Biblical theology

Review: The Bible is not Enough

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The Bible is not Enough, Scot McKnight. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2023.

Summary: In reaction to the embrace by American Christians of “humane” approaches to war and Christian nationalism, calls for an imaginative and improvisational approach to living out the Bible’s vision of a peaceful world.

This book reflects a response of Scot McKnight both to the rise of an aggressive Christian nationalism and an embrace of “humane” approaches to war through high tech precision weaponry. His concern is the embrace by American Christians, of ideas approving war both upon culture and our enemies abroad, justified by saving America for God. But where does the idea of the Bible not being enough come in? He argues that if instead we are to be people following the Prince of Peace, we need a new beginning that our political founding documents can’t offer. He writes:

“The Bible offers some raw materials of a new beginning. But the Bible itself has been become [sic] another tool of the ‘humane.’ The audaciousness of the Bible has been tamed–tamed and then co-opted. All too often the Bible is weighed against itself, allowing extreme to mitigate extreme, sometimes even pushing the other end off the stage. But that is not how the Bible worked or works. The Bible did so because the times called for it. The Bible imagines a peaceful world and then insists upon improvisation to realize that peace” (pp. 5-6).

McKnight then proceeds to assert that peace is fundamental to the Christian’s calling. God has made peace with us through Christ and made peace possible between opposing peoples through Christ, breaking down every human division. Peace shapes the vision of Christians for their lives in the world, calling forth imagination of new possibilities where peace has been absent. Peace calls us to improvise beyond the text of scripture to realize that vision in present day society. The remaining four chapters unpack McKnight’s thoughts of the shape of this imaginative improvisation on the Bible.

First of all, he invites us to a prophetic Imagination. He elaborates the peaceful vision the prophets proclaimed describing the coming of God’s kingdom rule, longed for by Israel in exile, and later under Rome. The coming of Jesus represented a turning point where an imagined future becomes kingdom imagination. In Jesus, kingdom has come. But what kind of kingdom? It is one that precludes war in a call of discipleship lived for others, manifested in the righteousness of the Sermon on the Mount, wholehearted love for God, neighbors, and even enemies, and the cruciform life, a denial of self and sacrificiality for others.

The kingdom imagination is an improvisational imagination. McKnight notes how the law of scripture shows marks of improvisation from wilderness to settlement and kingship to the ministry of Jesus and the life of the church. He addresses divorce law, for example and the laxity that often affected women adversely, the high standard uttered by Jesus, with the Matthean addition and Paul’s further exception. Thus African-American Christians improvised in envisioning their own liberation and so we might improvise in the pursuit of peace, presumably even against structures and ideas rooted in some formulation of biblical law (for example, the use of “just” or “humane” means in war). Finally, this improvisation arises from a peaceful imagination. It is an imagination that refuses to kill either Christian or non-Christian for the sake of the state, that takes up only the sword of enemy love, that imitates Christ in the way of peacemaking as a person of peace in every sphere.

There is much that is compelling in what McKnight writes. The central idea of Jesus as the king of peace and what it means to be a person of peace as one of his followers is a defining character of what it means to call oneself Christian. This is how Christ’s kingdom works and grows. Justifying war or embracing culture war runs against all this. I found myself struggling at two points:

One was, how far are we to be engaged in bringing in the peaceable kingdom? And how much awaits the return of Christ? Sometimes, it seems that McKnight was simply urging us to seek peace and pursue it to whatever extent we can, employing peaceful imagination (and I would argue that this may accomplish far more than we expect). At times, it felt he was suggesting nations act this way. It felt like he was trying to replace Christian nationalism with a Christianized state. Can the ethic of Christians and that of states in a fallen world be the same? If states are ordained to restrain evil by both punishing law-breakers and providing for defense from aggressors, can those who lead and enact these functions abdicate their responsibilities? And must Christians refuse any position, civil or military, where force must be ordered or exercised? I think McKnight would say yes. But this leaves others to do the “dirty work.” I would have liked for McKnight to have addressed these questions.

