Category Archives: Biblical theology

NEW BOOK—To Follow the Lamb: A Peaceable Reading of the Book of Revelation

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I am happy to announce the publication of my most recent book: To Follow the Lamb: A Peaceable Reading of the Book of Revelation (Cascade Books, 2022), ix + 278pp.

To Follow the Lamb is a commentary of the entire book of Revelation that places a special emphasis on the peace message of Revelation. Revelation is not a book that portrays a violent, vengeful God but rather than shows God to be most profoundly revealed in the gracious Lamb. The key to reading Revelation is to take seriously the opening words of the Book that tell us it is a”revelation of Jesus Christ.”

Revelation is an exhortation to discipleship—follow the Lamb wherever he goes! It offers a sharp critique of the world’s empires and a sharp critique of how people of faith all too easily find ways to be comfortable within the empires. Revelation portrays God as merciful and peaceable—but engaged in a battle against the spiritual powers of evil that energize the nations’ domination systems.This battle, though, is fought with the weapons of love, not worldly violent weapons.

Available online from:

Amazon (the Kindle version is only $9.99)

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Both sites have previews that show the first part of the book.

Also available at: Bookshop.org

Endorsements:

“Ted Grimsrud is a worthy and capable guide through the often misread and confusing images laid out by John of Patmos to the churches of Roman Asia. Anyone who has ever wondered how to make sense of this powerful narrative will find a great companion in To Follow the Lamb. Go form a study group and dig in!”—WES HOWARD-BROOK, Seattle University, author of Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now

“In this important book, Ted Grimsrud clears away decades of misunderstanding and misuse to reveal the beauty and power of the Apocalypse. Writing with deep insight and lucid prose, Grimsrud forcefully challenges violent interpretations of Revelation and fixes our gaze on the nonviolent Jesus. A treasure trove for peacemakers and justice seekers, To Follow the Lamb is accessible, relevant, and sorely needed. Guaranteed to deepen your appreciation of Revelation—I highly recommend it!”—ERIC SEIBERT, Messiah University, author of Disarming the Church: Why Christians Must Forsake Violence to Follow Jesus and Change the World

“In the midst of the sometimes violent rhetoric of Revelation, Grimsrud makes abundantly clear that Revelation features the nonviolent victory by the slain and resurrected Lamb, who reveals a nonviolent God, over the powers of evil, represented by the Roman empire. One of the most valuable contributions of this comprehensive theological analysis of Revelation is how it applies the book’s nonviolent resistance to empire to our call to challenge the American empire.”—J. DENNY WEAVER, Bluffton University, author of God Without Violence

More posts on Peaceable Revelation

Reading the Bible as if Jesus matters

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A response to: Bradley Jersak. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way. Whitaker House, 2021. 287pp.

This is a most helpful, even liberating, guide to reading the Bible with Jesus as the center. Bradley Jersak, a theologian and pastor who has traveled a fascinating path from Pentecostal fundamentalist to Eastern Orthodox with a stint among Mennonites, draws on his own evolving experiences with the Bible. Jersak presents us with an approach that walks the line between the authoritarian literalists on one side and the cultured despisers on the other side, and he provides an empowering and enlivening understanding of the Bible as witness to the healing path of Jesus.

The entire Bible witnesses to Jesus

Jersak calls his approach to the Bible “the Emmaus Way,” referring to the story in Luke 24 following Jesus’s resurrection. The risen Jesus encounters two his disciples walking on the road from Jerusalem to the nearby town of Emmaus. They don’t recognize him, taking him as a stranger to the area. They share their grief at Jesus’s death until he finally reveals himself and tells them not to grieve, that what happened was totally in line with message of the Bible. That is, the Bible—all of the Bible—points to Jesus as its center.

So, Jersak presents an approach where we take Jesus at his word and read the entirety of the Bible in light of Jesus’s life, teaching, death, and resurrection. When we do so, we will find the Bible come alive as a life-shaping guide to wholeness, generosity, mercy, and creativity. In harmony with Jersak’s message that the Bible is about joyful living, the writing style of A More Christlike Word is engaging, humorous, accessible, and encouraging. We learn a lot about Jersak’s own checkered journey of moving from a narrow, fearful reading strategy to his present open-hearted, welcoming, and gracious approach.

