In Marlowe’s renowned play, Doctor Faustus, the doctor wagers his soul to the task of achieving a unified understanding of all things. The chief obstacle to this ambition—laying aside his moral shortcomings and his seduction by Lucifer—is the ambiguity of the world he encounters at every turn. “Resolve me of all ambiguities,”1 Faustus exclaims, but due to the fragmentary nature of human thought and knowledge, neither books nor academic disciplines nor even magic make such resolution possible.

Without suggesting any comparisons in character between Faustus and Thomas McGlothlin, in his brilliant monograph, Resurrection as Salvation, McGlothlin masterfully engages with a “familiar” topic in early Christianity which is latent with ambiguity: resurrection. By setting out his Pauline resurrection schema, McGlothlin comes as close as anyone to achieving a unified understanding of resurrection in early Christian writings.

From the start, McGlothlin is clear that the question driving his research is not about the nature of resurrection (What is the resurrection body like?) but the purpose of resurrection (Why does resurrection happen, what does it accomplish, and for whom?). As becomes clear through each chapter, agreement about what constitutes resurrection does not ensure agreement about why it happens (18). McGlothlin grounds his argument in Scripture and Second Temple Jewish literature and sets out two primary purposes for resurrection in the ancient world: as a prerequisite for judgment and as an outworking of salvation (265). So, McGlothlin finds resurrection for judgment of both the righteous and the wicked in Daniel 12, 4 Ezra 7, and 2 Baruch 50–51, as well as John 5, Acts 24, and Revelation 20. He locates resurrection only of the righteous for salvation in Josephus’s description of the Pharisees, 2 Maccabees, John 6, and Paul’s writings (namely Romans 6, Philippians 3, Ephesians 2, and Colossians 2). McGlothlin offers words of caution that (1) believing all will face judgment is not the same as belief in the resurrection of all people (33), and (2) that these divisions rely on “an ostensibly suspicious silence” since a number of texts don’t associate resurrection with anyone but the righteous, thus not addressing questions of a more universal resurrection (24).

McGlothlin’s primary argument is that the tension between the two purposes for resurrection shapes early Christian understandings of resurrection and informs differences in how resurrection is understood and defended in early Christian writings. Early Christians such as Irenaeus and Tertullian, for example, are often lumped together as holding similar views of resurrection. However, McGlothlin concludes that while both writers agree on the fleshly nature of resurrection, they different rather significantly on resurrection’s purpose. Other surprises include agreements between those seemingly opposed to one another, such as Irenaeus and the Valentinians, as well as Origen and Methodius.

Nevertheless, the focus of the study is not only on the tensions between the two purposes of resurrection, but how Paul’s writings are used to resolve these tensions and defend a particular understanding of “resurrection.” McGlothlin begins with what he calls the Pauline resurrection schema (PRS) and traces this schema through five sets of early Christian writings: Irenaeus, Tertullian, two Valentinian works, Origen, and Methodius. As McGlothlin argues, how they engage—or don’t—with the PRS determines how they define resurrection and their understanding of resurrection’s purpose.

The first chapter offers a survey of the two understandings of resurrection in Second Temple and NT texts and sets out the PRS in detail. Essentially, the PRS develops the second view of resurrection—resurrection as an aspect of salvation. Noticing the connections in Paul’s writings between resurrection, righteousness, salvation, the Spirit, and Christ, McGlothlin draws these motifs together into one “constellation.” This resurrection schema links moral transformation to resurrection through conformity to the resurrected Christ driven by the Holy Spirit and describes both the present and future condition of the Christian, depending on the Pauline letter. The view of resurrection of all for judgment is juxtaposed with the PRS: those who link resurrection with judgment cannot grasp the integration of resurrection and salvation found in the PRS; but those who uphold the PRS have difficulty explaining how all people are resurrected (43).