I also wonder about his improvisational approach to the Bible. How would he differentiate his improvisational approach to the Bible from that of Christian nationalists? I think this language is actually not helpful. The Bible, rightly handled, is enough to persuade me that the call of Christians is a call to peace, to shalom. McKnight makes that point for me by pointing to biblical texts, not by improvisation. Applying those texts in daily life certainly does take a biblically informed imagination but I think the language of improvisation, of the Bible not being enough, is reckless, and might open doors McKnight and I would rather see remain closed.

What McKnight challenges is our love of war and neglect of peace. If we are serious about Jesus, McKnight asks to what is our imagination devoted–to peace or to war, to defeating our enemies or loving them, to making one nation great, or proclaiming the Prince of Peace to the nations? And I would propose that the Bible is enough to answer that question.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Humility Illuminated

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Humility Illuminated, Dennis R. Edwards. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: A study of humility throughout scripture, showing it as the distinctive identifier of those who follow Jesus.

Almost everywhere one looks, one finds evidence of American churches embracing the cause of American greatness, trying to seize control of American institutions, scheming to “win” the culture war. Meanwhile, hardly a week goes by where there isn’t news of pastoral corruption, whether with regard to funds, the abuse of authority, or the abuse of others or covering such abuse. Meanwhile, youth are heading for the doors. For many, it is not lack of belief in Jesus but rather that the church looks nothing like the Jesus who “came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.” In a word, they see nothing of the humility of Jesus.

Dennis R. Edwards, a pastor for many years and a seminary professor and dean, believes it is desperately important to understand the nature of biblical humility because such humility is the identity marker that sets Christians apart from the surrounding culture, whether in the first or twenty-first centuries. Both then and now status, control, power were celebrated and humility looked down upon. Yet this was the way of Jesus who followed a path of descent from God’s right hand all the way to the cross to redeem a lost humanity. In this book Edwards shows from an extensive survey of scripture how this is to be the way of life for those who follow after Jesus.

His study begins in the Old Testament with Moses focusing on how Moses was a man who yielded to God, submitting to him. Such submission is closely tied to the fear of the Lord, that all of life is lived before God. He follows with a study of how Jesus embodies humility, riding a donkey into Jerusalem, centering the poor, women, and children in his ministry. He finishes this with Paul’s portrait of the humble Jesus in Philippians 2.

He then reflects for several chapters on the implications of humility for the church. He discusses communing rather than competing for place as a key to the unity of the church. He uses the household codes in Paul to observe their call for those naturally holding power to humble themselves and sees this as a key for multi-ethnic ministry. He speaks of the crucial role of humility in reconciliation, proposing that all of Romans is written around Romans 14-15 and the conflict between Jewish and Gentile parts of the church in Rome. Reconciliation and the humility that leads to it are also key to understanding Philippians. For pastors, humility is expressed in shepherding, not a domineering control as in some “shepherding” movements but in nurturing instruction by example, who live out a mutuality of care and oversight and vulnerable confession.

Suffering of various sorts is an occasion for humility, yielding ourselves to God in it and enduring in the hope that God will, in due time raise us up. Our worship together is an occasion for humility from the yielding of ourselves to God to the yielding of our seats to each other. Everything from how we read scripture to singing and song choices to how we arrange our meals to welcome each other are occasions for humility. Stewarding, whether of our time, talent, or treasure, or our collective stewarding of creation for the common good of all God’s creatures and not just ourselves call out humility in us.

Edward’s chapter on empowering gets to the heart of the choice we face. I think the church in America is where it is because we don’t believe that God will lift up, exalt, and empower the humble. Hence we seek to lift up, grasp for power, and exalt ourselves, ignoring the warnings of God for those who do this. Humility tests and reveals our faith, or lack thereof, in God. In this book, Edwards, with gentleness and an encouraging spirit, lays out the way of Jesus which is the way of the humble servant, submissive to God and considerate of others. He leaves us with the choice of whether we will yield to this countercultural way of living that identifies us with Jesus, or identify with the world.

This is a timely text, when so many signs seem to point to the success of the arrogant, to those who flout humility and integrity of character. Edwards’ book calls me and helps me through his own pastoral writing to “turn my eyes toward Jesus.”

