A resident of New Zealand for at least 30 years, Christian lay theologian William J. Laurence's other vocation is as a luthier --that is, an artisan wA resident of New Zealand for at least 30 years, Christian lay theologian William J. Laurence's other vocation is as a luthier --that is, an artisan who crafts musical instruments; and he takes that work very seriously. (This background is much more than incidental to the book.) Not academically trained in theology or Biblical studies, he's nevertheless well read in these fields, fluent in Greek, and a serious student of the Bible. Readers do well to be wary of self-published (Strait Road Press, the imprint here, is apparently Laurence's own company) theological books written by uncredentialed authors, because the latter are often densely ignorant, self-righteously opinionated, and/or arguing for off-the-wall theology with no genuine grounding in Scripture or common sense. However, that is not true in this instance. Laurence has produced a sober, well-reasoned and grounded study of God's love for humans, based on the lexical meaning of the Greek word agape [pronounced as "ah-gah-pay"]. At a bit over 140 pages, this is a short work, and a quick, jargon-free read; but it packs a great deal of ground-breaking insight into that short length.
New Testament scholars have always been aware that, whereas agape is a rare word in the secular Greek of the first century, in the New Testament it emerges as by far the most commonly used word for love, both the love God has for humans and that He commands them to have for Him and for each other. The same preponderance of agape is already apparent in the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced ca. 300 B.C. Many serious students of the New Testament, including this reviewer, have long maintained (while admitting that there is no actual lexical evidence for this) that the early Christian writers, guided by the Holy Spirit as they interpreted the love shown by Christ on the cross, took a relatively rare word and invested it with the meaning "unconditional love." Much modern Christian theology (mine included) has also held that such "unconditional love" is an essential element of God's nature, so that He loves everybody in a way that's essentially almost automatic and involuntary. This is problematic, in that it has no objective lexical foundation and in that it disconnects God's love from His reason and His will.
In this book, Laurence draws heavily on the ground-breaking 1918 article "The Terminology of Love in the New Testament," by famed "Old Princeton" scholar B. B. Warfield, published in The Princeton Theological Review just three years before Warfield died. For whatever reason, this article attracted little attention at the time, seems to have been quickly forgotten, and exerted little or no lasting influence on subsequent theology or New Testament studies. (I'd never heard about it until Laurence mentioned it on a discussion thread in a Goodreads group; I've subsequently gotten a copy by interlibrary loan and read it for myself --although the read was facilitated by skimming in some parts, since it's a long article and deals with apparently every attested ancient use of all four Greek words for love in eye-glazing detail.) But it deserves attention, because it establishes that all four words emphasize different aspects of love; and the aspect emphasized by agape is, in Warfield's words, "...approbation, or... esteem.... It is from the apprehension of the preciousness...of its object that it derives its impulse, and its content thus lies closer to the notion of prizing than that of liking." In other words, it is a love founded on the lover's view of the worthiness or value of its object.
Building on this foundation, Laurence considers the way that this meaning of "love" would have appealed to the LXX translators as expressing a higher type of love than that implied in the more common Greek word philia; the shaping influence of the LXX on the Christian usage, and the ways that the apostles Paul and John define agape for Gentile readers in I Corinthians 13 and various verses in I and II John; and both the positive aspects and limitations of the biblical images of God as Father and of God/Christ as husband/bridegroom for understanding His love. Then he considers the biblical imagery of God as artisan, crafting the completed church as His eternal temple and bride, beautiful and precious in His eyes because of the beauty and value He has imparted, and will impart to it; and finds in this the most complete explanation of God's love for humans. The subsequent chapters develop this understanding, and its significance for how we think about God and our response to Him. It is presupposed (and stated in places) here that this response is voluntary, and desired by God from all humans; and with that supposition I agree.
IMO, this book would be worth its price (though it offers more of value) simply for making contemporary New Testament students aware of Warfield's forgotten lexical work, which has significantly re-written the way I think of agape. If we understand the latter word in accordance with its objectively demonstrated meaning, as love for something/someone seen by the lover as worthy of love because of the object's worth, value or preciousness, then God's agape is a reasonable and willed love on His part, related to His wisdom and holiness. And I would also agree with Laurence that this worth, value and preciousness is entirely something God imparts to us, not anything we would possess in ourselves apart from God.
Where I respectfully disagree with Laurence in one particular is with regard to what God values in us. To my mind, this is not entirely limited to our beauty and worth as part of the finished product of the New Jerusalem, the Bride of Christ. Granting that God is not limited by time, and that in the perspective of eternity He already sees the finished product as complete (though, as finite and time-bound humans, we can't truly see from His perspective, and it's perhaps presumptuous to think we could) I believe that it's more consistent with Scriptures like John 3:16, and with the constancy of Divine attitudes spoken of in multiple Scriptures, to see His love as inclusive of all humans, even those who won't be part of the completed church, and as already extended to them as individuals, not simply as parts of a whole, and prior to the completion of the whole. If we take seriously the idea that He made us in His image, and that the latter is not wholly destroyed by the fall into sin (even though it's marred), I would argue that this image is something He finds precious and worthy of love. (That doesn't mean His love overrides His justice and forces Him to forgive the impenitent; rather, it means He grieves for the damnation of sinners whom He continues to love.)