McGlothlin’s description of resurrection in early Christian and Jewish writings and Paul’s development of a resurrection schema is clear and masterful. Within this setup he offers a few important nuances (1) the NT offers no explanation for how to hold together the two understandings of resurrection within it; (2) early Christians writers don’t have two competing views before them, consciously deciding on one over the other; and (3) Paul’s understanding of resurrection and how moral transformation, salvation, Christ, and the Spirit work together can be unpacked in many ways. In other words, even with two understandings and one resurrection schema, ambiguity remains.

These points of clarity begin to address the lingering question of whether early Christian writings are asking the same questions as McGlothlin. Were they more focused on nature than purpose when discussing resurrection, which explains why 1 Corinthians 15:50 is one of the most utilized texts in early Christian writings, but Romans 6 is not? Were the tensions surrounding the purpose of resurrection in early Christian writings simply mirroring the tensions in the NT on which they depended? Such questions are not meant to undermine McGlothlin’s argument but to support it. That both understandings of resurrection exist within the NT—even within Paul’s words if Acts 24 is included—suggests that early Christian understandings of resurrection are more complicated than often suggested. As McGlothlin concludes, adding Paul’s resurrection schema into the mix ensures that early Christian reflection on resurrection is necessarily complex (267) and begins to unpick the source of this complexity. Conflicts over resurrection—whether interpreting 1 Corinthians or Romans—were “conflicts within Paulinism” (268) as McGlothlin draws out in the chapters that follow.

Within chapter 2, McGlothlin shows how Irenaeus, defending creation’s integrity, adopts elements of the PRS and links together moral transformation, baptism, the Spirit, and bodily resurrection. For Irenaeus, resurrection is reserved for the righteous and part of a longer process of maturation and moral transformation, a “stepping-stone” toward immortality and perfection in Christ with the Spirit’s help (73). But, as McGlothlin notes, Irenaeus develops this understanding of resurrection alongside a “bare, undeveloped affirmation that all will be raised to face judgment” (50) and “appears not to have noticed the tension” (95). While Irenaeus takes seriously the PRS in his anthropology, theology, and account of resurrection, he does not ultimately offer “one coherent understanding of resurrection” (86).

McGlothlin then turns to Tertullian (chapter 3). Despite Tertullian’s defence of Paul as “my apostle,” McGlothlin concludes that in contrast with Irenaeus, Tertullian’s understanding of resurrection does not cohere with the PRS. He writes, “Where Irenaeus had used the work of the Holy Spirit to link moral transformation and resurrection within the broader process of human maturation, failing along the way to explain how all would be raised for judgment, Tertullian began with the purpose of resurrection as a prerequisite for judgment and severed the connections in the [PRS] that did not fit with this view” (96). While Tertullian upholds a link between moral transformation and resurrection, “the whole point of resurrection, its tota causa, is judgment” because only through resurrection can “the whole morally responsible being . . . receive God’s judgment” (122). Resurrection is connected with moral transformation, but only because resurrection and judgment for moral actions are synonymous for Tertullian. This, McGlothlin argues, subverts the connections between these motifs in the PRS. In Tertullian’s model, moral transformation, the work of the Spirit, and even Christ’s own resurrection (132–33) have no impact on a person’s resurrection, only on what happens afterward.

In chapter 4, McGlothlin engages with two Valentinian texts: Treatise on the Resurrection and the Gospel of Philip. He suggests that these texts, which lack discussion of a general resurrection, reflect a use of “resurrection” that is more faithful to the PRS than Irenaeus or Tertullian. Both of these texts, relying on Colossians and Ephesians, speak of resurrection both as that which happens after physical death and as something received now. Physical death is not a prerequisite for resurrection but rather in the Treatise, resurrection is the morally transformed Christian life now (147) and for the Gospel, transformation is resurrection, intimately connected with the sacraments (157). McGlothlin observes that these texts synthesize Pauline thought, holding together two senses of resurrection—in this life and after death—even though Paul himself never describes these two senses in the same letter.