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Just Discipleship

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Just Discipleship, Michael J. Rhodes (foreword by Brent A. Strawn). Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: A study both of what the Bible means by justice and how we become people who practice justice.

Michael J. Rhodes grew up in a conservative, white suburban congregation. They believed the Bible and tried to live out its teaching. And then they invited John Perkins to speak. His use of biblical passages on justice that invited them into a deeper discipleship stretched Rhodes vision. What he heard from Perkins was neither a liberal agenda or “woke” but “the Bible tells me so.” That led to trips to see these truths in action in urban Baltimore, and eventually to living in urban south Memphis. And then it led him to doctoral studies of biblical texts on justice and an effort to bring biblical theology and praxis together. This book is a distillation of that work. In it he seeks to do three things: 1) to carefully read the biblical texts related to justice; 2) to bring biblical texts into dialogue with what theologians say about ethical discipleship; and 3) to imagine what moral discipleship might look like today.

Rhodes begins by summarizing the justice story of scripture, one in which God brings justice to victory in Jesus after both humanity and Israel fail to be a royal, priestly family, and in which Jesus brings justice to victory by establishing a people who do justice by forming a people of God and inviting all humanity to join in. He then lays out how people are formed as just disciples in community: through story, through the promotion of a certain kind of character, through formative practices cultivating virtue, and through politics in the sense of church structures and policies aligned with just discipleship. This occurs in a cultural context with a continuum of responses ranging from rejection to cooption, with adaptation and collaboration in between. Ultimately, this formation occurs in the context of God’s reign over all creation.

Having laid this groundwork, he proceeds to consider how we become just disciples. He looks at the feasts of Deuteronomy which brought people of various economic strata together and how we do justice in the economic segregation of our neighborhoods. He considers the justice songs of the Psalms and considers how we sing and pray in our churches, He turns to wisdom teaching of Proverbs and the plight of low wage workers and forms of racism and classism in our society. Finally, 1 John is examined focusing on the imitation of Jesus and how justice-oriented discipleship is both received as gift and embraced as God-ordained task.

He then explores how churches become outposts reflecting God’s just kingdom rule.He considers two cases. The first is the biblical idea of Jubilee in which debts are cancelled, property is restored and slaves freed. Rhodes, drawing on Chris Wright’s idea of not treating these texts as blueprints but rather paradigms, weighs the possibility of churches voluntarily pursuing reparations for past injustices related to Black slavery and unjust tratment, citing the example of Virginia Theological Seminary. He did not discuss this but I could see similar applications in some contexts with indigenous peoples of North America. Rhodes also considers the case of Paul’s teaching with the Corinthians about the Lord’s table and the breaking down of societal distinctions in our church practice and governance.

The last part of the book looks at political engagement, looking beyond our common appeals to Romans 13 and Revelation and our subjection to political powers to our engagement with them. Rhodes draws a fascinating contrast between the model of Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in Babylon. While both were people of faith and integrity, Joseph acted alone and used his position to consolidate Pharoah’s (and his own) power, enslaved Egypt, and afforded benefit to his own family. Rhodes even raises the intriguing and plausible idea that this may have contributed to the animus against, and enslavement of Israel subsequently. By contrast, Daniel acted in community, working to challenge Nebuchadnezzar’s pretensions to godhood, making God and not himself great and arguably humanizing Nebuchadnezzar in his rule. He served where this did not involves assimilation, while refusing to collaborate when this compromised the worship of God. Rhodes thus sees Daniel as offering a better paradigm for our bolitical engagement.

Rhodes offers us a fresh look at both biblical passages and church practice. I’d never thought about the contrast between Joseph and Daniel. Nor had I thought about how feasting and singing might form just disciples. He gives numerous examples both from his own church in south Memphis (before taking a faculty appointment in New Zealand) and other congregations. Grounding his discussions of just discipleship and justice issues in a probing examination of biblical text, he sidesteps the criticism that this is just a Christian version of critical race theory. While he addresses political engagement without the church becoming entangled in a particular brand of politics the stronger appeal for me is that he shows what the church as its own polis and in its own congregational life can do. And he shows how just discipleship is just discipleship–it is what we signed up for when we decided to follow Jesus.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Beginning and End of All Things

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The Beginning and End of All Things (Essential Studies in Biblical Theology), Edward W. Klink III. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: Proposes that creation is not confined to beginnings but unfolds throughout the biblical story, concluding in the new creation.