Even with this caveat, I would still highly recommend this monograph as one any serious student of the New Testament or of Christian theology ought to read and interact with. It's a major contribution to both fields....more
This volume (published in 1992) is part of the New American Commentary series on the Bible, under the imprint of Broadman Press, the publishing arm ofThis volume (published in 1992) is part of the New American Commentary series on the Bible, under the imprint of Broadman Press, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. Like the roughly contemporary New International Biblical Commentary from Hendrickson Publishers, it's based on the New International Version; both series are edited and written by evangelical scholars, and intended for laypersons interested in serious Bible study as well as for preachers and for teachers and students in academia. (Apparently unlike most of the volumes in both series, though, this one treats technical matters in the commentary itself, and uses some technical terms that not all lay readers will be familiar with.) Senior New Testament scholar Robert H. Stein, the author of this book and a number of others, was a major figure in his field (he's now retired); at the time this was written, he was a long-time professor at Bethel Seminary, but subsequently taught for many years at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
In this commentary, Stein's focus is on Luke's theological message. So he usually doesn't go into discussions of the historical authenticity of the events Luke records, or the pre-history of the Gospel traditions, though he sometimes touches on these subjects lightly. A short introduction covers such matters as authorship, date, audience, and especially Luke's purposes and themes; it also provides an outline of the third gospel, and a map of New Testament Palestine. The body of the commentary follows the outline, with a short introduction to each major division, the full NIV text of each individual unit, a discussion of its context, phrase-by-phrase comments, and a summary of that unit's message(s). Indexes of persons, Scripture references, and subjects are provided (though that last one is very sketchy, just about a page and a half). There is no bibliography, perhaps because Stein interacts more with the Lukan text itself than with secondary sources. (Some of the footnotes are references to the latter, but most refer to other Bible texts.)
For the most part, the exegesis here is inductive. Where the text itself admits of more than one interpretation, Stein generally lists all the possibilities, and gives contextual or grammatical reasons for his preference. To briefly summarize his treatment of some key passages, he does not see a direct allusion to the year of Jubilee in Luke 4:19; regards the Beatitudes in this gospel as blessings upon believers, not as a list of requirements for becoming a believer; and treats Luke 21:7-24 as referring to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., not to an eschatological tribulation. His treatment of the parable of the soils in Luke 8:4-15 offers a mediating position on the polarized "eternal security" vs. "conditional security" debate. Those who hold a "conditional immortality" position on individual eschatology will disagree with his view of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man; and his treatment of the parables in Luke 15 would have benefited from Kenneth E. Bailey's Finding the Lost: Cultural Keys to Luke 15 (1992), which was evidently published too close in time to this commentary to allow Stein to use it.
Read from cover to cover, the commentary seems repetitive in places; but the repetitions serve the needs of many commentary users, who only look up treatments of particular passages instead of reading the whole book. At 642 pages (625 of them in the actual text), this is a very substantial and solid commentary, careful, sober and responsible in its treatment of the text. I would have no hesitation in recommending it to any readers wanting to seriously study this particular gospel.
Note: A version of this review first appeared in the January 1995 issue of The Christian Librarian....more
The 1987 reading date for this popular level commentary is a rough guess, but I read it in the period of my career when I was teaching Bible courses aThe 1987 reading date for this popular level commentary is a rough guess, but I read it in the period of my career when I was teaching Bible courses at the college level. Since my Sunday school class has embarked on a three-month study of the book of Revelation, I'm currently using Fogle's book as a resource for my teaching, which prompted my interest in finally reviewing it here. Like the author of the commentary, as an evangelical Christian I approach all of the Bible, including its last-written book, as an inspired revelation from God (and so, obviously, take its interpretation very seriously).
Generally, though, Revelation has been seen by most of its readers as a very difficult book to interpret, and its difficulty is increased for modern Western Christians (and non-Christians) by the great degree to which we're removed from its historical and cultural context. It's steeped in the concepts and imagery of the Old Testament; and it's also heavily influenced by the language and style of the apocalyptic literature that grew up in the centuries between the testaments. That style includes much use of complex symbolism and figurative language. For English-speaking evangelicals in the 20th and 21st centuries, another complicating factor is the great influence of the theology of "dispensationalism," developed in the 1820s by former Anglican priest turned Plymouth Brethren leader John Nelson Darby, and spread far beyond Plymouth Brethren circles by the wide popularity of the Scofield Reference Bible around the turn of the 20th century, and of the writings of Hal Lindsey in the 1970s. This peculiar (and IMO fallacious) form of premillennialism, built around Darby's signature theological invention, the "pre-tribulation rapture," gives great attention to the book of Revelation, but views its contents almost entirely as a detailed and relatively literal description of events destined to take place near the very end of the present age.