McGlothlin then moves to Origen (chapter 5) arguing that Origen unites the tensions in previous chapters though his description of the resurrection of all people alongside an understanding of moral transformation as resurrection both in this life and as an eschatological reality. For McGlothlin, with his unique anthropology (i.e., material continuity of the body is not necessary after death), Origen is the first to bring together the PRS and a general eschatological resurrection. For Origen, bodies reflect the moral state of the soul so that after death, the inhabited body (either more glorious or more gross) corresponds to the moral state of the person in life. As such, the “actual event of resurrection . . . is shaped by moral transformation in this life” (176). Moral transformation is not synonymous with resurrection, but the resurrected body corresponds to moral transformation. For Origen, resurrection is possible in this life, is directly connected with salvation, and is what all will experience after physical death as their bodies are transformed either for glory or for shame (204).

McGlothlin’s final chapter (chapter 6) examines the writings of Methodius with a focus not only on how Methodius reacts against Origen but also on Methodius’s “own theological voice” (213). Like Origen, Methodius embraces a connection between moral transformation and resurrection as found in the PRS alongside a belief in the resurrection of all. However, for Methodius, death and resurrection happen so that all—good and evil—may be morally transformed to perfection, thereby cutting the connection between moral transformation in this life and in the resurrection, and instead linking moral effort in this life and what happens after resurrection. For Methodius, the causal direction is reversed so that death and resurrection produce moral transformation and perfection. Whether these morally transformed humans will spend eternity in glory or shame, however, depends on their moral efforts in life. As with Tertullian, a liability in limiting resurrection only to that which happens after physical death means that Christ’s death and resurrection has limited space in Methodius’s scheme. Christ’s resurrection and that of all people is not one Methodius addresses directly (253). Even as Methodius embraces the two kinds of resurrection found in Scripture, they remain separate in his thinking and thus, at the end of this chapter, it is clear that no early Christian successfully resolves the tension between these dual understandings.

Despite the remaining ambiguities and unresolved tensions, McGlothlin offers challenging and clear conclusions alongside common themes that emerge from the interaction of early Christian writers with his PRS. One significant result is the significance of this study for Pauline reception since McGlothlin concludes that Paul is “the clear force to be reckoned with on the theme of resurrection” (8) even as his own ambiguities influence those of early Christians.

Two threads drawn out in each chapter but not featured in the conclusion are the definitional differences between early Christian writers and the importance of progress in their understandings of resurrection. In terms of definitions, depending on the chapter, the argument revolves around differing definitions of “spiritual” (Irenaeus), “resurrection” (Tertullian, Origen), “death” (Gospel of Philip, Origen), and “flesh” (all of the above). McGlothlin points out where definitions of key words are at stake, but doesn’t explore how such differences impact the way the motifs of the PRS are linked together (or not!).

In terms of progress, this theme occurs in almost every chapter. McGlothlin describes Irenaeus’s understanding of humanity as working “through a series of pedagogical stages” to make possible the gift of bodily resurrection, which is in itself “merely a stepping-stone to further progress” (70, 73). For McGlothlin, Tertullian understands newness of life to be “a gradual process of progress in faith” (109) and, similar to Irenaeus, he leaves room for those who enter God’s kingdom after resurrection “to continue pursuing knowledge of God after this world has passed away” (119). Even the Gospel of Philip’s resurrection is described as a “complex process that is ongoing even now, conforming the baptized to Christ” (157). Origen’s soteriology is also portrayed as a process leading to “increasing conformity to God” (185). As a teacher himself, Origen draws the motifs of the PRS together to offer “a rich account of the way in which moral progress is a long, sometimes slow process of progressive education by the Spirit” (197). What place, therefore, does progress have in an understanding of how the PRS is incorporated into early Christian resurrection schemata?

