Participating in Christ

My review on Participating with Christ, a collection of essays by Michael Gorman.

Goals of the Book:
I can’t speak for a wide swath of academia, so I can say this anecdotally: in the circles I run in, there’s been a resurgence of interest in the theme of “participation in Christ”. This book, actually a collection of essays by Michael Gorman, explore the relationship between cruciformity (or, resurrectional cruciformity in the book) and participation in Christ, drawing them together and painting a new picture of the Christian’s resurrection life.


Essentially, resurrectional cruciformity refers to what kind of life we live when we participate in Christ. Every day, we must die to ourselves and rise to Christ (in the Spirit) to experience the life that is in Christ. This is because we are called to cruciformity, or living a life that looks like Christ. When we share in his life, we share also in his sufferings; one cannot be had without the other.

What Does This Offer the Church?
As mentioned above, I’ve seen new interest in participation in Christ. If I were to wager a guess, this comes from the debate between the New Perspective of Paul scholars and those from the “Old/Lutheran” perspective. Being “in Christ” adds a new layer to the discussions on justification and our understanding of what it means to be a part of the covenant community. So, in a sense, this book allows lay people and scholars to participate a bit more fully in these wider debates.

But, more important than that, this book aims to give us a more detailed focus on a central Pauline theme. Gorman, in his many books, has shown that cruciformity is a central tenet of Pauline theology. Now, he draws that together with participation language to show how being “in Christ” is the core ontological status of the Christian. Essentially, this book offers a central Pauline theme back to the church in order to re-invigorate her life.

How effectively does it communicate its goals?
If you have been following some of my NT Wright reviews, you might already know that I am not a huge fan of books that are simply collections of essays, unless I know ahead of time. At least with some of the Wright books, they have been somewhat repetitive, with a lot of overlapping material. This book largely avoids that problem, but it might be left with my other critique of these books: disjointedness. Sometimes, the book can feel pushed t

This is a very thorough and largely academic work on a specific aspect of Paul’s theology, what it means to be ‘in Christ’. It is accessible to the general reader but helpful if you are aware going into it. There are great riches to be mined in this work and the reader is best served by taking their time going through it and reading through the scriptures references. I read Gorman’s ‘Reading Revelation Responsibly’ and found that a very enlightening read as I studied the book of Revelation. This new book promises to do the same for this aspect of his Pauline theology. Gorman write at great length on the connection between the way we live our lives as Christians understanding the fact of the resurrection (Resurrectional Cruciformity) and what it means to live ‘in Christ’ as our primary state as Christians. The book is written as a series of eleven essays and does not necessarily need to be read beginning to end. The reader will be helped by reading chapter one first as it is an overview of his thoughts on participating in Christ.

“Participating in Christ” is exactly the sort of Christian non-fiction that I like to read. Michael J Gorman's careful, in-depth reading interprets Paul within the context of old testament scriptures, Paul's other writings, and his culture. Gorman's examination of what it means to participate in Christ dives deep into the scriptures and puts Paul's writings into a context that I think modern readers often overlook.

The writing for this book is very academic, and if you come to it looking for something easy-to-read then you might be tempted to give up partway through. However, the writing is still very accessible to readers who (like me) don't have formal training in theology. Just know going into it that this book will require some patience. I like deep, academic books but they require a little extra effort to digest and this one took me quite a while to read. I also started to feel a little lost near the end, where Gorman spent several chapters tracing one argument and it became a bit difficult for me to follow as I read it over the course of a few weeks.

Overall, though, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I keep coming back to it as a reference when studying, most recently while writing a blog post about identifying as part of the community that exists in Christ. I highly recommend “Participating In Christ” to those who want to learn more about what it means to be part of Christ's body or who are looking to read a book that will make them think deeply about the Christian faith.

Thanks to author Michael J. Gorman and publisher Baker Academic & Brazos Press for providing an advance reader copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.