Lerry W. Fogle, at the time he wrote this book, was a Church of the Brethren (a different denomination from the Plymouth Brethren) minister, who was also active in the charismatic movement of that era. (I don't know anything more about him than what's given in the brief write-up on the back cover.) His short (a bit over four pages) Introduction just explains his purpose in writing the commentary. It grew out of a Bible study in his congregation, as a result of which he felt led to share with the wider church an interpretation of Revelation that sees it as primarily intended to reveal Christ and his message of exhortation and encouragement to the church when it was written, and in all the ensuing centuries. That encouragement finds its climax and strength in the vision of the eternal kingdom of the coming age that will replace the present one; but the biblical book itself isn't mainly just a description of entirely future events. The intended readership of the commentary is primarily evangelical laity; in keeping with this, the Bible text used is the King James Version, and there's no scholarly jargon and little reference to the Greek. Fogle's language is conversational, much like an expository sermon in many ways, though the commentary isn't a "homiletical" treatment studded with modern examples and applications. Few footnotes are included, and references to other writers in the text are rare.
29 of the 30 chapters of this book are simply passage-by-passage, inductive explanation of the text of Revelation. (Chapter 30 just consists of a single page, and is a short summation in Fogle's words of Revelation's central message.) The whole text of the passages aren't repeated, but italicized quotations are cited throughout, and other Scriptures are referred to and quoted as appropriate. A short review can only touch briefly on some of the more significant interpretive stances. As I do, Fogle understands the "John" (Revelation 1:1) writing the biblical book to be the Apostle John, though he isn't dogmatic about it. In direct contradiction to Darby, he understands "Israel" in John's sense to refer to Christian Jews and Christian Gentiles together, as God's one people. He explicitly rejects and rebuts the "pre-tribulation rapture" theory, and recognizes both the descriptions of judgments in the body of the book and of the "millennium" as symbolic descriptions of different aspects of the church age. Likewise, he sees the "beast" of Revelation 13 as a collective entity opposing God throughout the present age, and the "New Jerusalem" as a symbolic depiction of the church.
If I have one significant criticism of the commentary, it would be that Fogle ignores the historical background of John's situation, which is the persecution of Christians (and observant Jews) by the Roman emperor Domitian, who demanded that his subjects worship him as a god. (Most scholars date the writing of the main part of Revelation at around 96 A.D., "towards the end of Domitian's reign,” as Irenaeus stated --though I personally believe part of it was written earlier, in the reign of Vespasian-- but Fogle doesn't discuss the date at all.) That persecution, to my mind, is an important context for understanding the prophecy. As would be expected, I have a few specific disagreements with interpretations of particular verses. The bibliography is not strong; it lists only eight sources, and two of those, Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and Foxe's Book of Martyrs, are used only for illustrative, not interpretive, purposes. (Dave MacPherson is the only other cited author whose name I recognized.) In fairness, Fogle would assert that his focus is the biblical text itself, not other writer's thoughts about it; but interactions with others' thoughts and information can often help us formulate and deepen our own.
But those quibbles aside, this is a very sound, sober and sane approach to an often misunderstood and undervalued book of the Bible, written at a level easily understood by the average lay person with no background in academic study of the subject, but offering insights that would be useful for preachers and Bible scholars as well. This isn't a book that would be apt to interest non-Christians; but I'd highly recommend it as a resource to any Christians studying the book of Revelation....more
Full disclosure at the outset: Ron Andrea and I are long-standing Goodreads friends, and he offered me a free copy of this book (which, obviously, I aFull disclosure at the outset: Ron Andrea and I are long-standing Goodreads friends, and he offered me a free copy of this book (which, obviously, I accepted!) in exchange for an honest review.
The author is a Christian believer (as am I), in his case for over fifty years. A veteran of 30 years of military service, he currently serves as an elder and Bible teacher for Prevailing Word Ministries/Glen Allen Christian Fellowship, a non-denominational evangelical church in Glen Allen, VA. His book apparently grows out of his congregational teaching, and is structured as an exploration of the Apostle Paul's message(s) in the New Testament Epistle to the Romans. Written strictly for lay readers, it doesn't purport to be either an academic treatment or a verse-by-verse commentary, and there are no bibliography or footnotes. (He does draw on other writers in places, notably the early 20th-century Chinese Christian thinker Watchman Nee.) At 218 pages of actual text, and with jargon-free prose, this is a pretty quick read.
Passionate pastoral concern radiates from these pages; Ron clearly cares deeply about the message of the book, and writes from his heart with a clear desire to reach and engage with the reader. Like many (perhaps most) thoughtful contemporary Christians, he's highly dissatisfied with the sub-biblical thought and lifestyle of the modern American church, and its failure to impact the surrounding world with the gospel. At the risk of over-simplification, I would summarize his main themes here as: unconditional love of God and others is the basis of the entire Christian life; our moral transformation from selfish egoist to loving saint is something only God can accomplish in us, not something we can do for ourselves; and we'll never become what God wants us to be until we're totally surrendered to His will (to the point of the breaking of our own self-will). All of these messages are perfectly scriptural and true, and I think would be agreed on by virtually all Christian readers --though the author suggests that the main problem of the church today is that we don't seem to understand any of this in actual practice. There are a number of other valuable insights scattered through the text. The discussion questions that follow each chapter here are first-rate; a pastor or Sunday school teacher doing a series of lessons on Romans could profitably use these to encourage self-examination/discussion by students in his/her class.
