Saint Paul

Pope Benedict's treatment of St. Paul's contribution to Christianity is an extremely well thought out presentation of the key elements of St. Paul's teachings that emphasizes in a clear way the importance of his writings and the centrality of Paul's works. Pope Benedict surrounds Paul's writings with the historical environment in which they were written and the social situations that existed at that time, thus giving a deeper insight to the man and his work. This book is the next best thing to having some one-on-one time with Pope Benedict XVI.

This is a small book, only 131 pages. It consists of a dozen or so short chapters on aspects of St. Paul's life and thought, each of which was originally one of the Pope's weekly talks. While the focus is on St. Paul, the book is a short summary of Christian teaching. St. Paul, of course, was one of the most important teachers of the early Church, and his thought covers the whole range of Christian concerns. Given what a well-known scholar Pope Benedict is, it would be natural to expect a book by him to be a scholarly exploration of the various doctrinal and textual controversies raging around St. Paul. This book gives a bit of that -- Benedict is very well-versed in that literature -- but that is not his focus. Instead of approaching us as a professor, teaching his graduate students, Benedict is approaching the average believer as a simple expounder of the Word. Simple, yet profound, there is a great deal of value in this little book.

Before addressing the substance of the reflections contained in this book, I'd like to address the book itself. This book is yet another example fo the high quality work done by Ignatius press, which is the main publisher of Pope Benedict's books in English. Other publishers will likely put out a similar book, but as was the case with their attempts with the Church Fathers series and the Apostles series, their work, while good, will never come close to the beauty and elegance of the books put forth by Ignatius Press. As far as the content of the book, quite simply another volume of rich, and insightful reflections by Pope Benedict. He fleshes out the person of St. Paul, his conversion, his ministry, and his theology. St. Paul is an important figure not only because he is a great example of the transformation which can occur in the life of a person after encountering God, but also because his mission and his theology give great witness to the person of Jesus. The Pauline year ends June 29, 2009, but the reflections in this book are timeless.