While the book has a popular, easily understood tone, it is also grounded in serious scholarship and perceptive theological and historical analyses. We learn a lot about the Christian tradition, including strengths and weaknesses of various prominent reading strategies over the centuries. We also learn a lot about the content of the Bible itself. Jersak’s sense of how it all fits together allows for differences within the canon in the context of an overall harmony. And, crucially, this overall harmony gives a positive, generous, life-giving message of God’s mercy embodied in Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.

Continue reading →

A review of N.T. Wright, Interpreting Scripture.

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Ted Grimsrud—November 1, 2021

N.T. Wright. Interpreting Scripture: Essays on the Bible and Hermeneutics. Zondervan Academic, 2020. xii + 387pp.

This interesting collection of essays by the prominent New Testament professor N. T. Wright gives a chronological record of his interaction with biblical texts dating from 1997 to 2020. Most of the twenty-two essays have been published in various obscure journals and essay collections. They are all vintage Wright, mixing careful reading of texts with theological analysis. The essays are scholarly but written with Wright’s characteristic clarity and accessibility.

The title of the book is a bit misleading, though. Particularly, the term “hermeneutics” in the subtitle promises a theme that the book does not actually touch on. It would be quite useful to have some essays by Wright reflecting on the philosophy of biblical interpretation. His thoughts in that area surely are worth attending to. However, these are mainly essays that show how he interprets the specific biblical texts and addresses specific biblical themes, not essays that step back and examine the act of interpretation itself.

This is one of three volumes published simultaneously by Zondervan Academic, the other two being collections of essays focused on Jesus and on Paul respectively. This third volume could be understood as essays on what was left over. Even so, a few essays on Paul and on Jesus find their way into Interpreting Scripture, suggesting that the selection criteria were not scrupulously followed.

Continue reading →

Another attempt to explain the violence in the Old Testament: A review of Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? by Webb and Oeste

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Ted Grimsrud—July 26, 2021

In Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric?: Wrestling with Troubling War Texts, William Webb and Gordon Oeste have given us a clearly written, comprehensive, and helpful treatment of the perennial challenge Christians face in seeking to understand the writings on divinely approved violence in the Old Testament. While overtly addressing a fairly narrow evangelical audience, the authors are sophisticated and insightful enough that anyone interested in this issue will find their book to be of value.

Webb and Oeste focus on two deeply troubling themes in the Old Testament, the stories of God-approved genocide along with what they call “war rape.” Theauthors argue that the “traditional view” of Old Testament violence is not adequate. This view holds that factual accounts of profoundly violent genocidal war in our present day are “roughly equivalent to what was happening in the biblical text” (34). And the presence of such accounts that (accurately) attribute such violence to God and God’s people should not trouble people of faith today. The traditional view sees: (1) God to be the source of the holy war commands, (2) biblical holy war to have “lofty and good purposes,” (3) the enemies of Israel to be evil and deserving of such violence, and (4) the holy wars to prefigure the final judgment at the end of time (34-35).

Webb and Oeste are actually fairly sympathetic with the traditional view. They dismiss without discussion what they call the “antitraditional view” (20). They write: “We do not develop the differences between our view and that antitraditional view. This omission reflects our intention that this book primarily addresses readers who either hold or have been raised within the traditional view” (20-21). This move significantly limits their potential audience—and seems unfortunate because many of those who have come to question their traditional views have found writers such as Eric Seibert and C.S. Cowles (the two examples of the antitraditional view cited by Webb and Oeste) to be helpful because, in spite of the impression given by Webb and Oeste, they share many theological convictions. Engagement with their views would have made Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? stronger.

Continue reading →

Christology and History

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Ted Grimsrud

[Sermon preached at Eugene (Oregon) Mennonite Church, July 30, 1989—the second of a two-part series; the first part is here.]

I have more to say about christology. In my comments this morning, I will focus on how our understanding of history, of historical events and how we think of those events. That is, how does our view of history affect our approach to christology, our approach to how we understand the implications of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and how we understand interpretations of those implications since then?

Why the historical aspect of christology matters

It is an important characteristic of Christianity that it is a historical religion in the sense that it is based on historical events not myths, thought the symbolic aspect is always intertwined. Christianity asserts that what happens in human history is very important. The major act bringing about salvation, according to Christians, is the work of Jesus of Nazareth, a person in history – his life, teachings, death, and resurrection. And for Christians, the effects of salvation are historical too, not an escape from history. Christians look to a transformed world within history, or as the end of history, not to some Nirvana or personality-less bliss totally removed from history.

