The book of Revelation continues to gain a great deal of attention–for better and for worse. Back in the 1980s I paid sustained attention to this amazing piece of literature and wrote a short commentary. Here is the commentary’s discussion of chapters fifteen and sixteen from Triumph of the Lamb
The book of Revelation continues to gain a great deal of attention–for better and for worse. Back in the 1980s I paid sustained attention to this amazing piece of literature and wrote a short commentary. Here is the commentary’s discussion of chapters eleven and twelve from Triumph of the Lamb
The book of Revelation continues to gain a great deal of attention–for better and for worse. Back in the 1980s I paid sustained attention to this amazing piece of literature and wrote a short commentary. Here is the commentary’s discussion of chapters eight, nine, and ten from Triumph of the Lamb
Douglas John Hall. Bound And Free: A Theologian’s Journey
One of North America’s most important Christian theologians gives us a brief theological memoir in this volume. Douglas John Hall, now professor emeritus at Montreal’s McGill University, has been a prolific writer for years, including a multi-volume systematic theology and important works on stewardship.
As far as mainstream Protestant theologians writing in the latter part of the 20th and early years of the 21st centuries go, Hall is pretty good. He respects the tradition and takes the Bible seriously–but also engages culture and pushes his readers toward social engagement. It is clear in this book, though, that Hall only wants to challenge the tradition so much and go only so far in pushing out the socially transformative message of Jesus’ way. His teachers are Tillich, Barth, and Reinhold Niebuhr–brilliant theologians, of course, but definitely practitioners of kinds of theology that do little, in the end, to transform the status quo.
I read this book quickly and found myself having self-consciously to push onward to finish. It’s a nice little book that gives some insights into life as a prominent theologian, but I didn’t find anything here, really, that inspired and challenged.
Steve Jeffrey, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach. Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution
If you are aware at all of the heated debates in Christian theology about the atonement, the title of this book will make clear to you the stance of the authors. One of the book’s contributions is to make clear, if anyone might have wondered, that the “penal substitution” doctrine (that in his sacrificial death, Jesus substituted for later Christians by receiving God’s punishment that all human beings deserve which then allows God to forgive sinners) is alive and well. “Alive and well” at least in the sense of widely held and vigorously argued for.
Pierced for Our Transgressions has many things going for it. It is pretty well written and covers a wide range of issues in its 373 pages. The forcefulness of the authors’ convictions does not help those who are not convinced by their assertions to feel a part of a genuine conversation, but it does make the book readable and engaging. The authors are quite aware of many of the challenges to their position and to their credit seek thoroughly to engage those challenges. I picked the book up because I wanted a wide-ranging and up-to-date defense of the substitutionary atonement position (for some reason, I find myself uncomfortable with the term “penal substitution”) and was quite happy with what I found in that regard. This book is up-to-date and lays out the position with clarity.
As is to be expected from evangelical Christians seeking to defend an essential truth they feel is under attack, the tone of the book does at times cross the line and become harsh and unfair toward theological opponents. But I have read books that are much worse on this score, and I do respect the authors’ attempt to be what they would understand to be fair and balanced.
Probably the two biggest contributions the book makes in developing its argument are (1) a long chapter 2 on “the biblical foundations of penal substitution” and (2) a discussion of “the historical pedigree of penal substitution” in chapter 5. Chapters 6 through 12 are a fascinating litany of responses to criticisms of the substitutionary atonement position. Most of the responses to the kinds of criticisms I would make seemed pretty superficial–and one major criticism (which I will discuss below) is not directly discussed. So I did not find this section nearly as informative as I hoped it would be.
The discussion of the biblical materials is wide-ranging and makes very clear how well thought through the authors’ position is. It’s internal logic is impressive and the support for that logic in terms of “prooftexts” does get one’s attention. However, this support comes much more in the form of small bits and pieces gleaned from throughout the Bible and not from wrestling with the large plot or storyline of the Bible. The larger plot makes clear that God’s mercy is the bottom line of the story, not the kind of “holiness” and “justice” that the authors see as underwriting God’s ultimately punitive response to human sinfulness. The big issue, then, becomes one of hermeneutics–do we interpret the small bits and pieces in light of the larger storyline or do we treat them as autonomous pieces of revelation in the form of bits and pieces? Given the authors’ hermeneutical choices, their conclusions are difficult to refute. But those choices are not based on a straightforward reading of the Bible nearly so much as emerging from theological conclusions seeking biblical support.
Likewise with the historical material. We are bombarded with a series of short quotes from all eras of Christianity but not given much in the way of context and the broader theological stories within which the quoted parts were written. I do have to admit to being impressed with the quantity of writers we are exposed to in this chapter–going back to the early church. Clearly, the theological dynamics that undergird the substitutionary atonement view do go way back. However, I am left with a couple of questions.
Even if the substitutionary view goes back to Eusebius, is that necessarily support for the assertion the authors make that this theology is thoroughly biblical? What about the gap prior to Eusebius (they quote just one writer from before the 4th century, Justin Martyr)? Is it a coincidence that theology with a more punitive and coercive bent emerges only after the Constantinian moment?
