Theology

Review: Light Unapproachable

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Cover image of "Light Unapproachable" by Ronni Kurtz

Light Unapproachable, Ronni Kurtz. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514007105) 2024.

Summary: An explanation of the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility as well as God’s gracious accommodation.

“God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.” (1 Timothy 6:15b-16, NIV)

There is a paradox in the verses above. On one hand God lives in unapproachable light. Of ourselves we cannot approach the light, let alone the God who lives in it. From this, and verses like this, theologians speak of divine incomprehensibility. Yet these verses describe God as blessed, as ruler, king, and absolute Lord, immortal, and they tell us of God’s living in unapproachable light. That is, these verses do speak of God truthfully, faithfully, and worshipfully. While God in God’s self is incomprehensible, Paul affirms there are things about God that God has revealed, that we may apprehend.

In Light Inapproachable, Ronni Kurtz unpacks how we can affirm both aspects of this paradox. While affirming the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility, Kurtz does not believe this leaves us in a place of not being able to say anything of God. Rather, he believes God accommodates our creaturely nature, as he did Moses, in the cleft of the rock (Exodus 33:19-23).

First, Kurtz lays the groundwork for a definition of divine incomprehensibility. He observes there is a biblical tension between the imperatives to “know the Lord” and the indicatives speaking of the unknowability and unsearchability of the Lord. He addresses a number of misperceptions about incomprehensibility. Finally, he identifies two ditches to avoid: theological despair and theological idolatry. With that, he offers the following definition of divine incomprehensibility:

“Divine incomprehensibility affirms that God the Creator is wholly other than his creatures and the distinction between the two renders God out of the rational jurisdiction of the creature’s theological and intellectual comprehension. In no way can the creaturely imagination comprehend the divine nature as it truly is. As the finite will never circumscribe the infinite, the creaturely mind will never surround all that is in God. Since God as God is out of reach for the mind of the creature, so too is God as god out of reach for the words and names of the creature. Divine incomprehensibility necessitates divine ineffability as the creaturely limits, combined with the otherness of God, means that we cannot either fully know or name God as he really is in se” (pp. 20-21).

Kurtz begins this project by developing the biblical doctrine of incomprehensibility. As a result, he identifies scripture that declares the doctrine, others that demonstrate the doctrine and those that demand it. He then turns to a historical theological treatment. He begins with Chrysostom and his response to the Anomoeans, who maintained that humans could comprehend God. And he recounts Chrysostom’s five homilies that refute this idea. Then he shows how the Cappadocian fathers further developed the doctrine. Next, he discusses Pseudo-Dionysius and The Cloud of Unknowing. While recognizing the importance of negation and mystery, Kurtz argues against the pessimism of a completely negative theology. By contrast, he discusses how Aquinas spoke both of incomprehensibility and knowability. He concludes his discussion with the Reformation, and the more contemporary work of Herman Bavinck.

Part Two of the book moves from retrieval to constructive theology. Kurtz begins with a discussion of the dogmatic location of incomprehensibility. Specifically, he develops what was implicit in his definition, that the doctrine properly is located in the Creator/creature distinction. In contending this, he argues against locating the doctrine in either human sinfulness or in the “size” of God. Regarding sin, he observes that the sinless angels cannot fully comprehend God. And it is not that God is larger but rather that God is wholly other that makes God incomprehensible.

But how then may we speak of God at all? Our creaturely inability does not rule out God’s ability to graciously accommodate our creatureliness and reveal something of Himself. Specifically, through anthropomorphisms (describing God in terms of human parts), anthropopathisms (describing God through human passions and volition) and anthropochronisms (describing God in terms of human time and chronology), God accommodates himself to our creatureliness. He does so analogically, in which the term, while not signifying what God in himself is like, conveys through the creaturely shadow, reflects what is true and meaningful of God. This truth is ectypal, that is, a revelation in creation patterned after the archetypal knowledge of God, which is unknowable.

Finally, Kurtz concludes by discussing the implication of both God’s incomprehensibility and gracious accommodation. This bids us to humility but not hopelessness and calls us into a theology of prayer and pilgrimage. He proposes the vivid images of the limp of Jacob and the awe of Moses.

