Issue 16 Preaching and Mental HealthBlog | Book reviews
Book reviews
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 26.09.18
Phoebe A story Paula Gooder (Hodder & Stoughton, 2018) five stars
Eugene Peterson once wrote that reading a novel is one of the more serious activities open to a pastor because the Gospel is the story of salvation to a particular people in a particular place. We use non-fiction at our peril to universalise it. Which is why Phoebe is such an interesting departure for Bible scholar Paula Gooder who has used narrative to place Phoebe in Rome, delivering Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paula Gooder is adamant that she has not written a novel. That is only partially true. You can’t create a character with a narrative without setting out an explicit motive (delivering the letter), a hidden motive that emerges from Phoebe’s backstory and an emerging motive that drives the rest of the story. But the Bible scholar’s focus is different from the novelist.
The easiest way to describe it is as if you read Romans 16 purely from the explanatory notes describing the personalities referenced. Using storytelling, Phoebe’s world grows organically from Romans 16 to the rest of the epistle, with some references to other parts of the New Testament as well. And what a rich world it is; a world where slaves borrow their masters’ houses for church meetings, where money is collected daily for the poor and each house church has a different character to the others. The way in which slaves could rise to prominence or reinvent themselves as is only possible in a huge city. It covers the importance of patronage and obligation, and the transformational power of adoption or being freed from slavery. Gooder wisely keeps Paul in the background as a distant but disruptive voice whose opinions are constantly debated.