And, why is Anselm completely ignored? Normally in this kind of historically-oriented discussion you would find Anselm in the index between Ambrose and Aquinas (and playing a much larger roll than either). But not here. Certainly it is possible these authors want to differentiate their substitutionary views from Anselm’s “satisfaction” argument–but given how closely these views typically are linked, shouldn’t the authors have at least explained why they want them to be separate?
The one big issue that arises for me in considering this kind of understanding of salvation (and I would myself want to link Anselm closely with the view defended in this book), is this: Why does God need to be “satisfied” or “turned aside” from punishing sinners if God is the one who does indeed save us (as both Anselm and those holding to the substitutionary view insist)? Why does God need a sacrifice when God is the one who provides the sacrifice? These authors (along with everyone else within this school of thought) develop an intrictate theory that explains many details concerning the necessary sacrifice of Jesus as the perfect offering God requires in order to offer salvation–but they never really address my question.
If God needs this sacrifice in order to be able to be free to save, how can it be that God then is the source of the sacrifice and the one who offers it? What actually is the difference between a God who loves human beings enough to sacrifice his own son to make forgiveness possible and a God who loves human beings enough simply to offer forgiveness? If God truly is acting out of love, why are these mechanistic processes of sacrifice necessary?
The authors of Pierced for Our Transgressions add a further wrinkle–echoing some but not all of their predecessors. They argue (briefly) in favor of what has traditionally been called a “limited atonement” (they prefer the term, “particular redemption,” pages 271-78). The gist of this idea is that “God did not will to save all” (page 270), but only those chosen by God before the beginning of time. The reason God “does not act to bring about the salvation of all…is that God sometimes allows something bad to happen (the death of the sinner) to serve a higher end. The highest end of all is his glory and, strangely perhaps to our minds, it brings him more glory not to save all: against the backdrop of the fate of those without Christ, God’s grace towards those in Christ is more gloriously seen” (page 270).
To say the least, this belief is troubling–and seems to run counter to the spirit of biblical faith. Maybe another reason these authors ignore Anselm is the other big idea Anselm has been known for, the ontological argument for the existence of God. God must exist since God is the “being than which no greater can be conceived” and if this being doesn’t exist then it’s not the greatest conceivable being since it would be a greater being if it did exist. Well, it is very easy to conceive of beings, imaginary or real, who are greater than a God who brings non-chosen creatures into existence in order to give “himself” glory when “he” condemns them.
Richard Bauckham. Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World
This is a useful little book. Richard Bauckham is a British New Testament scholar with a strong background in theology (he did his Ph.D. with Jürgen Moltmann in Germany) and a deep commitment to social ethics and Christian mission. All of these elements come together in a concise but solid summary of the biblical vision of God’s healing intentions for creation.
Bauckham considers the entire Bible’s witness to the gospel of God (he sees Genesis 12:1-3 as a crucial text for reading the Bible as a whole)–and looks at this witness in the context of our contemporary world. I especially appreciate his perceptive analysis of the Bible’s “metanarrative”–not a authoritarian narrative such as been created in Western culture with Christendom and its successor, the Enlightenment. Rather, the Bible’s “metanarrative” is a story, a story of God’s persevering love expressed in a particular community with the intention of speaking of universal access to God’s healing love.
This is how Bauckham concludes his argument: “The biblical story is not only critical of other stories but also hospitable to other stories. On its way to the kingdom of God it does not abolish all other stories, but brings them all into relationship to itself and its way to the kingdom. It becomes the story of all stories, taking with it into the kingdom all that can be positively related to the God of Israel and Jesus. The presence of so many little stories within the biblical metanarrative, so many fragments and glimpses of other stories, within Scripture itself, is surely a sign and an earnest of that. The universal that is the kingdom of God is no dreary uniformity or oppressive denial of difference, but the milieu in which every particular reaches its true destiny in relation to the God who is the God of all because he is the God of Jesus. We may recall the Bible’s final book, where Babylon, the ruler of the kings of the earth, comes to nothing, destroyed by its clash with the narrative of God’s kingdom, but where the nations bring their glory and honor into the new Jerusalem, that is, they bring all they have to offer as glory and praise given to God (Revelation 21:24-26)” (page 110).
I recommend this book especially as (1) an inspiring portrayal of the big picture of the Bible, a coherent message of healing love, and (2) an important grappling with the tension between particularity and universality in the biblical message–helping with understanding the biblical message of “chosenness” as a call to loving service and not selfish hegemony.
The book of Revelation continues to gain a great deal of attention–for better and for worse. Back in the 1980s I paid sustained attention to this amazing piece of literature and wrote a short commentary. Here is the commentary’s discussion of chapters six and seven, from Triumph of the Lamb
N. T. Wright. Evil And the Justice of God
N.T. Wright, the British New Testament theologian and Anglican bishop, has become a bit of an industry. We may note this simply in how this rather slight book (less than 170 pages of text with generous white space throughout) found release in hardback and remains unavailable in paperback. Wright has continued to crank out books of this size and scope in great numbers while presumably also readying the next massive volume in his Christian Origins and the Question of God series (supposedly on the writings of Paul).