Edward W. Klink III contends that the church has a truncated doctrine of creation, focused only on the beginning of all things. We focus on the scientific controversies around beginnings. We see it as subordinate to redemption and we are often focused more on the end of all things. Klink argues that the doctrine of creation ties all of this together and runs through the narrative of scripture. He sees the work of Jesus both revealing and fulfilling the purpose of creation and the new creation being the end for which all things were created.

He begins with Genesis 1 and 2 and the covenantal relationship God establishes with his people as prophets, priests, in a creation that is the temple of God. Genesis 3 tells the story of creation under the curse of sin, while revealing God’s ongoing commitment to creation, eventuating in redemption. Genesis 11 is the focus of the next step in this unfolding story, that of creation’s confusion at Babel as the ultimate expression of the anti-God city of man.

In Abraham God renews and reinstates his vision for humanity, the promise of a new country. Israel embodies the new Adamic humanity; prophets, priests, and kings with God in their midst. Yet, their failure opens the way for God to fully reveal creation’s purpose in Christ as prophet, priest and king. He is not only these things, but also the temple. Klink asserts that Jesus was never plan B (or C) but the one toward whom creation’s purpose pointed. One of the most fascinating parts of his discussion is his reflection on John 18-20 where the agony, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus are set in a garden with Jesus as the Gardener as he comes to Mary, reversing the story of the first garden. He explores how the cross’s suffering and shame restores what was lost in partaking of the tree, bringing what was intended in creation to fulfillment.

Just as Christ as second Adam fulfills creation’s purpose, so the church fulfills the corporate Adam’s (Israel’s) purpose, becoming, as the body of Christ, a temple unto the Lord. As a people remaining in the world, they fulfill Adam’s embodied life, caring both for human bodies and for the rest of physical creation. All this anticipates the new creation, in which “heaven” comes to earth and all things are re-created under Christ. This in turn leads to the consummation of the sabbath rest of creation and life in God’s garden city.

I greatly appreciated the idea of the continuity of creation throughout the biblical narrative and not opposing creation and salvation. It removes salvation from a purely “spiritual” experience to one that brings redemption into our bodily life, into the care of creation, and into the expectation of the new creation. I do think there is more work to be done in explaining how Jesus is not plan B, particularly, what the work of Christ would have been had there not been a fall. Yet the picture of Christ as the one who fulfills creation’s purpose only enlarges our vision of Christ. Klink opens for us a vision of creation not truncated and subordinated, but integral throughout the biblical story to the purposes of God in Christ.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Being God’s Image

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Being God’s Image, Carmen Joy Imes (foreword by J. Richard Middleton). Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: A study of what it means to be God’s images as representative rulers in God’s good creation, what was lost in the fall, how we might live well in a good but fallen world, and how we see in Christ’s coming the fulfillment of God’s image in humans and of God’s purposes for the creation.

One of the fundamental assertions of the first chapter of Genesis is that when God created human beings, he made them in (or as Imes contends as) his image. In this book, Carmen Joy Imes explores what this means for what it means to be human.

She begins with creation noting the pattern of the first three days that established domains and the second three that filled them with their residents. She explores biblical cosmology and the idea that creation is God’s cosmic temple. Humans, who rule under the divine King follow his pattern in work of six days working and sabbath. Humans then are God’s embodied, royal family representing God and exercising responsible rulership stewarding the creation. All humans, regardless of sex are the image of God. What Imes establishes in these chapters is the integral relationship between our embodied life as God’s image and our engagement with God’s creation of the earth. Our work is how we participate in this rule. It doesn’t define us but brings satisfaction.

What was lost in the fall was not the imago dei but rather rebellion, distrust, and fear replaced love and trust in our relationship with God, and this affected both our human relationships and that with the creation, which was marked by thorns and thistles and toilsome work. The endurance of the imago dei means that all must be treated with dignity. The rebellion was costly and eventuated in violence beginning with Cain. It led to the flood, an act of un-creation to afford a chance for a fresh start (Imes includes a wonderful chart of the chiasm of the flood account that centers in God’s remembrance of Noah). God continued to resist the violence of militaristic power at Babel, that prevented nations and cultures from flourish and filling the earth.

