePalma Digeser provides the final essay focused on a specific apologist and demonstrates Paul’s influence on how Methodius described believers’ preparation to unite with God as well as what the nature of such experience will be like. Todd Still helpfully draws the volume to a close by bringing the study of Paul in second and third century apologies to bear on the Apostle himself. Still acknowledges differences between Paul’s aims and opponents over and against the later aims and opponents of the figures addressed in the volume. Nevertheless, in light of the accusations leveled against Paul and some of the communities that he addressed, Still maintains that Paul was an apologist for his gospel and may thus be seen as part and parcel of the apologetic strain that crisscrosses ante-Nicene literature.

This volume provides a distinctive scholarly resource among recent of studies of Paul’s reception in earliest Christian texts. Although studies of how scripture, in general, or Paul, in particular, may be used by certain apologists, it is difficult to think of a comparable work on Pauline reception among the apologists as a group. Alongside this important contribution, a strength of the volume is its awareness of the blurred lines of both what constitutes an apologist and what qualifies as Pauline reception. Wilhite’s introduction heads off some potential objections about missing studies by acknowledging the omission of Irenaeus and Origen, who were or will be explored in separate volumes within the series, as well as Eusebius, who flourished as a writer during the fourth century and thus postdates the temporal constraints of this volume. While many writers were more than apologists (e.g. Melito, Clement, Novation), all have legitimate claim to be included in this volume. Nevertheless, the awareness of editors and contributors of the blurry boundaries surrounding the term apologist allow contributors to explore cautiously and in multiple ways how best to study Paul’s impact on the respective apologists.

In such explorations, the volume bears witness to another notable phenomenon in the field of Pauline reception studies, namely, the diversification of methods that are employed to study reception. Some essays in this volume rely primarily on quotations, allusions, or other forms of reference by which a later author might cite Paul. Other essays roam further afield by considering, for example, how an epistolary format may itself demonstrate a debt to Paul or how shared metaphors between Paul and an apologist may indicate the latter’s usage of Paul. Of course, the method that a scholar selects will be determined in part by the fittingness of the method to the subject matter. Since apologies are ostensibly written to outsiders, the contributors to the volume must account for the effects of this implied audience when selecting their methodology. Yet the appearance of multiple methodologies in the same volume suggests that the field of Pauline reception studies has grown large enough that at least two things are now true. First, anyone writing on Pauline reception should be attentive to the implications of their methodological choices. Second, the field of reception studies is sufficiently large to house multiple methodologies under its roof or, in this case, within the covers of the same book. The use of alternative methods then allows for diverse perspectives regarding how authors may have employed, altered, or ignored their literary predecessors in early Christianity.

Given the up-to-date discussions of both Pauline reception and the respective apologists explored here, The Apologists and Paul is a must-have resource for libraries catering to scholars and postgraduate students engaged in the study of early Christianity. A comparable combination of detailed studies with a wide-ranging breadth of coverage specifically dedicated to the apologists is difficult to find in the many other excellent works on Pauline reception in ante-Nicene Christianity. The Apologists and Paul thus joins the other volumes in the series in making a valuable contribution to both New Testament Studies and Patristics, disciplines which are too often kept isolated from one another.

Jonathon Lookadoo
Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary
jonathon.lookadoo [at] puts.ac.kr