Because, as I said, the major act of salvation from Christianity, Jesus’ work, occurs in history, we must conclude then that christology is also closely tied to history. The heart of christology is interpretation of the historical events surrounding what Jesus did and what happened to him. In addition, the development of christological interpretations since the time of Jesus (creeds, confessions, systematic theologies, and so on) all also happened in history. No christology, no interpretation of Jesus, happens in a timeless way separate from the historical context in which it occurred.

For example, both in the case of Jesus’s time and in the case of following doctrinal development, historical social and political issues played a central role even in the theology itself. We cannot really understand what happened with Jesus and how it was interpreted in New Testament times apart from understanding something about the history of the revolutionary political ferment among first-century Jews, the responses of Christians to this later in the first century, and the overarching reality of the Roman Empire. As well, in another example, political concerns in fourth-century Rome, governed by the first so-called Christian emperor, Constantine, greatly affected the formulation of the first great christological creed, the Nicene Creed. So, history has a lot to do with christology. Continue reading →

Christology: What It is and Why It Matters

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Ted Grimsrud

[Sermon preached at Eugene (Oregon) Mennonite Church, July 23, 1989—the first of a two-part series; the second part is here.]

What is Christology and why does it matter? I suppose for most of us most of the time we do not really think much about this question and hence do not really have an answer. But in reading the pages of the Gospel Herald, in observing the discussion near the end of the Pacific Coast Conference meetings last month, and in seeing that our denomination’s general assembly next month will include a conference on Christology having a registration limit of 600 people, a total already reached – obviously many people in our denomination do believe that Christology is very important. And, as many of you know, I believe that too, and last Fall began a long-term research project on Christology. But I am not sure we all think Christology is important for the same reasons.

Mennonite controversies

Last month, at the Pacific Coast Conference annual meeting, Harold Hochstetler gave his annual report as Conference Minister, which included a summary of the ordinations and ministerial licenses that the Conference Leadership Committee approved during the past year. Following his report, as is customary following all of the reports at the meeting, the audience was asked if anyone had any questions. An older man, a long-time leader in the Conference and retired pastor, stood up to express his concern that the Leadership Committee might not be doing its job carefully enough. That is, he expressed concerned that the Conference might be ordaining or licensing people who are not theologically sound. He mentioned two foundational beliefs that he feels are especially crucial: the virgin birth and the deity of Christ.

Harold attempted to respond by explaining the Leadership Committee’s care in approving credentials for ministers. This did not seem to satisfy everyone, however, as his comments were followed by more expressions of concern, this time by a couple of young pastors sharing the basic perspective of the first questioner. I did not talk with any of these people, but I am pretty sure that they have been influenced by an organization called the Fellowship of Concerned Mennonites which for nearly ten years has been arguing very publicly that the Mennonite Church is experiencing a crisis in its theology. This group has focused its concern on the issue of Christology in recent years, especially since the publication of the book Jesus Christ Our Lord: Christology from a Disciple’s Perspective, written by long-time Goshen College professor Norman Kraus and published by Herald Press, the official Mennonite Church publisher. These Concerned Mennonites think Kraus’s book is heretical. Continue reading →

Biblical interpretation: Anabaptists, Gadamer, and Latin American liberation theology

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Ted Grimsrud—July 29, 2019

[This essay was published in Ted Grimsrud, Embodying the Way of Jesus: Anabaptist Convictions for the Twenty-First Century (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2007), 57-71. The chapter title in that book was “Biblical Interpretation: Anabaptist Theology and Recent Hermeneutics.” It was drawn from one of my comprehensive exams in my PhD program at the Graduate Theological Union entitled “Philosophical Hermeneutics in Conversation with Latin American Liberation Theology” (1986).]  

Historians have proposed that 16th-century Anabaptist theology and practice pioneered many changes now embraced by Christians throughout the world – believers baptism, separation of church and state, and conscientious objection to warfare among them. This pioneering dynamic may be seen with regard to biblical interpretation as well. The Anabaptist approach to the Bible has many affinities with recent developments.

My concern with this chapter is to use these convergences as a way of articulating an approach to biblical interpretation that builds on the insights of our 16th-century forebears and broadens them with help of philosophical hermeneutics and Latin American liberation theology.