Kurtz writes clearly about the incomprehensible and with clarity about this doctrine. The combination of biblical, historical, and constructive theology in a relatively slim text makes this both accessible and substantial. And his pastoral approach of humility and hope that runs through the book translates this from abstract theologizing to truths we might embrace in both worship and life.

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

Review: Bonhoeffer for the Church

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Cover image for "Bonhoeffer for the Church" by Matthew D. Kirkpatrick.

Bonhoeffer for the Church, Matthew D. Kirkpatrick. Fortress Press (ISBN: 9781506497822) 2024.

Summary: A study of what Bonhoeffer wrote about the church’s identity, purpose, practices, and life together.

When the name Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes up, one might ask, “which Dietrich Bonhoeffer?” At present, their are different “camps” trying to claim Bonhoeffer for their own. While his widest readership has always been among those who identify with one or another church, his works do not offer a systematic theology of the church. What Matthew D. Kirkpatrick does, with the aid of the now-completed set of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, published by Fortress Press, is organize this material into an extended statement of Bonhoeffer’s message for the church. While reflecting extensive scholarship, Kirkpatrick writes for the church, making this a text for pastors, leaders, and lay people to explore together.

After a brief biographical sketch emphasizing Bonhoeffer’s pastoral work, Kirkpatrick begins by discussing foundations of the church’s identity. He begins with creation and fall, emphasizing the tragedy of wanting to be like God when we already were. Instead, the first couple turned in on themselves, and we re-enact this in our lives in a shared predicament. But God breaks in through Christ’s work on the cross, God’s living Word. God breaks in, often mediated through others, enabling us to have faith in Christ. Such faith calls us into community with love as faith’s expression. Christ makes our community possible through that love and we meet each other through Christ. Thus our own “visions” of and attempts to build community die. Instead we receive community as a gift through Christ.

Crucial to our community is Bonhoeffer’s idea of vicarious representation. Christ served and redeemed as a vicarious representative, and while the church cannot do what Christ did in redemption, it vicariously represents Christ in service to one another and the world. For Bonhoeffer, this is the basis of pastoral care. This further works itself out in intercessory prayer and the confession of and forgiveness of sin. Intercession is not just praying for others, but praying as the other in and through Christ and is a profound expression of community. In confession of sin, we take on the sins of others, recognizing our own sin, and pronouncing Christ’s forgiveness of the other. A concluding chapter in this section discusses ecumenism, the true and empirical church, and why we go to church as a counter to our individualism. Christ meets us in others.

Part Two turns from our identity to our inner life. Firstly, Bonhoeffer addresses authority, leadership and the priesthood of all believers. The focus is on the priority of the God’s word over human words and structures as the source of authority. This is followed by a chapter on preaching, theology, and the word of God. Preaching is central to the inner life of the church. For Bonhoeffer, this means submission to the word of God, by both those who preach and the congregation. The church comes together to be addressed not by a person but by the living God. Kirkpatrick follows this with a chapter on the reading of scripture, music, and sacraments.

For Bonhoeffer, evangelism is not winning people to Christ but rather a means by which God, mediated through Christ, calls people to faith. Evangelism meant listening before speaking, both to God and the person, seeking to discern God’s word in that situation. For this reason, he opposed programmatic approaches. for him, faith in Christ and his word was sufficient. Likewise, in his teaching on time alone, the focus is on listening to God, both in prayer and in scripture. Each nurtures the other.

Part Three engages the church in the world. Kirkpatrick emphasizes that Bonhoeffer did not focus on rules or laws. Rather, the focus was on God to discern what one must do to follow Christ. This may explain as well as anything Bonhoeffer’s decision to plot to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer on the state followed Luther’s two kingdoms. However, in the context of Nazism, he also believed the church must address the state with the Word of God. Thus he refused to incorporate the Aryan paragraph as a violation of the Word of God. The final chapter covers his letters and papers from prison. This includes Bonhoeffer’s idea of a “religionless Christianity.”

Few agree with Bonhoeffer at all points. But the delight of this book is in how it underscores the centrality of Christ. Salvation comes through him. Community is possible only in him. Our preaching is for hearing Christ’s word together. Our witness is predicated on Christ’s work of calling others to himself. Ethics is obedience to Christ. Amid the contentions around Bonhoeffer, Kirkpatrick has given us a book at once profound and useful for our life together.