Overall, McGlothlin’s lucid writing engages with the intricacies of each writer’s theological and philosophical concerns in a way that readers can easily follow with key points repeated so as not to be missed. And yet, despite all of his work to resolve the tensions in early Christian use of Paul to understand the purpose of “resurrection,” McGlothlin ends not with a unified understanding of all things but with a set of new questions. Unlike Faustus, McGlothlin doesn’t need to have all the answers. For him, the questions are enough as they open up new avenues for understanding Paul, Paul’s use in early Christian writings, and even “resurrection” in a way that contributes to contemporary systematic theology. This book is a significant study not only for questions about resurrection in early Christianity, but also for the use of Paul by early Christians. It is also an excellent example of how one holds together the study of Scripture, the history of interpretation of a text, and the theological questions and concerns that emerge from such study and interpretation. McGlothlin might not offer in the end a unified theory of resurrection, but he does accomplish a goal shared with Origen as he helps the reader to “perceive as open and clear the things that earlier seemed less easy to understand” (Comm. Rom. 5.8.13; 187).2

In Resurrection as Salvation, Tom McGlothlin offers a measured, nuanced, and highly persuasive analysis of early Christian accounts of resurrection. He drills deep in the primary sources, reading them in the context of broader developmental themes in the thought of their authors, with sensitivity to the specific and technical sense in which authors use terms, in nuanced dialogue with scholarship published on specific issues within each author’s thought, with an eye to how each concept treated fits into the patterns of the author’s wider theological perspective, and with precise attention to the texts in the original languages (McGlothlin provides his own translations except for some texts of Methodius available only in Slavonic). While reading this book, I found myself harboring few, if any, doubts, even of a minor nature, about McGlothlin’s central thesis and his support of it through readings of specific texts. When doubts of this nature did arise, the author had an uncanny way of anticipating and promptly allaying them. In what follows, therefore, I will not take issue either with the more minor arguments McGlothlin makes in interpreting early Christian authors or with his major thesis. Instead, I will take the opportunity to consider some of the larger implications of his findings for questions about the relative merits of various streams of the Pauline and New Testament legacy on resurrection, how to adjudicate between these streams, and how to characterize each thinker’s overall approach in relation to them.

This monograph does what it says it will: treat the reception of Paul’s view of resurrection as salvation in pre-Nicene thinkers. But it also serves as an introduction to early Christian anthropology that manages to keep in its purview the reception of biblical teaching on resurrection more broadly, of which Paul is but one, if the strongest and thickest, strand. By using resurrection as a lens, McGlothlin brings into focus the diversity of early Christian thinking on the nature of the human person. McGlothlin demonstrates how early Christian thinking on resurrection kaleidoscopically reflected, multiplied, and recombined a more basic diversity inherent in the biblical text itself.

McGlothlin distinguishes between two streams common to both second temple Judaism and the New Testament. According to the first, typified in the gospel of John and Revelation, resurrection is a prerequisite for judgment, a universal human experience that precedes the meting out of reward and punishment. According to the second, resurrection is itself the salvific reward granted to the righteous. Paul develops this view in the context of a rich theological framework of interconnections, which McGlothlin dubs “the Pauline resurrection schema.” For Paul, McGlothlin argues, the resurrection of Christians cannot be reduced to a singular event, circumstance, or state of being. Instead, it is a diachronic process involving christological, pneumatological, and eschatological aspects.

In Resurrection as Salvation McGlothlin deftly demonstrates how an array of second- and third-century figures worked to integrate this Pauline legacy into their anthropologies while negotiating a cumulative biblical inheritance that did not always cohere obviously with Paul’s teaching. The results varied drastically.

McGlothlin’s vivid descriptions of these contrasts lead naturally to a normative question. How ought we to weigh the relative merits of the approaches of these thinkers? This comparative question, in turn, raises a more basic query: what criteria are most helpful in assessing these contributions? We may consider how questions come into play in the concrete evaluations McGlothlin offers of the figures he treats.

Irenaeus’s progressive, Spirit-driven anthropological vision is deeply Pauline, both materially, in that he locates resurrection at the nexus of pneumatology, Christology, and eschatology, and structurally, in that he sees resurrection as a reality gradually realized over time. But Irenaeus also affirmed a more Johannine general resurrection, including a resurrection of the wicked.