Our age is not friendly to the authoritative use of writings from the past. We breathe the air of a skeptical, individualistic, and ahistorical worldview characterized by radical doubt regarding revelation, by suspicion of claims for loyalty and duty to people and communities outside our selves and maybe immediate family, and by a sense that only the present matters and that how we got to where we are today is irrelevant if not undiscoverable anyway.

Nevertheless, many believe that these issues, though daunting, are not insurmountable. In fact, their existence only underscores the need to construct and enact a biblical hermeneutics that makes available the immensely helpful resources of the biblical materials for Christian ethics.

One recently emergent tradition that has accepted this challenge and thereby made it much more real to the rest of the world is what has become known as “liberation theology.” This movement’s main center has been Latin America, but the label “liberation theology” has been used much more widely of groups such as blacks, feminists, Africans, etc. I will focus on Latin American liberation theology from its “classical” period, the late 1960s through early 1980s.

I will explore the close affinity that liberation theology has in its attitude toward and use of the Bible with another recently emergent “school” of thought – “philosophical hermeneutics.” In particular, I will consider the thought of German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. Continue reading →

Wrapping up Boyd’s CWG [chapter 25; Postscript; Appendices]

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Ted Grimsrud—January 24, 2018

[This is the 27th (and last) in a long series of posts that have worked through Greg Boyd’s important book, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross (Fortress, 2017). The 26th post may be found here—and an index of the series here.]

In Chapter 25, “Mauling Bears and a Lethal Palladium” (pages 1195–1248), Boyd discusses his final category of violent divine portraits, what he calls “The Principle of Semiautonomous Power.” He then has a short “Postscript” (pages 1249–61), subtitled “Unlocking the Secret of the Scroll,” that is essentially a summary of the core argument of CWG as a whole. He concludes the book with a series of “Appendices” (pages 1263–1301) that elaborate on various issues that have arisen in the book.

Misusing God’s power

Boyd discusses several stories that tell of God giving someone superhuman powers—and then having those individuals use the powers to do violence. Examples are Samson and the prophets Elijah and Elisha. It what sense should we attribute such violence to God? Boyd coins the term “semiautonomous power” to describe how the violence should not be laid at God’s feet. “When God gives someone divine power, he … places [it] under the control of their own power” (1196).

These stories don’t seem particularly important to me, partly because they are rare and peripheral. More to the point, to me the question is why these stories were told. What contribution do they make to the Big Story? The story of Samson seems relatively easy to deal with since Samson is presented as a less than exemplary character and to a significant extent, his violent deeds illustrate the chaos that the book of Judges shows—“when there was no king in Israel.” The violence of Elijah and Elisha seems to make a less obvious contribution to the story. Certainly, though, the violence is not normative.

Boyd asserts, regarding Samson, that “the immature, immoral, and violent ways Samson used the power of [God’s] Spirit can only be understood as reflecting Samson’s will and character, not God’s” (1230). But I wonder—isn’t God the one who gave Samson this power? Doesn’t that make God in some sense responsible for the consequences of how it was used? Again, it seems that Boyd is too focused on keeping God’s hands clean. That focus seems to follow from Boyd’s problematic view of inspiration. In a move that may make things worse, Boyd wants to turn God’s seeming irresponsibility into a virtue: “We can only marvel at the humility of a God who, out of covenantal solidarity with his people, would stoop to work through legends of a man who was as infantile and degenerate as Samson” (1231). I’m not sure what I think we should learn from the Samson story, but I do think it shows God in a pretty bad light.

Boyd’s point with the principle of semiautonomous power is that “God is not implicated in the violent way his servants sometimes used his power” (1197). I find this argument to be unpersuasive—the stories themselves don’t seem to tell us this. They celebrate God’s involvement. The power for violence seems unambiguously attributed to God. So, Boyd’s principle seems like another convoluted effort to leave God with clean hands. Continue reading →

Even more on Boyd and Spiritual Warfare [chapter 24]

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Ted Grimsrud—January 15, 2018

[This is the 26th in a long series of posts that will work through Greg Boyd’s important book, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross (Fortress, 2017). The 25th post may be found here—and an index of the series here.]

In Chapter 24, “The Dragon-Swallowing Dragon: Examples of Cosmic-Level Aikido Warfare” (pages 1143-92), Boyd continues to make the case both for his understanding of the role of cosmic evil powers being responsible for most of the OT violence that is attributed to God and for centrality of the dynamic of God’s strategic withdrawal as God’s method of judgment.

