The Collected Essays of C. Kavin Rowe on Hermeneutics and New Testament Studies

C. Kavin Rowe. Method,Context, and Meaning in New Testament Studies. Eerdmans, 2024. Hardback. ISBN 978-0-8028-7759-8. $69.99. Studies in Luke, Acts, and Paul. Eerdmans, 2024. Hardback. ISBN 978-0-8028-8274-5. $75.99.

In these volumes, Kavin Rowe brings together thirty-one essays from across his career that highlight his substantive contribution to the fields of hermeneutics, New Testament studies, and the history of early Christianity. Rowe has a direct writing style that matches his methodological clarity and his penchant for precision. These features serve his analysis of the often complex and technical issues of history and exegesis.  
 
One way to characterize these essays is with the terms conversation and comparison. A dialogic quality enlivens the methodological discussion in these studies from several distinct angles. There is serious engagement with several biblical texts and interaction with a wide range of dialogue partners. His series of essays on Luke and Acts, for instance, usually include the close reading of a particular biblical passage that serves as an anchoring focal point by which to engage broader biblical-theological themes (see Studies, 3–72, 110–214).
 
A good example of this is his treatment of Acts 2:36, a text that speaks of God making Jesus “both Lord and Christ” (Studies, 179–200). In his analysis, Rowe situates this text within the narrative framework of Luke-Acts and notes the tension generated by the fact that Luke has already identified Jesus as Lord in strategic ways in the preceding narrative. Rowe then surveys the history of interpretation from Arian interpreters to historical-critical commentators and then articulates the “Christological coherence” of this passage (Studies, 179). 

Rowe’s argument for a confessional approach to the discipline of New Testament studies is likewise rooted in the exegesis of strategic passages about the nature of truth alongside of interaction with contemporary scholarship and the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard (Method, 3–19).
 
Rowe also includes several essays that state the big idea or the specific thesis of one of his larger works and then proceed to interact with critical responses to that larger work. These include his study of Christianity in the Greco-Roman world, especially in relation to Empire studies (Studies, 3–23) and the theological truth claims of the book of Acts (Studies, 95–109), his narrative analysis of Jesus as Lord in Luke’s Gospel (Studies, 73–94), and his examination of the Stoic tradition (Method, 155–78). 

These entries provide helpful précis of Rowe’s primary arguments in these larger works. For those already familiar with those volumes, these interactions provide clarification and depth of understanding. For Rowe, this further engagement with critics is an “attempt to reason together in search of common wisdom” (Studies, 95). 
 
Alongside conversation, Rowe also endeavors to complexify and clarify the art and science of comparative analysis. In particular, Rowe develops his proposal that certain traditions constitute “grammars of life” that integrate an array of historical, theological, textual, and social dimensions (Method, 155). In order to compare traditions such as these (like Christianity, Judaism, or Stoicism), this comprehensive element must be taken into account. 

Rowe observes in this vein that “comparison between strong traditions of life asks us what we make of the truth claims of others” and therefore requires us “to specify what posture of reasoning we take toward them and what the consequences are of our rejection/acceptance” (Method, 156). For Rowe, “comparison is finally a question of truth, of relationships, of politics, and thus of practical reason.” Accordingly, the act of comparing comprehensive traditions “questions the shape of our existence, both what we’ve been and what we will become” (Method, 156).
 
In other words, more is at stake in this kind of historical comparative analysis than simply descriptive data-gathering and conceptual synthesis. For Rowe, comparative inquiry is “less a question about a specific method than it is about being human in a world with competing accounts of what that is” (Method, 200). When examining mutually exclusive traditions that are integrated into an entire way of viewing the world, the interpreter or historian requires extensive time and a vantage point of considerable range. Practically, then, “to study alternative traditions as an academic is to learn patience” (Method, 178). 

Rowe’s central claim about comparative inquiry in the ancient world is provocative and has prompted response and criticism from a variety of methodological angles. Rowe summarizes many of these criticisms and responds in several essays that were originally portions of published forums on his work (see esp. Method, 179–215).
 
A final feature worth noting is the way these essays evidence Rowe’s composite skill as an exegete, a historian, and a theologian. Rowe writes within an interdisciplinary atmosphere where exegesis is organically informed by a set of historical and theological instincts. 

There are obviously specific areas or interpretive positions that some will disagree with among these essays (something surfaced by Rowe’s own rejoinders to various criticisms), but as a collection of substantive ideas and conclusions presented for students and other scholars to consider, these volumes admirably succeed.