A criticism that could be made is that, though the introduction states that the focus is on Paul's message in Romans, and the chapter headings progress through Romans section by section, relatively little of the text actually expounds the epistle. Main ideas of each section are identified from one or two verses, and then elaborated by quotes from other Pauline writings, other parts of the New Testament, and even the Old Testament. (One chapter even leaves Romans completely, digressing to cover Mark 14:3-9.) Now, exposition of Romans could certainly include reference to other Pauline letters where he makes similar points, or elaborates a point, and reference to the Old Testament sources of his thought (especially where, as he often does, he directly cites the Old Testament). But if you're expounding on the message of Romans, even if you aren't purporting to comment on it verse-by-verse, most of your discussion needs to be on the words of Romans itself. That proportion here is completely reversed. (Even when verses from Romans are quoted, they often aren't from the part of Romans that's supposedly being discussed!) Perhaps a viable solution would have been to make the book simply a discussion of Paul's message as a whole, and not to try to tie the framework directly to Romans.
Personally, I'm not as convinced as Ron is that misunderstanding the basic ideas he's presenting here is the source of the church's sorry state, nor that the message here will correct things if it's just read and taken to heart. (Indeed, I could see some readers distorting the message of spiritual/moral transformation as God's responsibility into an excuse for not bothering to cooperate with the process, though that isn't the author's intention or a fair interpretation of what he says.) Rather, I think the main problem of the church is a lack of understanding as to how the abstract ideas of love, moral transformation and consecration to God's will are to be lived out in practice. Each denomination has its comfortable standard of expected behavior (mostly handed down from the 19th century), that's been the way they've always lived; it's naively assumed that this lifestyle is exactly what Jesus and the apostles had in mind, and anybody that wants to go beyond it or try it by the yardstick of Scripture is weird and rocking the boat. We need a root-and-branch reexamination of the specifics of contemporary Christian attitudes and behaviors, more than we need re-assertions of the general principles. Another valid criticism here, then, is that this book is light on practical specifics of how to apply Paul's behavioral commands. Some specifics are touched on, indeed, but in very brief and undeveloped fashion.
Despite these criticisms, though, I think this is a book that can benefit some Christian readers. It would perhaps be most beneficial as a wake-up call to those whose dedication and practice is lukewarm....more
The Goodreads description for this book essentially reproduces the cover copy, but that does accurately summarize the subject matter of the book. WhilThe Goodreads description for this book essentially reproduces the cover copy, but that does accurately summarize the subject matter of the book. While the Bible asserts that God's essential nature is loving towards humans, and that He is just and fair in dealing with us, there are texts that can appear to present challenges for that picture. A standard argument made by critics of theism in general, and of the Judeo-Christian tradition in particular, is that the God portrayed in the Bible is clearly a monster unworthy of worship; and most of this criticism is focused on the Old Testament. While the cover copy and book text focuses on answering the accusations from the current so-called "New Atheist" movement, this whole array of accusations against the biblical God have actually been around for generations (in some cases going back to pagan Roman polemicists such as Celsus). And to be fair, these are not only challenges raised by Christian-hating bigots skimming the Biblical text in search of mud to sling; a serious reading of the text by most Christians necessarily raises questions as to how apparent moral contradictions should be understood. Not surprisingly, thinking Christians have grappled with these questions for centuries --not simply defensively, to answer critics, but to understand fully the positive witness of Scripture to how we should regard God. Although no diverse group of thinkers ever agrees in every detail about everything, some basic understandings have developed.
What Copan (who is a professor at Palm Beach Atlantic Univ.) has done here is bring together the results of this study of the text, with particular reference to recent scholarship, in one focused volume. He expresses his own conclusions; but he interacts constantly with the findings of other scholars, Christian and non-Christian, cited with endnotes. (The book doesn't have a biliography, but the mostly bibliographical notes fill 16 and 1/2 pages; this is a serious, impressively documented study.) Another strength of the book is that it makes use of modern knowledge to illuminate the world of the ancient Near East, placing the Old Testament in its cultural context (which is significantly different from ours, in ways that significantly affect interpretation and application). Copan organizes his treatment in four parts. Part 1 (two chapters) introduces New Atheist thought, and summarizes the New Atheist critique of the Judeo-Christian God. In the three chapters of Part 2, the author addresses criticisms of God's supposed vanity, the references to Divine "jealousy," and the command in Genesis to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (which was never carried out, and never intended to be). The Mosaic Law is the focus of Part 3, the longest section with 13 chapters, with particular attention to the questions of sexism, slavery, and genocidal warfare, each of which are addressed in multiple chapters. Finally, the last section devotes a chapter to the questions of whether, without a theistic position, morality can be, first, known (Copan answers yes to that, as I would) and second, convincingly defended (he makes a case that there the answer is no) and another chapter to the role of the Christ-event as a retrospective lens for fully understanding the Old Testament as it's ultimately meant to be. (He also makes some reference in earlier parts of the book to the New Testament, specifically to its treatment of slavery and in dealing with the morality of God allowing the crucifixion of Christ.)