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

Review: Metaphysics of Exo-Life

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Cover image of "Metaphysics of Exo-Life" by Andrew M. Davis

Metaphysics of Exo-Life, Andrew M. Davis. SacraSage (ISBN: 9781958670040) 2023.

Summary: Metaphysics of Exo-Life constructively engages the naturalistic cosmotheology of Steven J. Dick using A.N. Whitehead’s process metaphysics.

The universe is much bigger than we once thought it. The Hubble and Webb telescopes reveal that our Milky Way, as vast as it is, is but one of millions of galaxies. The observation of habitable planets orbiting stars in our own galaxy leads to the extrapolation that there could be billions of such planets in the universe where living organisms may have evolved, including beings with intelligence equivalent to or greater than our own. That raises interesting questions for any of us who are theologically minded: questions about God, about creatures of other worlds and whether parallels exist to our own understanding of creation, fall, and redemption, and how God manifests God’s self in these numerous worlds.

Cosmotheology is the branch of theology considering such metaphysical questions with regard to exo-life, or life on other worlds. Appropriately, one of the pioneers of this area of thought is NASA historian Steven J. Dick, who has formulated a “naturalistic cosmotheology” centered on evolutionary becoming. He has even observed the ways this resonates with the process theology of A.N. Whitehead, the father of process thought. Dick denies the existence of God in a traditional sense while allowing for the possibility of the evolution of “superintelligences.”

In this book, Andrew M. Davis argues that the “resonances” with A.N. Whitehead’s process theology may be developed in a way that deepens and extends, rather than denies Dick’s thought. He does this by engaging six principles of cosmotheology formulated by Dick. He shows that Whitehead’s thought may be formulated into an inverse statement that deepens and extends Dick’s thought. It also resolves some unanswered questions.

Dick’s six statements are:

  1. Humanity is not physically central to the universe.
  2. Humanity is not central biologically, mentally, or morally in the universe.
  3. Humanity is not at the top of the great chain of being in the universe.
  4. Cosmotheology must be open to radically new and non-supernatural conceptions of God…a God grounded in cosmic evolution.
  5. Cosmotheology must have a moral dimension, extending to embrace all species in the universe–a reverence and respect for life in any form.
  6. Cosmotheology must embrace the idea that human destiny should be linked to natural cosmic events, not to the divine.

Summing up, Dick enunciates an imaginative cosmotheology, or rather, a cosmophilosophy that does not premise the existence of God. Rather, he roots his proposal on evolutionary processes on a cosmic scale. By comparison, Davis affirms much in Dick’s work with regard to evolutionary processes on a cosmic scale and the absence of a God apart from these processes. But where he differs from Dick is in incorporating God into those processes through the process thought of Whitehead. He does this through devoting a chapter to each of Dick’s principles and develops a Whiteheadian inverse principle for each of Dick’s principles. These are:

  1. Humanity exemplifies metaphysical principles that are utterly central to the universe.
  2. Humanity exemplifies biological, mental, and moral antecedents that are metaphysically central to the universe.
  3. Humanity exemplifies the same metaphysical principles that are expressed in various intensities throughout the great chain of being in the universe.
  4. Cosmotheology must be open to truly radical and non-supernatural conceptions of God, a God grounding and exemplifying the metaphysical conditions of cosmic evolution.
  5. Cosmotheology must provide the ontological basis and stimulus for ideals of moral reverence and respect in the nature of things.
  6. Cosmotheology must embrace human destiny as inextricably linked to the destiny of the cosmos as an infinite evolutionary expression of the metaphysical conditions chiefly exemplified in the divine.

Thus, Davis shows how a God inextricably engaged in cosmic evolution, while not privileging human experience, is able to connect that with the existence and experience of other beings. By adopting Whitehead’s process thought, he avoids a supernatural God external to the processes. Rather God is developing apace with the cosmos.

