Lisa Bowens

Associate Professor of New Testament

Lisa Marie Bowens, PhD ’14, associate professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, earned a BS (cum laude), MSBE, and MLIS from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, an MTS and ThM from Duke Divinity School, and a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. She is the first African American woman to earn tenure in Princeton Seminary’s Bible department. Her first book, An Apostle in Battle: Paul and Spiritual Warfare in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 (Mohr Siebeck), is a revision of her dissertation and examines Paul’s ascent to the third heaven through a cosmic/apocalyptic lens. It traces martial imagery in the letter and explores how this imagery facilitates understanding Paul’s journey as an example of spiritual warfare. Her second book, African American Readings of Paul: Reception, Resistance, and Transformation (Eerdmans), is the first book to investigate a historical trajectory of how African Americans have understood Paul and his letters. The monograph covers African American writings from the 1700s to the mid-twentieth century and demonstrates how these interpreters utilized the Pauline corpus to resist and protest injustice and racism in their own contexts. She has also co-edited Preaching Romans From Here: Diverse Voices Engage Paul’s Most Famous Letter (with Scot McKnight and Joseph Modica) and Do Black Lives Matter?: How Christian Scriptures Speak to Black Empowerment (with Dennis Edwards). An award-winning author, she was designated by Patheos as one of the 50 New Testament Scholars to read and follow and recently delivered the prestigious Speaker Lectures at Oxford University in 2023. Among her current writing projects are two commentaries, one on 2 Corinthians and one on 1-2 Thessalonians.