Not surprisingly, in a book with 222 pages of actual text, I have a few disagreements with Copan here and there on the interpretation of particular Old Testaments verses. However, I'm in agreement with the general lines of his theses here. One central point is that God's perfect will for a loving human society based on equality and sharing is revealed in the Garden of Eden, but that hierarchy, selfishness, sexism and exploitation were introduced by humans in the Fall, against God's will, and ingrained in humanly created social and cultural structures which were not amenable to instant reform. The Old Testament, then, is largely a record of God meeting humans where they were at, and at the same time moving them in a direction of greater egalitarianism, mutuality, justice and respect for human dignity. In this light, the Mosaic Law is not to be understood as a permanently binding code for all people at all times, only for ancient Israel at a particular point in its history; it makes considerable concession to the hardness of human hearts at the time (and I see a clear statement of this in Ezekiel 20:25, though Copan does not), but it contains the principles that serve as seeds of more developed understanding. And the author also takes seriously the position that the full revelation of God's sacrificial love, and its implications for our own ethics, only becomes clear in the ministry of Christ. (Which is why it's not correct to characterize the pre-Christian Old Testament as "Christian.") This is, of course, only a bare thumbnail sketch of the developed discussion in the book; it isn't a substitute for it.
One weakness of the book is the lack of any indexing. However, it is intended for possible group study; and to that end, it has some ten pages of appended discussion questions for each chapter (which would give participants a chance to disagree with the book in places as well as to agree, but more importantly would get them thinking on their own). IMO, this is an extremely constructive feature, and I'd like to see this book widely discussed in churches and Christian groups! I believe it would be a valuable resource for Christian biblical literacy and serious engagement with the Bible.
What about non-Christians? Will it magically cause every skeptic to embrace the God of the Bible? No; you can't rationally argue people into believing positions they aren't psychologically ready to accept, nor into abandoning positions and prejudices they didn't rationally adopt in the first place. But for open-minded skeptics who are willing to consider, or at least honestly explore, other viewpoints, it could induce some re-evaluation of their thinking --or at least a realization that there are other legitimate ways to think about it....more
Note, Feb. 23, 2021: I've just edited this to correct one typo.
Although I had a vague memory, when the Christian Goodreaders group chose this book as Note, Feb. 23, 2021: I've just edited this to correct one typo.
Although I had a vague memory, when the Christian Goodreaders group chose this book as a common read, of having read some of Bonhoeffer's writings back in my early 20s, I now believe that what I read back then was his Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community (which I'm currently rereading). I had no recollection, over my recent days of reading, of having read any of the text previously. If I had read it even back then, I think it would have made more of an impression on me; but I also think I would have been too immature in my Christian experience at that time to fully appreciate and engage with it. That isn't to say that my ability to do so now is perfect either, but I have the advantage of over forty years of added growth and perspective. Also, I have the added benefit of having read Eric Metaxas' biography of Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy a year ago, which got five stars from me (my review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ), and which considerably enhanced both my understanding of Bonhoeffer's thought and my admiration for him as a person.
Bonhoeffer has to be ranked as one of the top theological thinkers, in the classical Christian tradition, of the 20th century, and probably of any century. His objective here, however, is not an abstract summation of Christian doctrine, but a practical exposition of how Christian doctrine bids Christ's disciples to live in the concrete reality of a world that's very hostile to Christianity. While his concern is practical, however, it has to be said that (unlike C. S. Lewis, a thinker to whom I'd accord similar stature) he's not writing to make his thought accessible to the average layperson. This is very much, not only serious theology, but academic theology informed by his background in graduate theological study and in higher education teaching. Indeed, the material here is based directly on his lectures teaching in the Confessing Church's underground seminary (the experience which in turn is the basis for Life Together, so the two books have an organic relationship). Reading it was heavy sledding intellectually for me (and I have a seminary degree) because of the complexity of the thought. Another challenge derives from the fact that it was originally written in German; Bonhoeffer had studied in the U.S. and could speak English, but he once said that he could express himself theologically much better in German. If rendering his thoughts into English was hard for him, one can guess that it sometimes poses difficulty for translators, too. (I read this in the Macmillan reprint of the 1959 2nd ed. of the Student Christian Movement's translation by R. H. Fuller with "some revision" by Irmgard Booth, which was the first edition to translate the whole work.)
The book has four principal parts; the first is a basic discussion of the relationship of Christian living to salvation by grace through faith, in the context of Bonhoeffer's Lutheran background. (I was raised as a Lutheran, so could relate to this.) As it developed historically, the Lutheran tradition in practice stressed the role of God's unearned grace in salvation to the point that it made any kind of actual Christian living in obedience to God's commands into an optional afterthought at best, and at worst even viewed it as a hindrance to "faith," since the supposed essence of faith was treated as believing that you could now do anything you wanted to and still be saved by "grace" (an attitude Bonhoeffer characterizes as "cheap grace"). My eventual disgust with this attitude as a teen, if fact, was a major reason for my leaving the Lutheran church. Bonhoeffer remained a Lutheran, but regarded this kind of "cheap grace" as a perversion of Luther's thought. A life of radical obedience to God (discipleship) is in fact the object of God's call to humans in salvation, and is enabled by the same free grace that enables conversion and salvation itself; it does not "earn" salvation nor accord merit to the disciples, but is nonetheless inseparable from salvation.