Before moving to Christ’s fulfillment of our failed call and restorative work, Imes explores what it means to live wisely and well in a fallen world. It means heeding the wisdom of the Word and the world. She particularly explores living well as sexual creatures and trenchantly points the way to sexual fulfillment, and in a sidebar article, explores the pervasive and problematic character of pornography. Looking at Ecclesiastes and Job, she explores living with joy amid the fleeting character of our lives and what it is to trust God when we feel we are unfairly suffering.

Jesus is the image of the invisible God, revealing what it means not only to be true God but truly human in bodily form. Although male, he honors women in being born of Mary, and able to represent all humanity. He participates in every aspect of human culture, often prophetically and restoratively, ultimately dying, taking on himself the consequences of our rebellion. In his bodily resurrection, he affirms God’s ongoing purposes for embodied humans. Imes proposes that the scars of the risen Lord point to their being continuity in our resurrected bodies while our mortality points toward the restoration of all things. Meanwhile, Jesus ascended empowers his people to carry on and multiply his work, even as we learn from him what it means to be in his image.

One manifestation of that work is the healing of human relationships in the beloved community of God’s people, undivided by gender, race, or any other factor that divides humans. Jesus intent is that we work this out in physical presence, not in some virtual or ideal world. All this anticipates the return of Jesus. Imes challenges views of the rapture in a sidebar and the idea of God’s people being removed from an earth that will be burned up. She argues from study of the passages that “the taken” are those taken in judgment, that the fire cleanses, and that Jesus will rule a renewed creation in which the bodily resurrected rule with him, fulfilling their calling as people ruling in his image, restoring creation.

The book includes a number of informative sidebars, for example comparing the creation accounts to other ancient accounts. Each chapter includes summaries and further resources including QR code links to further resources from the Bible Project as well as other written resources. For group study, a discussion guide is offered.

Imes makes a powerful statement for our embodied lives and work both now and in the new creation as the imago dei. She also speaks compellingly that the imago dei, in creation and redemption transcends all distinctions between human beings. The book complements her earlier Bearing God’s Name (review), on our calling, in addressing our identity as an embodied royal family representing our great King as we rule over and care for his creation–forever.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Emotions of God

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The Emotions of God, David T. Lamb. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press. 2022.

Summary: A study of the emotional language used of God in scripture, considering seven emotions spoken of both in Old and New Testaments.

The title of this book caught my attention. God has emotions? Readings in systematic theology taught me that God was impassible, that God does not experience passions or emotions, pain or pleasure, in ways that would change the unchanging God. Part of the reason for this is that emotions, at least as humans experience them do reflect real changes in our state of being, vacillating between highs and lows, sometimes unpredictably. Yet as this work amply demonstrates, scripture in many places attributes emotion to God. And the author freely admits that he does not believe in an impassible God, but rather one who is “affected emotionally by the behavior of humans” (p. 6). He chooses not to engage the theological discussion but rather to examine the biblical material supporting the idea of God having “emotions.”

It should be noted that in making this assertion that Lamb considers emotions not only to be strong feelings, but they may involve actions, can be rational, may be controlled, and may be understood. He then proceeds to introduce the scope of his study, seven emotions, all of which are evident in connection with God in the Psalms: hate (5:5; 11:5 45:7;), anger (6:1; 30:5; 78:21), jealousy (78:58; 79:5), grief (78:40), delight or joy (18:20; 22:8; 35:27), mercy (25:6; 28:6; 103:4), love (5:7; 25:6; 136).

In each of the following chapters Lamb takes one of the seven, defines the term, identifies the different Hebrew and Greek words used in Old and New Testaments respectively associated with the emotion, and then considers a number of key texts and what they reveal about these emotions in reference to God. With hate for example, he discusses what it may have meant to say “Esau I hated” or Jesus reference to “hating mother and brother and sister,” the latter which he would propose meaning “loving less.” In scripture, much of God’s “hatred” is directed against evil, and reflects the obverse of his intense love for his good creation, deeply hating anything that mars it and his good purposes for it. God hates injustice and falsehood. He discusses ways in which we do not hate like God (for example, being inconvenienced), and that we ought hate the things God hates, that sometimes, these should make us furious. He recommends that we take this to prayer but that this will also mean resisting evil and injustice.

