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The Madness of St Paul – How St Paul Rediscovered the Love of God

Reviewed by Chris Skilton.

Richard Dormandy has served in parish ministry for twenty five years and is a member of the Board of ‘Ministry Today UK’. This is indeed a pastor’s take on the life and ministry of St Paul and a compelling and fascinating read. The book is concerned not so much with the theology of Paul, but with his person, as laid very bare in 2 Corinthians.

Dormandy suggests that it is in this epistle that Paul reaches a personal crisis point and that it is written as a result of the devastating personal rejection that he experiences at their hands. The author suggests that “In his (Paul’s) eyes, they fail to understand how much he loves them. Possibly he also fails to understand how desperately he wants them to love him” (p.33).

In the depth of his despair, Paul rediscovers Christ and himself as he confronts three key paradoxes of life and faith, all of which feature prominently in this letter – joy in affliction, riches in poverty and power in weakness (pp.63-67). In these, Paul, it is argued, truly discovers what it means to be ‘in Christ’ and it is through this traumatic personal journey and only then that Paul is able to write his most glorious, profound and sublime work – the Epistle to the Romans.

This study of Paul through our “emotional response to the text” (p.90) may challenge some of the presuppositions of readers of ‘Ministry Today’ about how we undertake our biblical studies, and that would be no bad thing. I probably need a bit more convincing that this therapeutic and modern understanding of Paul could be the last word on the apostle, but I found it illuminating and fresh, bringing different familiar passages to life in a striking and new way.

I had wondered on finishing reading whether it would have been helpful to have had a further chapter or two applying the lessons of the biblical text to contemporary ministry. However, I think that ultimately it is a strength of the book not to do that work for us, but to invite us to take the book and 2 Corinthians to heart and draw our own conclusions. It would be a creative and courageous gathering of ministers who committed to reading the book and then discussing its implications for their ministry.