The Least of These: Paul and the Marginalized

Carla Swafford Works

Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020

Reviewed by George Martin
5/30/2023

I suspect that seminary students as Wesley Seminary (Washington DC) are eager to study the New Testament in the classes taught by Carla Works who wrote The Least of These: Paul and the Marginalized. The book reflects the concerns of her students, as their questions and doubts are reflected in her work. They were the same issues that helped frame my book on Paul. There are so many things ascribed to Paul that he may not have written. It can be difficult to know what he really believed particularly when it comes to questions concerning women in the early church and the place of slaves as well.

The main thesis of the book is to see Paul as the apostle for the least and most subjugated in his world. Paul, Works maintains, would “cringe at how our structures and hierarchies of the ‘present evil age” (Gal. 1:4) have limited our thinking, caused us to want uniformity rather than unity, and hindered us from seeing the Spirit of God move among the least expected.” (p. 83) So it is that she emphasizes that Paul did not see the slave Onesimus as the property of Philemon. That is what I concluded as well in my book.

Works reminds us that Paul wasn’t wearing a three piece suit and preaching in a stadium styled church to thousands given his prison record. She notes that he did very little to ever endear himself to the elite, especially with his willingness to work with his hands to earn his own living, and not be dependent on any patron. He became like the “others”, the least.

At one place in her book Works offers a long list of all the metaphors Paul used in his letters to refer to the least in his world. Some of them are: slave, wet nurse, premature infant, orphan, debtor, nothing, and last of all. (I just listed a few. See page 129.) She notes that in regard to the church in Corinth, Paul notes that some lived as kings, while Paul saw himself and those around him as “scum of the earth.” (1 Cor 4:13, p. 143).

Another thing I liked about the book was the authors awareness that Paul in bringing the gospel to pagans, and knowing it was the story of the Jewish God, did not water it down to somehow make it something easy for them to comprehend. As she wrote “Paul is working with the gospel that is simply a tough sell.” As she notes it still ought to be in that category. She writes that the opening lines of Romans 2 “ought to pull the rug out from under you.” (p. 156).

One of the places where there is a real parallel between her work and my book regards Paul’s insistence on the active role of women in the life of the church as it gathers for worship and teaching. As she writes, “Not only are women present in First Church Corinth, but they have voice.” They also have their voice and the equal rights in a marriage. She clearly states that Paul’s understanding of equality for women was advice in his world which “runs against the norm” (p. 76).

With the theme that Paul’s focus was including the least in the world as full-fledged members of the early assemblies the author wonders what might be missing in twenty-first century churches. “Who is absent from the table?” Are we allowing “cultural norms” she ponders, “to dictate our love toward one another?” (p. 177) In other words would Paul come back, look in the average the church, and recognize the presence and status of the least in our world?
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