In spite of (or is it because of?) his extraordinary productivity, Wright almost always has worthwhile things to say–he certainly does in Evil and the Justice of God. We may wonder how much more useful and insightful his contribution addressing the important issues he takes up in this book might be had he spent more time on it. But we can be thankful for what we have.
The core of this book, and Wright’s distinctive contribution to thought on the problem of evil, is his chapter on Jesus’ crucifixion and how that provides a framework for Christian understanding of evil and of God’s response. I greatly appreciate Wright’s summary of the core theme of the Bible (“the entire Old Testament…hangs like an enormous door on a small hinge, namely the calling of Abraham in Genesis 12,” p. 46)–that God’s is working in a long-suffering way consistent with God’s just love to bring healing in the face of human evil. Jesus’ life that led to his crucifixion and God’s vindication of this life by raising Jesus from the dead tells us what we need to know about God’s creative work in the face of evil and what God expects from people of faith as their role in this work.
I like Wright’s theology a great deal. I like that as a biblical scholar he is informed and bold concerning the big theological themes and perfectly willing to address them. And address them he does, doing so in a way that keeps the biblical message at the center. He expresses a strong commitment to the Bible’s message of shalom. If he’s not quite a full-blown pacifist and social and political radical, he’s generally close enough (despite some irritating brief seemingly pro forma digs at various expressions of “liberalism” in the early part of the book when he is setting out our current cultural setting for addressing the themes of the book).
I do have one significant concern, though. In reading much of what Wright has published and in listening to him speak several times, I am left with the impression that while working very hard (and largely successfully) at placing prophetic biblical concerns at the center of his theology, he still does remain a bit of a Constantinian. That is, for Wright, the church retains a sort of ontological privilege in his schema of salvation history. I would think that someone as immersed in the recovery of the prophetic message of the Bible would recognize how far Christendom departed from the agenda of biblical prophets (from Moses to John of Patmos). The community gathered around Torah in the Old Testament and the messianic assembly in the New Testament both stand in judgment of the church.
Certainly, Christians have the calling to work within their communities to recover and embody the biblical message of shalom and to fulfill the calling of Abraham’s descendants to bless all the families of the earth. However, the church as an institution has long ago forfeited its standing as the steward of this message. Wright’s sanguine assumptions about the church as the center of God’s work in the world weaken his arguments about the tasks followers of the biblical God face in embodying God’s justice in our present time.
Christopher D. Marshall. Crowned With Glory and Honor: Human Rights in the Biblical Tradition
This is a splendid little book. Marshall, a New Testament scholar who teaches in New Zealand, provides a concise but thorough account how the Bible and biblically-based theology may strongly affirm a commitment to human rights. In doing so, he shows conclusively that modern notions of human rights such as reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are fully compatible with Christian thought.
Along the way, Marshall does critique Enlightenment-based notions of human rights, but his intent is to build bridges more than pit Christian theological language against human rights language as is lamentably done by some Christians. Marshall’s strengths include a thorough understanding of the biblical message that allows him to provide an outline for a general biblical theology (Old and New Testaments) that serves as the basis for his affirmation of human rights. He helpfully focuses on the big picture in the Bible rather than isolated proof-texts.
Marshall also does a fine job in introducing the general arena of human rights thought as it has emerged in moral philosophy and political realities. In doing so, he gives Christians an excellent primer on the intersection of their theology with the public policy world–and he gives those unfamiliar with theology a good sense of how the Bible can be seen as friendly to their human rights concerns.
Yet another strength is Marshall’s economy of expression. His main text runs slightly less than 100 pages, but he is quite thorough in his discussion (beyond the main text we have 13 pages of informative endnotes and a 9-page bibliography). Certainly he could have said much more (and we could use a large tome on this subject). But what he presents is quite adequate and persuasive–Christians have every business strongly advocating human rights and human rights advocates from outside Christianity have every business welcoming biblical thought as part of their rationale for their advocacy.
Michael Standaert. Skipping Towards Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire
One major contribution this book makes is to look critically and thoroughly at the political context of the Left Behind phenomena. This examination is illuminating and alarming. Tim LaHaye has a long history of right wing political activism–fueled in part by his paranoid theology. Standaert makes an important contribution both in tracing LaHaye’s career and connections and in making clear the political impact of the content of the Left Behind books.
This is a readable book that points to many resources to help buttress Standaert’s argument. He clearly is completely negative about LaHaye’s perspective and influence. However, while his negative perspective comes through clearly throughout, he is reasoned and careful and documents most of his critiques.
It’s not a perfect book. Standaert is not a scholar. He writes well and has done significant research, but on many issues is clearly relying on others’ research–and not always the best research (for instance, he does not refer to Paul Boyer or George Marsden, probably the two most important historians who have written on American fundamentalism and premillennial dispensationalism).
Still, I would recommend this book as an important resource for anyone who wants to understand better why the Left Behind phenomenon is problematic. Beyond most of the critiques I have read, Standaert is especially helpful for his focus on the broader political and cultural issues at play.
Peace Theology 