This slender book is part of a larger effort by the Catholic Biblical Association (CBA) to make contemporary biblical scholarship more readily available to pastors and the general public. In this inaugural volume in what promises to be an extensive series, Frank Matera masterfully recapitulates his own work on New Testament theology.Footnote 1 What Matera offers here is not “cutting edge” or experimental theology; rather, the book represents the cumulative insights and work of the last several decades of biblical scholarship, work that very much reflects mainstream scholarship. In fact, the work might be rightly termed “conservative,” understood in the best and most descriptive sense of the term.
The field of New Testament theology was made famously controversial through the works of twentieth-century giants like Bultmann, Cullmann, and Kümmel, but Matera brings a measured and reassuring tone to his presentation of what can be a difficult and unsettling topic. The book unfolds around two main concerns: an articulation of the diverse theologies within the New Testament and the unity of theological vision across the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. Matera achieves these two goals admirably by offering a summative account of his own work in the field, avoiding the granular analysis characteristic of earlier form-critical approaches to the material by utilizing a more literary approach to New Testament theology. Matera offers separate chapters on the synoptic tradition, the Johannine tradition, the Pauline tradition, and finally a chapter that treats together the Catholic epistles, the Johannine epistles, and Revelation. In the opinion of this reviewer, the separation of the Johannine epistles from the chapter on the Johannine tradition does not serve Matera’s presentation well, whereas the treatment of Revelation apart from the considerations of the Johannine tradition does work well.
The last two chapters offer an overview of the New Testament theologies and the internal and external unity of these theologies, providing a more canonical overview of the coherence of these theologies explored in the earlier chapters. Matera accomplishes this task without abandoning the critical spirit that informs his study of the diversity of theologies found among New Testament authors and their communities. For example, his investigation of canonical unity of New Testament theology, what he terms the “external unity” of New Testament theology, anchors the Christological focus that provides for the “internal unity” and coherence of the canon.
Matera makes this small book exceptionally useful by including brief “bullet-point” summaries at key junctures in his presentation of complex material as well as offering a few notes and a handy bibliography at the end of the book. In all, Matera and the CBA have done a great service for pastors and teachers by undertaking this project. Other academic organizations would do well to follow the lead of CBA and Paulist Press in making scholarship speak to the needs of the church and “people in the pew” through a wide-ranging series such as this one. The future of theology may move out of college and universities and into parish and small group settings. The guild will need to adjust and adopt modalities for academic theology and biblical studies to speak into new settings.