The violence in Numbers 16

One of the most violent passages in the OT is Numbers 16, where God is said to judge rebellious Israelites by killing nearly 15,000 of them. Boyd uses this text to illustrate his crucicentric reading strategy. “There is no question but that this gruesome narrative presumes that it was Yahweh who performed these supernatural destructive acts” (1145)—but we cannot “theologically interpret this passage” as actually meaning that it truly was God who did the violence. We must “assess this portrait to be a literary crucifix, reflecting the same willingness of God to stoop as low as necessary to bear the limitations and sin of his people that is reflected on Calvary” (1145-6). That is, as I understand Boyd, God was willing to have this passage attribute the violence to God in order to “bear the limitations and sin of his people.” Presumably, then, God did not actually cause all these deaths.

It seems to me that in order to save his “commitment to treat all Scripture as ‘God-breathed’ as well as his commitment to the Conservative Hermeneutical Principle (1144), Boyd is compelled to read Numbers 16 as if the clear meaning the writer gives the story is wrong! I fail to see how his argument actually does save the infallibility of the text. One could say the story is wrong (and not directly inspired) and yet take it seriously as part of the Big Story (which is inspired in its overall message). People who affirm both the inspiration or truthfulness of the Bible and the normativity of the peaceable revelation of God in Jesus need not follow Boyd’s path. We may see the truthfulness as present in the Big Story as a whole, not in each element of that story.

I find it ironic that Boyd presumably affirms the validity of the need for punishment in this story. What he thinks is not true is simply the idea that God “himself” “pulls the trigger” and causes the deaths. I would respect his crucicentric method more if he would recognize that the cross simply is not about divinely needed punishing judgment (beyond the evil actions of Rome and the religious leaders). I wish he would recognize that the cross refutes the validity of punishment and shows it to be evil in relation to Jesus. Then Boyd could use his method to deconstruct the idea itself that God needs to punish. Continue reading →

More on Boyd and Spiritual Warfare [chapter 23]

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Ted Grimsrud—January 9, 2018

[This is the 25th in a long series of posts that will work through Greg Boyd’s important book, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross (Fortress, 2017). The 24th post may be found here—and an index of the series here.]

In Chapter 23, “When Hell Breaks Loose: Redemptive Withdrawal and Cosmic Conflict” (pages 1099-1142), Boyd reflects further on the implications of his cruciform hermeneutic for understanding OT violent portraits, focusing especially on the Genesis story of the Flood. A key element of his perspective is his emphasis on the cosmic evil powers who actually are the agents of the destruction, while God’s role is simply to withhold God’s protections and let the powers do their damage.

The way to justice: divine withdrawal or something else?

Boyd begins the chapter by summarizing his basic argument concerning spiritual warfare: “When God decides he must withdraw his protective presence to allow one form of evil to punish another form of evil…. Satan and other cosmic powers are … present, looking for every opportunity to kill, steal, and destroy” (1099–1100). I sense that in order to save his belief in God as in ultimate control, Boyd must project onto God a will to punish. Why “must” God “withdraw his protective presence”? I suspect that Boyd wants to hold on to the belief that God is in ultimate control of what happens in the world. The only way God can be in control and still be nonviolent is if God exercises “control” by “withdrawing” and letting Satan, et al, be the actual enforcers of the needed punishment that a “just” world requires.

One way this notion ends up being deeply problematic is the extraordinary imprecision of this punishment with its enormous collateral damage. The “killing, stealing, and destroying” that Satan, et al, do in this scenario catches up everyone in its path, just and unjust, innocent and guilty. And it is not only human beings that are crushed but also the rest of creation. Not only does God actually remain complicit in the violence if God could stop it, but God’s means of punishing sin are extraordinarily unjust toward those who don’t deserve to be punished.

I tend to think that the only moral alternative to Boyd’s scenario (because I agree with him that a violent God who actively punishes contradicts the truthfulness of the definitive picture of God we have in Jesus) is a weak God who is not all-powerful. God does not exercise brute power to destroy God’s enemies. For example, Satan (i.e., the Dragon) is not punished in Revelation but defeated and robbed of existence simply through disbelief—disbelief that emerges from the self-sacrificial, persevering love of the Lamb and those who follow him wherever he goes. The power of the Powers rests solely on the power given them through idolatry, through people’s consent. Continue reading →