According to McGlothlin, Irenaeus did not satisfactorily reconcile these two aspects of his biblical inheritance or even grant them equitable attention (94–95). He kept the Johannine perspective on resurrection dutifully in the corner of his eye, but—following Paul—fixed his gaze on resurrection as salvation. The idea of a general resurrection of the good and the bad marred the larger picture of his thinking like a puzzle piece forced into a space in which it did not belong: it was ill-fitting, largely ignored, and detracted from the bigger picture. By failing to integrate it, Irenaeus also failed to integrate the Pauline resurrection schema “into every aspect of [his] theology” (95; see also 87). Yet at this point the reader may wonder: given that Paul himself does not integrate his views with a Johannine perspective,1 does this failure really entail that “the Pauline resurrection schema” is taken less seriously than it would be if the schema were more thoroughly reconciled with the Johannine account? In fact, why shouldn’t one argue just the opposite, that Irenaeus’s reading—while wooden, perhaps—in fact takes Paul more seriously than more thoroughly integrative approaches in that he adheres more strictly to the bounds of Paul’s own thinking?

Tertullian, in whom McGlothlin finds a reversal of Irenaeus’s priorities, comes in for criticisms at least as strong as those pertaining to Irenaeus. While nodding in the general direction of Paul, Tertullian privileges resurrection as prerequisite for judgment. In an effort to underline the bodily character of this universal resurrection, Tertullian weakened Paul’s connections between resurrection and the moral transformation and conformity to Christ’s own death and resurrection brought about by the Spirit in this life. On balance McGlothlin’s critique of Tertullian seems even a bit sharper than that of Irenaeus, though McGlothlin points to a structural parallel between the two thinkers: both compromise faithfulness to the “full breadth” of the New Testament (159).

Is this impression correct? In McGlothlin’s judgment, is Tertullian’s view of resurrection, privileging the Johannine account, less persuasive than that of Irenaeus, which privileges Paul? If so, why? Would McGlothlin argue that Christian theologians ought to develop accounts of resurrection out of a center in Paul? It would seem that Tertullian’s view, as compared with the others treated in Resurrection as Salvation, most closely approximates the traditional views of resurrection that tended to be held by the ecumenical Christian church, i.e., that resurrection referred primarily or foundationally to a general, bodily resurrection of all human beings after death. Hence if his view is to be deemed inadequate vis-à-vis other options already on the table in the second and third centuries, this would seem significant for assessing the hermeneutical persuasiveness of subsequent accounts of resurrection that took on significant influence in later centuries. And conversely, if Tertullian’s went on to become, or most significantly shape, the dominant view, this would raise questions about how its future appeal and success might be explained—or not—vis-à-vis its hermeneutical features.

McGlothlin praises the two Valentinian texts—Treatise on the Resurrection and the Gospel of Philip—for being “faithful to the Pauline resurrection schema in a way that Tertullian and Irenaeus were not” (139). Yet, as he goes on to point out, at least in the case of Treatise on the Resurrection, whether the postmortem resurrection it discusses is “fleshly” is unclear (139–40n15). Genuine resurrection, in this work, is opposed to “the flesh of this illusory world” (146). In fact, it would seem that it is precisely the weakening of the connection between embodiment and resurrection that strengthens the link between resurrection now and resurrection later (146). Both resurrections are spiritual in such a way as to be opposed to the flesh of this world. If connecting the two resurrections comes at the cost of a clear affirmation of the bodily character of the second resurrection, does this cost attenuate the “Pauline” character of these two Valentinian works (given texts such as Rom 8:9–11)?

In the case of Origen, McGlothlin calls attention to how the Alexandrian is able to synthesize the relevant scriptural data (264) by building creatively on Paul with his suggestion that resurrection involves a continuum or gradation of bodily states (172–73). For Origen, bodily resurrection is no more uniform than the body itself. There is a spectrum of different types of resurrection, more and less glorious. Because resurrection bodies exist in different forms, all of which are pedagogical and none of which are merely punitive, resurrection is at once salvation and a means of universal judgment. Origen makes Paul and John cohere with the glue of this innovative, extrabiblical solution.