In the second and third parts, Bonhoeffer works through the Sermon on the Mount and the sending out of the twelve disciples as messengers of the Kingdom of God in the Gospel of Matthew, dealing with the Biblical text in expository fashion (and often with significant interpretive insights) as a source of principles or blueprint for what characteristics Christian discipleship needs to embody in the modern context --or, indeed, in any cultural context. His Bible-based understanding of the Christian church as very literally the Body of Christ, the earthly continuation of Christ's saving and serving incarnation in the world, by virtue of our real and dynamic union with him as believers, joined to both his redemptive death and his resurrected new life, is the focus of the final part.
My appreciation for Bonhoeffer's thought isn't without specific disagreements. In particular, he espouses a strong "vocational pacifist" ethic (that is, waging war and administering forcible justice is okay for the State and its agents, but the Christian isn't allowed to take part in it because of our supposedly different calling), based principally on literal interpretations of language used by Jesus in places in the Sermon on the Mount that I would consider hyperbolic in context, and as qualified by other Scriptures. A detailed discussion of the case for and against Christian vocational pacifism isn't appropriate here, but I think the position is flawed and logically contradictory. It's also not a position that Bonhoeffer himself ultimately stuck with, since he eventually came to believe that his Christian moral duty in obedience to God required him to assist in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. (Some of his pacifist admirers today refuse to acknowledge this, but the evidence is overwhelming.) I also disagree with his Lutheran sacramental theology, which embraces infant baptism as an actual producer of saving (albeit invisible!) "faith." IMO, believer's baptism would be more consistent with his view of radical discipleship (and with the New Testament's view of baptism). But those disagreements don't, for me, diminish the overall value of this book. Even when you disagree with Bonhoeffer, he's intellectually (and spiritually) stimulating.
This edition has a very short Foreword by Anglican Bishop G. K. A. Bell, who knew Bonhoeffer personally, and a roughly 24-page biographical memoir by Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law, Gerhard Leibholz, which also reproduces, in English translation, a couple of Bonhoeffer's poems written in prison. In summation, I don't think this book would appeal to non-Christian readers; throughout, it presupposes a Christian faith commitment, and can't really be appreciated without that. But I would highly recommend it for all college-educated Christians who can handle the reading level....more
Note, Jan. 4, 2025: I've just edited this review to delete a typo (a "'s" that shouldn't be there).
This is a short, but pithy, book which offers preciNote, Jan. 4, 2025: I've just edited this review to delete a typo (a "'s" that shouldn't be there).
This is a short, but pithy, book which offers precisely what its title indicates: attempts to reconstruct the very human psychology of some 20 representative female figures from the Old Testament, along with a short introductory chapter on "General Background." As her novel How Far to Bethlehem? makes clear, Lofts wrote from a basically Christian stance; she takes the biblical text seriously, respects the possibility of the miraculous and of divine-human interaction, and understands the Old Testament story as a divinely-guided movement from a pagan concept of an anthropomorphic god to a transcendent spiritual God with transcendent moral demands, who cannot be bribed or cajoled. (She also has a profound appreciation for the Bible as literature, grounded in a familiarity with it from childhood that she speaks of in her preface.) Her approach to the Bible as an adult, however, was not one of strict Fundamentalism; she was not an absolute inerrantist (her contemporary, C. S. Lewis, wasn't one either) and she indicates that she did not always take every story, such as the six-day creation, literally. (When she distinguishes her approach from that of "sickening piety," she doesn't precisely define the latter; but what I think she has in mind is an approach so misguidedly reverential that it cannot let the text speak for itself, or the people in the narrative be their imperfect human selves.) She was also no Bible scholar; she was an amateur in the subject, a "lay" reader of the Bible who neither had any special scholarly knowledge nor assumed any in her readers. All of her writing here is based on a pretty much face-value reading of the Biblical texts themselves, supplemented only by general knowledge and a few references to the 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews. However, she was also a masterful historical novelist, with a keen knowledge of human psychology, a kind willingness to sympathetically understand the motivations that can underlie even the worst behavior (while not condoning the behavior), and a basic feel for the social dynamics and life patterns of pre-modern communities.
As the author herself recognizes, the biblical writers were primarily interested in the great Story, the story of God's dealing with humanity to which the small stories of individual people were only incidental, recorded only insofar as they advanced the big Story --not as conscious grist for later "psychological portraits." Often what she writes is a matter of reading between the lines, or guessing at possible reactions based on her conviction (which I think is true) that human nature is essentially unchanged from Old Testament times to the present. Even so, in reconstructing the personality and thought of these women, she has set herself a large task in which I'm not sure she always succeeds, or that it's even possible for anyone to succeed in. Arguments from silence are particularly dangerous; that words or feelings aren't mentioned is no proof that they weren't said or felt. We can, at this late date, know very little of the thoughts or motivations of a woman like Bathsheba, IMO, with what little we're given to go on. And there are several places where the interpretation of the text a certain way is not self-evidently correct, but Lofts assumes that it is. She also makes just a few chronological or factual errors: Jehu's slaughter of the Baal priests and killing of the males of Ahab's line took place after Jezebel was killed, not before, and Esther's husband did not "cancel" the order for the massacre of the Jews --Persian laws couldn't be canceled. (He did give a new edict allowing the Jews to defend themselves.) Lofts' discussion of Rahab could have benefited from the brilliant and convincing re-interpretation of the conquest of Canaan by G. E. Mendenhall in The Tenth Generation; but that was of course written long after 1949. (I'm not familiar with any rabbinic legend that Rahab later married Joshua --though I take Lofts' word that such a legend existed-- but I do know that, as Lofts doesn't mention here, both Testaments record that she did marry Salmon of the tribe of Judah, whom another perhaps apocraphal legend identifies as one of the two spies she protected, and that the couple were direct ancestors of Jesus.)