In similar ways, Lamb moves from definition and word study to key texts to application with each of the seven. I particularly enjoyed his discussion of what God takes joy or delight in, from the creatures of the deep to his people, each and all of us! His chapter on sorrow centers on the reality that God may be grieved, and that Jesus wept deeply for Lazarus. He distinguishes compassion, which is more episodic and empathic with love that is faithful and enduring. In the process, Lamb invites us into the redemption of these emotions in our lives: to hate what God hates, to be angry but not sin, to be jealous for God and the things of God, to grieve and lament with God the world’s deep brokenness, to revel in and join in God’s delight in his world and people, to show mercy and compassion, and to love steadily and faithfully and selflessly.

My only wish would be that Lamb had said something more about emotions and how God may be both responsive and unchanging. We believe God is both transcendent and immanent, infinite and yet personal, is spirit, and yet in the second person of the Trinity, for eternity to come the Incarnate Son. As we hold other truths in tension, is there a way in which we are also called to hold God’s unchanging nature and evident emotional response to his creatures in tension? To deny a belief in impassibility does not seem enough, nor is a denial of the emotional language attributed to God. Often, we cannot fully explain these truths in tension, yet it seems we must hold them in tension in mystery, wonder, and faith, hoping that one day we will know more fully, even as we are known.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Trinity in the Book of Revelation

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The Trinity in the Book of Revelation (Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture), Brandon D. Smith (Foreword by Lewis Ayers). Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: A Trinitarian reading of Revelation, drawing upon the insights of the pro-Nicene fathers to elucidate John’s vision both of the One God and the working of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Discussions of Revelation often focus on the vivid imagery of the book trying to make some sense of its significance. Yet at the heart of John’s vision is the triune God acting as Father, Son, and Spirit in concert to bring about the final victory of the Lamb, the eradication of all forces of evil, and the heavenly city come down. It is this on which Brandon D. Smith focuses in this study of Revelation’s portrayal of the triune God.

His approach is to draw upon patristic resources and the pro-Nicene formulations articulating the doctrine of the Trinity to elucidate the theology of the Godhead revealed in John’s vision. Smith defends against the charge of eisegesis in arguing that the Trinitarian formulations best make sense of the unarticulated theology of the biblical text of Revelation, that they offer the best explanation of what we find in Revelation. One patristic approach that particularly frames Smith’s study is that of redoublement, the idea that we must speak of God “twice over,” first considering what the persons have in common (the divine nature) and what distinguishes them (processions or missions).

After establishing this approach, the following three chapters consider Father, Son, and Spirit. The first part of each chapter considers the pro-Nicene material and then the latter part the key texts pertaining to the member of the Godhead. Smith highlights the Father as fountainhead of the divine nature who gives revelation to Jesus, shares the throne with Jesus, and the Spirit, and receives their mediatorial work. We see the Son receiving worship, carrying out divine prerogatives, and claiming divine titles. Perhaps most interesting is the material on the Holy Spirit, focusing on the “seven spirits.” who he makes the case for being a reference not to angels but to the Holy Spirit, noting the facing of the spirits outward from the throne and joined with Father and Son in receiving worship. Drawing on patristics, we see emerging in John the triune God, one in nature, sharing in the worship of all those in the heavenly throne room, both acting singularly and indivisibly as one being and yet distinctively as three persons.

The writer concludes by arguing that this patristic-biblical reading of Revelation centered on the triune God challenges our modern readings of Revelation often devoid of a high Christology or binatarian in nature. Furthermore, he gestures toward the ways in which such a reading is of benefit to the church in reinforcing our confession of faith, in undergirding our existence as the church gathered in Christ, pardoned by the Father and united by the Spirit, by how it points us toward the one who “was, is, and is coming” and by recognizing the Trinity at the center of our reading of all of scripture.

