Tag Archives: theology

The Vocation of Letter Writing: Christopher Seitz’s Commentary on Colossians

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colossiansIn his commentary on Colossians, Christopher Seitz, an Old Testament scholar by trade, makes use of a wide array of ancient and modern Christian interpreters to give an irenic, theologically rich, and textually sensitive reading of Paul’s letter. Seitz’s book is part of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series, which takes as its premise the idea that “the Nicene tradition, in all its diversity and controversy, provides the proper basis for the interpretation of the Bible as Christian scripture” and that “dogma clarifies rather than obscures” (p.11).

One of the more unique facets of Seitz’s commentary is his canonical approach. He seeks to interpret Colossians in light of both the larger Pauline corpus of which it is a part, as well as the rest of the Old and New Testaments. He acknowledges from the outset that “canonical readings” have come under fire in the past for being “either a genre mistake or a piety masking illegitimate (‘unhistorical’ in our present parlance) interpretation” (p.50). Consequently, Seitz takes time to respond to these criticisms by giving a more in-depth description of what he thinks the term entails: Continue reading →

The Tales of Jesus: A Review of Stephen Wright’s “Jesus the Storyteller”

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jesus the storyteller

In Jesus the Storyteller, Stephen Wright takes a fresh look at the parables of Jesus, focusing particularly on reading these stories as stories. The first part of the book is a wide-ranging, though necessarily incomplete, survey of how past historical Jesus scholarship has understood the parables.

Since the time of Augustine, these stories of Jesus have often been seen as highly allegorical, making The Good Samaritan, for instance, primarily an allegory for the drama of salvation, with the Samaritan being a symbol for Christ (p.9). Regardless of how spiritualized or overly-imaginative some of these interpretations may have been, they did at least preserve the rich narrative dynamics of these stories, something that was often a casualty of the 19th and 20th century “quests” for the historical Jesus (p.9). Continue reading →

A Review of Mark McEntire’s “A Chorus of Prophetic Voices”

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a chorus of prophetic voices

Mark McEntire, who teaches at Belmont University (and blogs here), is the author of A Chorus of Prophetic Voices, a wide-ranging and interesting introduction to the prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible. In the first pages of the book, he gives a brief history of how scholarship has approached these prophetic texts over the last century in order to give some context for where his work fits into the conversation.

The historical-critical method, masterfully represented by figures like Gerhard von Rad, held sway for much of the 20th century and focused on recovering the historical voices of the prophets, embedding them in historical contexts tied to specific periods of Israel’s ancient history. McEntire finds that:

The great accomplishment of these efforts was the grounding of the Israelite prophets in the earthly world of politics, economics, war, and suffering. Materializing the prophets was an effective antidote to the church’s long-held tendency to spiritualize the words of the prophets and read them as a disparate collection of esoteric predictions of the distant future. (p.1)

However, he also points out that this approach had shortcomings, including the undermining of the unity of larger prophetic works into smaller, isolated pieces as part of efforts to devise hypothetical reconstructions for how these books were compiled into their canonical forms.

The historical approach has recently given way to more literary studies of the prophets, which engage with “the final forms of the scrolls as literary works, recognizing that the last stage of their production is the one most responsible for how we view the whole” and emphasize “the scrolls as unified works of literature that constructed imaginative worlds of their own” (pp. 3,6). An important event that helped shift studies in this direction was the publication in 1978 of Walter Brueggemann’s book The Prophetic Imagination. McEntire tells readers that Brueggemann’s work: Continue reading →

Symbols, not Riddles: A Review of William Hendriksen’s “More Than Conquerors”

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more than conquerors

The son of Dutch immigrant parents, William Hendriksen (1900-1982) obtained his BA at Calvin College and went on to earn a doctorate from Princeton Seminary. In the early 1940’s, he was appointed Professor of New Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary, where he served for nine years before returning to full-time pastoral work. He is remembered both for his scholarly commentaries as well as for his 1939 book, More Than Conquerors: An Interpretation of the Book of Revelation.

In the 75th anniversary commemorative edition of More Than Conquerors, the included biographical tribute shares with readers that Hendriksen was a disciplined and prolific writer who could read in twenty(!) different languages and worked on his biblical commentaries even into his final years (p.8).

Written as the escalating rumbles of violence and warfare echoed ominously throughout Europe and the rest of the world, More Than Conquerors gives readers a clearly-written exploration of Revelation that seeks to show why Christians of John’s day found this apocalyptic work full of hope and comfort, rather than fear and confusion. Hendriksen explains:

The theme is the victory of Christ and of His Church over the dragon (Satan) and his helpers. The Apocalypse is meant to show us that things are not what they seem… Throughout the prophecies of this wonderful book Christ is pictured as the Victor, the Conqueror… He conquers death, Hades, the dragon, the beast, the false prophet, and the men who worship the beast. He is victorious; as a result, so are we, even when we seem to be hopelessly defeated. (pp.14-15)

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Anathematize Them: A Review of David Wilhite’s The Gospel according to Heretics

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gospel according to hereticsWhy should the Church ever listen to heretics? How do you define a heretic in the first place? In David Wilhite’s engaging and informative introduction to the early christological conflicts of the Church, The Gospel according to Heretics, he takes on these questions and more with admirable clarity, depth, and sensitivity. Wilhite teaches at George W. Truett Seminary in Texas and specializes in the study of North African Christianity in late antiquity, giving him a good background for taking readers into the world of the Patristic era.