That said, though, I think a great many of Lofts' insights are both credible and illuminating! She also writes with the lyricism and flair of a great novelist, with an eye for significant moments and telling details, and the gift of language to infuse bare nonfiction with the emotional power of true literature. And --very importantly, in a work of this type-- she recognizes that though Hebrew society (like all the societies of the world, in that day) was male-dominated and sexist, the message of the Old Testament itself is not sexist; it presents women as active participants in God's story, as humans capable of making consequential decisions and doing significant things. (Indeed, she suggests that the roots of modern-day equality for women may well lie in the innovative attitude of the Old Testament Hebrews in that respect, compared to the attitudes and practices of surrounding cultures.) One of my Goodreads friends, when I marked the book as to-read, opined (in a personal message) that for one who's already read the Old Testament stories, it would be repetitious. In terms of strict narrative, that's true; but what draws the reader to these re-tellings of the stories isn't the plot per se, but the author's interpretations. It's also important to realize that she was writing less for readers familiar with the Bible, and more for those NOT familiar with it, in the hope of motivating the latter, as she suggests in the preface, to actually read it. Even over 60 years later, I like to think that for some readers, her hope might still be realized!...more
French sociologist and historian Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) was one of the most important Christian thinkers of the 20th century. I'd always had the (mFrench sociologist and historian Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) was one of the most important Christian thinkers of the 20th century. I'd always had the (mistaken) impression that he was a Roman Catholic, probably because of his nationality; actually, while he was baptized in that church as a baby, he converted to the Reformed church as a young man, after a few years as an atheist and Communist. He fought with the French Resistance in World War II, and before and after the war enjoyed a long career teaching in French universities (and from 1946 until his death --he never retired-- at just one institution, the Univ. of Bordeaux). This book is one of some 40 that he wrote.
Although Biblical studies wasn't his area of academic specialization, this volume consists of seven serious "meditations" discussing particular passages in the Old Testament book of II Kings, given close readings and considered for what they authoritatively reveal to us about God's role, and our role, in the world, the sphere in which politics operates. It concludes with a final reflection on what he calls "inutility" --the fact that none of our actions, such as obedience, prayer, and evangelism, are ultimately necessary to fulfill the purposes of an omnipotent and omniscient God, but are nonetheless commanded by Him. (As he indicates in a few of the sparse footnotes, his interest here is not in the speculations by secular scholars about the supposed literary development of the Old Testament texts, and he approaches these with some skepticism. He also is not mainly interested in interacting with other Christian scholars, though he occasionally mentions the insights of a couple of French O.T. scholars in the footnotes.) His central concern is in letting the Biblical texts speak to us on a level of basic principles. These are not, however, principles for the specific points of a partisan political program. Indeed, he takes a very negative view of the human tendency (typified, in our present U.S. context, by the white evangelical churches' total self-identification with the G.O.P., and the white liberal and black churches' mirror-image merger with the Democrats) of believers to imagine that particular secular political entities or causes are the instruments of God's kingdom on earth, and that serving them is really serving Him.
Because this is a relatively short book at 199 pages, it's a fairly quick read; but it isn't a shallow one (and can actually be rather challenging). Ellul's writing is deep and pithy; I sometimes quote lines from a book in one of my Goodreads groups if I find them particularly insightful, but if I did that here, I'd be quoting almost the whole text of the book. There are a few places, though, where I had to reread a sentence or two a couple of times to get the meaning (and wasn't always sure even then), though it's probably clear enough in the original French. (This is also a book that, in terms of comprehension, is best not read when you're tired; it needs peak mental alertness!) If I were asked to summarize the main themes here, I'd say they are the relationship of God's foreknowledge and eternal plan to mankind's free will (Ellul uses "man" for mankind generically; this was written in 1966), the relationship between God's justice/judgment and His mercy, which are both aspects of His love; and the central role of paradox in Christian truth. Interestingly, though the Reformed church was historically Calvinist, Elull (correctly, IMO) treats human free will as a central truth of the biblical message; determinism is explicitly rejected here.
Much writing by Christians on social and political subjects can be addressed to, and appreciated by, both believers and non-believers; it may address topics of serious interest to both, and base its thought on principles understandable to both through the common grace of general revelation (in the human conscience, etc.) However, I've recommended this book just for Christians, since it's dealing with strictly theological concerns that probably wouldn't interest non-believers directly. Of course, persons of the Jewish faith are also concerned with the interpretation of the Old Testament; but Ellul consistently approaches the Old Testament through the lens of the New, which limits the book's appeal for the Jewish community. (Indeed, one of his most original insights is the discussion of the significance of Elisha's ministry as a type of Jesus' ministry.)