Not only does Smith offer an interesting approach to reading Revelation, he centers our focus where I think it should be, not on the signs, but rather the triune God who gave John this vision, and who is at work through all that John sees to accomplish God’s purposes. Smith doesn’t offer a prophetic scheme or a timeline, but calls our attention to the glory of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the glorious kingdom that is the destiny of the multitudes surrounding the throne, worshipping with the help of the Spirit the Lamb who is seated with the Father on the throne.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Apostle and the Empire

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The Apostle and the Empire, Christoph Heilig (foreword by John M. G. Barclay). Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2022.

Summary: Focusing on 2 Corinthians 2:14, Heilig argues for an alternative to either hidden or unexpressed criticism of the empire in Paul’s writings, proposing that we might also consider texts that have been overlooked.

Until N. T. Wright, most commentators on the Pauline works considered Paul to be silent on or even supportive of the Roman empire. Wright changed that with an article in 2000, “Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire,” proposing that subtexts could be found in Paul’s writing of an anti-imperial nature, referred to as hidden subtexts. John M. G. Barclay responded with a critique outlining five necessary conditions that would need to be met to accept Wright’s hypothesis that Wright answered in a chapter of Paul and the Faithfulness of God in 2013. A more recent paper by Laura Robinson questions the “hidden subtext” idea proposing that they are not hidden but just are not there, and that the concerns evoked by Wright about surveillance by the empire were unwarranted.

In this work, Heilig seeks to move the discussion to a new place. In addition to challenging Robinson’s assessment of the dangers Christians faced, invoking for example, the Pliny-Trajan correspondence, and the troubles Paul actually found himself in, he proposes the idea that Paul’s criticism is not so much hidden as perhaps, at least in some passages, overlooked. After mentioning passages like 1 Corinthians 2:6 and 1 Thessalonians 3:3, he focuses much of this monograph on 2 Corinthians 2:14:

But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.

2 Corinthians 2:14, NIV.

A significant part of Heilig’s argument, overlooked in most commentaries, is the contemporary context of the victory procession of Claudius in 44 AD, celebrating his victory over Britannia. The Corinthians actually had an emperor cult that celebrated this victory. References to a triumphal procession would readily evoke this event in the minds of the Corinthians, not simply a general military practice. He explores the challenge to empire implicit in the reference God leading this procession, spreading the knowledge of the victory of Christ. Heilig argues that this, at very least expresses a sense of “unease” with the empire. He also suggests that this may be found even in the “clearest” of the passages on the empire, Romans 13:1-7, although I am surprised the author does not explore the standards for the just exercise of power implied in these passages, that is an implicit judgment against the much more arbitrary exercise of “the sword” in actuality.

In the last chapter before the conclusion, he decries the woeful state of access to the most current scholarship on context for biblical commentators, illustrated by the “overlooked” material on Claudius. I felt that, while this may be valid, I would have been more greatly helped by a discussion of further research along the lines of this work, and at least a preliminary overview of other passages where he thought criticism may have been overlooked rather than hidden.

That said, I do think this proposal offers new ground for work on Paul’s unease with empire and the realities faced by early Christians navigating Roman society, one that recognizes both Paul’s courage and discretion.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Face to Face with God

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Face to Face with God (Essential Studies in Biblical Theology), T. Desmond Alexander. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: An exploration of the biblical theme of priesthood and mediation and how Christ fulfills these par excellence.

Throughout scripture, we learn that no one can see God face to face and live. Yet the promise of the New Testament is that one day we all will have the veil removed and see God face to face, and live forever in his presence. How can this be?

T. Desmond Alexander explores this in this sixth volume in the Essentials in Biblical Theology, focusing on the theme of priesthood and mediation throughout scripture, culminating with the portrait of Christ in Hebrews as a priest and mediator superior to all those who have gone before.

Alexander begins with a study of the portable sanctuary that Moses is instructed to erect amid the camp and how it is a model of the heavenly sanctuary, down to the perfect cubicle shape of the Holy of Holies, as is the new Jerusalem, descending from heaven as a cube. It is the place where heaven and earth meet, a footstool, as it were, of God’s heavenly throne. It also reproduces in its outer courtyard, holy place and Holy of Holies, the three zones on Mount Sinai, a new idea to me.