In much traditional Christian thinking, heretics were viewed as evil and malicious (p.2). They were to be avoided and their voices were to be silenced if efforts to persuade ended in failure. The early church father Irenaeus, in his work Against Heresies, records that the Apostle John supposedly once fled from a building in order to avoid the heretic Corinth’s (3.3.4). Ignatius also exhorted readers in his Letter to the Trallians to, “cover up your ears in order to avoid receiving the things being sown by them” (9). Continue reading →

Theosis in the West? A Review of Michael Gorman’s Inhabiting the Cruciform God

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inhabiting the cruciform GodIn our last review, we looked at Michael Gorman’s book Cruciformity and saw that for him the defining characteristic of Paul’s experience of God was Spirit-enabled conformity to the crucified and resurrected Christ, a concept he termed “cruciformity.” He also showed that Paul used the the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2:6-11 to help flesh out the shape of this cruciform spirituality.

This time, we’re going to look at Gorman’s 2009 book Inhabiting the Cruciform God, which is basically an extension of what he started in Cruciformity. One of the foundational claims of his 2001 book was that, for Paul, God is cruciform. Gorman launches into Inhabiting the Cruciform God by verbalizing the consequence of this claim, writing that “an experience of the cross, a spirituality of the cross, is also an experience and a spirituality of God—and vice versa” (p.1). This leads us to the central proposal of this book, which we will spend the rest of our time unpacking: If God is cruciform, then cruciformity can also be understood as theoformity. He explains:

For Paul, to be one with Christ is to be one with God; to be like Christ is to be like God; to be in Christ is to be in God. At the very least, this means that for Paul cruciformity—conformity to the crucified Christ—is really theoformity, or theosis. (p.4)

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The Cruciform Life: Michael Gorman on Paul’s Narrative Spirituality

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cruciformitySpirituality is a slippery word. In the introduction to his 2001 book Cruciformity, Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross, Michael Gorman notes that for many, it is a term “associated with vague feelings of purposefulness or serenity and disassociated from religion, especially religious community” (p.2). He defines Christian spirituality as “the experience of God’s love and grace in daily life” and endeavors throughout the book to show that the defining characteristic of Paul’s spirituality was “cruciformity,” a term he uses to describe the concept of being conformed to Christ (p.3). Indeed, the basic aim of the book is really to unpack “what Paul means by conformity to the crucified Christ” (pp.4-5).

So what makes the cross so central to Paul’s experience of God? A good place to begin is in 1 Corinthians, where Paul wrote, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (2:2 NRSV). According to Gorman, “know” in this context means “something like ‘to experience and to announce in word and deed’” (p.1). Additionally, the “and” in this verse can be better translated to mean “even” or “that is,” resulting in the following translation: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ—that is Jesus Christ crucified” (p.1). He delves into the striking nature of this claim, writing that, “For Paul, ‘to know nothing except Jesus Christ—that is, Jesus Christ crucified,’ is to narrate, in life and words, the story of God’s self-revelation in Christ’” (p.7). Continue reading →

Love One Another: Craig Koester on Discipleship in John

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the word of lifeAmong the four canonical Gospels, John’s account has long been seen as distinctive. His narrative is suffused with poetic symbols, dualistic language, and vivid imagery. The parables we find Jesus telling throughout the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are for the most part nowhere to be found in John. Instead, we find extended discourses from Him exploring the various dimensions of His relationship with the Father and the rest of the world. John’s Gospel also has a number of unique stories about Jesus. These episodes include the “I am” statements of Jesus (ex. “I am the light of the world” or “I am the bread of life”), as well as Jesus’ nighttime conversation with Nicodemus and His wedding miracle at Cana. All of these things help make John’s written portrait of Jesus unique and valuable, but they can also make reading John a disorienting experience, especially for those used to the language and rhythms of the Synoptic Gospels. Craig Koester’s book, The Word of Life: A Theology of John’s Gospel, is a great introduction that helps perplexed readers familiarize themselves with the major themes and distinctive features of John.

In the preface, Koester explains that reading John theologically means having the courage to ask questions. Questions like, “Who is the God about whom Jesus speaks? Who does the Gospel say that Jesus is? And how does the Gospel understand life, death, sin, and faith?” (p.ix). Because these sorts of questions get raised repeatedly throughout the narrative, thinking through them necessitates reflecting on the Gospel as a whole, rather than just focusing on one or two single passages and extrapolating from there. This is what Koester attempts to do throughout the book, looking at the entire Gospel to investigate how John’s portrayal of Jesus forms answers to these questions. In this post, we’re going to spend our time exploring Koester’s perspective on the life of discipleship in John, looking especially at some of the lesser known stories and metaphors used by Jesus to help His disciples get a clearer picture of what following Him is supposed to look like. Continue reading →

To Bring Good News to the Poor: The Mission of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel

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theology of lukeJoel B. Green’s book, The Theology of the Gospel of Luke, is a concise and insightful exploration of the major contours of Luke’s theology, beginning with an exploration of the Gospel’s social context, moving on to a discussion of Jesus’ identity and mission, and ending with a pair of chapters looking at discipleship and the role that Luke’s Gospel has played (and continues to play) in the life of the Church. Luke’s narrative frames the words and actions of Jesus within the rich and ongoing story of God’s redemptive purposes in creation, giving salvation important meanings at both the individual and community level. Green writes that “Luke situates human salvation, even when understood in personal terms, within larger social conventions and institutions—a strategy foreign to many of us” (p.135). Indeed, such a community-centered vision of salvation’s scope can seem odd thanks to the individualistic emphasis of many in the Western world. What does it mean to hold together the assertion that salvation has important personal and social implications in Luke? This is the kind of question that Green wants to explore. Continue reading →