This was my first exposure to Ellul's writing and thought. Having read it, though, I most definitely hope to read more (once I've reduced my to-read shelf to more manageable proportions!). ...more
For decades at least, popular culture has been periodically excited by discoveries of various ancient Gnostic writings, as sensationalized press and TFor decades at least, popular culture has been periodically excited by discoveries of various ancient Gnostic writings, as sensationalized press and TV accounts eagerly proclaim that each of these discredits the very foundations of traditional Christianity; the Gospel of Judas is the most recent of these. The mythos is fueled by fiction and movies such as The Da Vinci Code and The Gnostic Secret, which hordes of readers imagine are fact-based. Many people are understandably confused by the whole thing, and wish they had some solid facts. This book is an attempt to provide those facts, and put them in an evidence-based, serious historical perspective.
Porter is a New Testament scholar, and Heath a historian of Christianity, at McMaster Divinity College, Canada's premier evangelical seminary; both are well-respected and competent academics in their fields. Here, though, they're intentionally writing for ordinary laypeople, so their presentation is short and simple (though they do use footnotes), presupposing no special knowledge of the subject. After introducing the controversial and hyped splash made in popular media by the 2006 release of the translated text of the Gospel of Judas, they set the document in the broader context of Gnosticism as a whole, and give a thumbnail sketch of that movement. As they note, that task is complicated by the fact that there were many varied Gnostic sects, though they had some basic ideas and attitudes in common; a root idea of all Gnostics, though, is the idea that "the physical or material was something evil that needed to be escaped from; only the spiritual was good." They also note that this is based on the ideas of Plato (actually, though they don't trace it that far, this strand of thought antedates Plato; it was introduced into Greek philosophy centuries earlier by Pythagoras, who had traveled in India and returned with many Hindu ideas) though they don't indicate how pervasive this mindset was among educated Greek-speakers in the Hellenistic era. (The writings of Paul and John both explicitly combat heretical ideas in the first-century Church that are clearly proto-Gnostic; and the mainstream strand of Christianity that became the Catholic and Orthodox churches, while never going as far as the Gnostics, absorbed a lot of this attitude, as evidenced by the steadily mounting glorification, in the early Christian centuries, of celibacy, asceticism and monasticism, and comments such as Clement of Alexandria's serious assertion that Jesus never had a bowel movement because that would have compromised his divinity. But Porter and Heath don't deal with those facets of the subject.)
Our authors then discuss the first mention of a Gospel of Judas, by Irenaeus late in the 2nd century, who associates it with a Gnostic sect called the Cainites; they go on to summarize the few other extant Patristic references to the Cainites or to the document. (They point out that there is no evidence that the work Irenaeus and Epiphanius mention is necessarily the same one as the recently discovered text, but in their chapter summary they seem to assume that it is. This is one of several features of the book that indicate rather hasty composition, without careful proofreading; obviously, that's a negative feature.) This is followed by a brief discussion of the finding of the manuscript itself, mostly to set it in the context of the extensive discoveries of papyrus documents in Egypt and Palestine, beginning in the late 1800s. One chapter summarizes and explains the content of the Gospel of Judas.
Finally, the remaining four chapters, broadly speaking, deal with the significance of the document (which they contextualize clearly as part of the Gnostic tradition of "rehabilitation literature" of marginal or disparaged Biblical figures), if any, for our confidence in the validity of traditional Christian faith. (The authors particularly critique Bart Ehrman's revisionist claim that the Gnostic interpretation of Christianity is just as legitimate as the traditional one.) Probably their weakest argument is the assertion that the cumulative evidence of extensive correspondences of elements in the Gospel of Judas with elements in the canonical Gospels proves or suggests literary dependence on the latter; one could just as well argue that they simply share a common source in Christian tradition. But in toto, they make a cogent and convincing case that, first, the real question is not (as postmodernist philosophy would ask), what would I personally like for Jesus' teaching to have been? but rather, what does objectively evaluated historical evidence suggest that his teaching actually was? --and, second, that every line of evidence we have tends to confirm that the canonical New Testament, and the mainstream tradition of the Church, much more faithfully represent Jesus' teachings than the later Gnostic writings (which even Ehrman recognizes date from no earlier than the 2nd century). The latter, on the other hand, reflect a radical rejection, not only of the original Christian preaching and teaching, but of the entire Old Testament foundation that Jesus built upon.
As noted above, this book does have its flaws of hasty composition and occasionally weak argumentation. A few sentences read clumsily, and there is a minor factual error when the authors say that James the brother of Jesus is not mentioned in the canonical Gospels (he is mentioned in Mark 6:3). The brevity of the text (120 p., plus the two indexes and the bibliography) means that this is not a source for an in-depth view of the subject and its related issues --though the two- page list of "Selected Reading" points the reader to sources that would provide an in-depth education in New Testament background. But it certainly is a good starting point for interested laypeople who want a basic framework for evaluating the extravagant claims being made for the Gnostics in some popular media. (There have been a spate of other books written that seek to do the same thing, and also from an evangelical perspective; but I've read only this one.)...more
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