But there is one aspect of Origen’s account that seems not only to go beyond Paul but also to stand in tension with him. This is the idea that the resurrection (even of Christ—see pp. 190–91) is contingent upon moral transformation. In McGlothlin’s words, “Individuals are progressively transformed to reflect that glory [that of Jesus] and its concomitant heavenly way of life through their growth in the virtues—a process that actually constitutes the resurrection of Jesus himself in its soteriologically significant sense” (194; see also 191). But does not this kind of contingency invert Paul’s logic? For Paul, does not a sharing in Christ’s resurrection become a reality in the believer precisely “even when we were dead through our trespasses” (Eph 2:5) and not on the basis of preexisting qualifications? If there is a genuine tension between Paul and Origen with respect to the contingency of resurrection upon moral transformation (on this contingency in Origen, see 194, 195, 196, 197, 202), this would seem to mitigate the extent to which Origen’s connection between moral transformation and resurrection may be seen as accounting for all the relevant data from scripture or even all the relevant data from Paul.

Methodius offers another creative, if highly unusual, approach to combining Pauline and Johannine views of resurrection. His solution is to retain the Pauline connection between moral transformation and resurrection, but reverse the vector of the relationship, so that the latter gives rise to the former. Resurrection after death will complete the process of moral transformation begun in this life; in the end, sin will be purged from everyone. Yet reward and judgment will be meted out to the resurrected based on their efforts in this life. While this account sacrifices the Pauline emphasis on the reality of resurrection in the Christian life at present, Methodius maintains the Johannine teaching of a universal resurrection that is a prerequisite for judgment, while also preserving the Pauline resurrection schema’s connection between resurrection and moral transformation. Some of the thematic breadth of Paul’s resurrection schema is preserved, even as it is chronologically constricted to an eschatological frame.

In taking stock of Methodius’s attempted solution, McGlothlin observes that Methodius failed to “relate the general resurrection to the resurrecting work of Christ in the incarnation” (253). At the same time, McGlothlin points out that Methodius does seem to build his unusual perspective on one text from Paul, Romans 6:7, and to make (a very literal interpretation of) that verse the governing principle for his understanding of resurrection, even though a great number of other Pauline texts (as McGlothlin shows so ably in his introduction) suggest that the road to the second resurrection is paved with moral transformation. This case in Methodius again brings up the issue of what faithfulness to Paul means. Does this require a thinker aligning points of emphasis with Paul’s own accents or is it sufficient to have a basis for one’s arguments in Paul?

McGlothlin’s treatment of Methodius, like his consideration of the other early Christian thinkers and texts that appear in his study, leads the reader to reflect on a number of larger questions. What should be the criteria for comparing the various views McGlothlin presents? Fidelity to Paul? To the New Testament more broadly? Subsequent reception and historical importance in various tributaries of the Christian tradition? What kinds of complexities pertain to assessing on the basis of these criteria and weighing them against each other?

In addition to raising the hermeneutical questions I have listed above, I would like to highlight four virtues of McGlothlin’s book in the spirit of thinking through these broader implications. On the formal front, McGlothlin demonstrates an admirable restraint and repeatedly resists overinterpreting the evidence. This pattern first emerges on p. 24, but is repeated throughout the book. McGlothlin does not inflate his arguments, but consistently argues in a modest and cautious way. Second, McGlothlin addresses thinkers on their own terms, showing how the theme of resurrection relates to the distinctive inner logic of each author’s thought. With respect to the material content of the work, McGlothlin’s book drives home for its readers two essential points, not only about early Christian treatments of resurrection, but also about early Christian literature more broadly. First, this book demonstrates in an unmistakable way that the idea of early Christian literature as a monolith, whether funded by the intent to valorize or to demonize, is a myth. Even as each of the thinkers McGlothlin treats dealt with a common biblical inheritance, the theories of resurrection that resulted differed drastically. And second, McGlothlin’s book points to the deeply biblical character of early Christian thinking on the resurrection. These authors differed in their convictions about how resurrection was effected by God, and even in their understandings of what resurrection was. Yet they all struggled to make sense of their common biblical inheritance. In leading readers to these crucial insights by using Paul’s resurrection schema as a prism, McGlothlin has injected new life into the ancient, dry bones of another inheritance: the inheritance of debates about resurrection in early Christianity.