Then Alexander goes more deeply into the concept of holiness, the consecration of priests and of Aaron and the related concepts of clean and unclean, with the sanctuary being holy, the Israelite camp clean, and the world and nations beyond unclean. Yet with all of this, Aaron can only come before the Lord once a year, and not daily. But it is God’s intent, even if it is not yet truly face to face, that this be a tent of meeting, where God, mediated through the priests’ sacrifices, meets his people. He also deals with the “tent of meeting” where Moses talked to God “face to face” as it were, with the barrier of the tent between Moses and the cloud. When Moses asks to see God’s glory, he is told that he cannot see God’s face, lest he die. The mediation of human priesthood can only go so far. And even this is only possible by the daily intercession of Aaron and the priests, dramatically portrayed at one point when Aaron, burning incense, interposes himself between the dead and the living when God strikes Israel with a plague.

Daily sacrifices and incense are burned for the sins of the people, beginning at the outside of the camp and going into the holy place of the tent. Then on the Day of Atonement, the priest passes within the Holy of Holies to offer sacrifice for the people. Alexander shows how this pattern is fulfilled once and for all by Christ who is both priest and sacrifice, who in himself is mediator. Yet how can Jesus, born of the tribe of Judah, and not a Levite, and certainly not a descendent of Aaron, do this? Alexander shows how this is the significance of the reference to Jesus as a priest of the order of Melchizedek, the king of Salem. He is the priest-king, David’s greater son of Psalm 110. Hence he mediates a better covenant as head of a kingdom of priests, devoted to the service of God.

The wonder, as Alexander shows, is that all this is possible through the priesthood and mediation of Jesus, by which we are cleansed, sanctified and perfected. It is not that we must serve God but rather that we may. Our hope is one of being able to boldly approach, looking for forgiveness and cleansing, not only to serve but to rest. Alexander traces all this out, step by step from Sinai and the portable sanctuary and priesthood, to the fulfillment in the Son who more effectively mediates for us and intercedes than any priest. Read this to not only understand all the regulations around the sanctuary and priesthood but to grasp their wondrous fulfillment in Jesus and what this has won for us as his people.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Theophany

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

Theophany, Vern S. Poythress. Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2022 (Originally published by Crossway in 2018).

Summary: A study of the visible appearances of God to his people in scripture, what they reveal about God, and how they anticipate God’s ultimate appearing in the person of his Son, God incarnate.

The word theophany refers to a visible manifestation of God. Vern Poythress asserts that all of these point to the wondrous news that God desires to commune with his people and that we have the hope one day of seeing God “face to face.” Poythress sees this closely interconnected with God’s promises and their fulfillment, God’s covenantal relationship with his people, his kingdom rule and his presence, God with us. He believes all the theophanies of scripture anticipate the ultimate theophany of the incarnation of the Son of God and look forward to the consummation of his redemptive purposes in his return.

Poythress begins by cataloging the different types of theophanies and their significance: thunderstorm, fire, cloud, glory, God’s court, as a Man, a warrior, in a chariot. He then considers how we know God, both as transcendent and immanent. The appearances reflect God, and Poythress considers the different ways God is reflected via human appearance, the Spirit, the Trinity, and even reflections in creation and the clothing evident in appearances.

After this, the remainder of the book is a survey of the appearances of God throughout scripture, from Genesis to Revelation. One thing is apparent. God appears abundantly throughout the scriptures, and in doing so reveals his presence, promise, power and purposes to people. Poythress often shows how these appearances anticipate the appearing of his Son in the incarnation.

Poythress is thorough in his survey, clear in his explanation, and frequent in drawing out the significance of particular biblical teaching to larger overarching themes. He also includes appendices discussing the angel of the Lord, and two discussing the early chapters of Genesis. The one thing he does not discuss is that, given the many appearances of God in scripture, what expectation might believers have of theophanies, and what is the extrabiblical evidence of such through church history? The author contents himself to see the significance of theophany as our communion with Christ, which is the believer’s ultimate comfort, to be sure.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.