While I do not hold to process theology (I do believe in an eternal, self-sufficient, super-natural God over the cosmos) I appreciate the engagement between and mutual respect of these scholars. Indeed, they have cleared substantial ground in this pioneering area of theology. Specifically, they take planetary and species imperialism off the table. Likewise they engage creatively the questions of God’s engagement in evolutionary processes and questions of morality on a cosmic scale. I’d like to see traditional theists constructively engage this conversation.

In addition, Davis includes two helpful reference articles in the appendix to this book. One is a literature survey of the work of process theologians with regard to extraterrestrial life. The second reprints a foundational article by Lewis S. Ford, “Theological Reflections on Extraterrestrial Life” from 1968. This is a mind-stretching work, but one valuable for conversations between cosmologists and theologians and for anyone interested in thinking deeply about our place in the universe.

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

Review: What is Faith?

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Cover image of "What is Faith/" by J. Gresham Machen

What is Faith?, J. Gresham Machen. Banner of Truth (ISBN: 9781800403598), 2023 (First published in 1925).

Summary: An exposition of the Bible’s teaching on what constitutes vibrant and saving Christian faith.

“Believe in Jesus!” “Saved by faith!” “I don’t have enough faith.” “We just have to have faith.”

The language of faith, even in our secular age, is bandied about a great deal. But are we all talking about the same thing? Sometimes, it seems like faith simply means some sense of the transcendent or a “religious sentiment of the heart.” At the other end of the spectrum, “faith” may be connected with affirmation of a particular set of doctrines–the faith. Faith is spoken in Hebrews 11:1 as the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” and yet in many minds faith is a vague feeling rather than substance and a hope in what one is pretty sure is not true.

It seems that this treatise by J. Gresham Machen, nearly 100 years old has never been so needed. He decries the fuzzy thinking, the lack of clear thinking, and the attack upon intellect in general and among Christians specifically in his own day. Nowhere is this so evident as in understanding the true nature of biblical faith, and this is what he sets out to address in this biblically grounded and carefully reasoned work.

He begins by observing that faith must have some object. For the Christian, this is the triune God. To believe in God (or any personal being), one most know the character of the one believed. This is both “doctrine,” and as it is understood becomes personal trust. All this is predicated on the idea that God has revealed God’s self. It also concerns our standing with God as sinners and how God, consistently revealed as loving Father, has addressed that standing through his Son, in whom there is redemption.

What then does faith involve? Faith combines knowledge of the truth with belief that the God may be trusted, and acceptance as undeserved gift what God has accomplished through his Son. As he sets forth these classic ideas, he engages the modernist challenge of his day with its “Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man,” emphasizing humanitarian good works and imitating Christ as a good teacher. He speaks bitingly of the “Good American” character education of his day and argued that spiritual and moral education was not the work of schools but churches and comparable religious institutions. For those who think this is a way to Christianize society, he argues that this moralism inoculates people against a genuine awareness of sin and need of the saving work of Christ.

He continues to address modernist challenges in his chapter on faith and salvation, really a classic exposition of justification by faith, answering the question of how we may hope for right standing with God. He addresses the ever-present temptation to combine faith with our works as salvific. Rather, those saved by faith work, with work arising from, rather than contributing to their faith. In the final chapter he addresses “faith and hope” and the experience of “weak” faith. He emphasizes that while the object for all Christians is to grow in their confident faith in God, it is not the size of our faith, as if it were some spiritual force, but the gracious and powerful character off God that matters.

This is a rich work filled with practical examples as well as careful reasoning. While some of the controversies today are different (and some not so much), Machen’s insights are important to anyone committed to the task of making disciples: from communicating the gospel, through conversion, and in encouraging the life of faith. As with so many classic works, Banner of Truth has served the church well in the re-publication of this work, soon to be joined by two others, God Transcendent and The Christian View of Man.

Review: Creator

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Creator: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1, Peter J. Leithart. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514002162), 2023.

Summary: Considering philosophical discussions of the being of God, turns to Genesis 1 which reveals the Triune Creator who speaks and sees, who loves and is good.

The challenge of this book for the person without a background in philosophy is to get past the first three chapters which explore questions of God’s being, self-existence, and simplicity, and what may be said of God, wrestling with the challenge of apophaticism, in which we can only say what God is not. There are questions of how God relates to the physical world and how God can be an unmoved mover and yet retain God’s simplicity. Along the way, Peter J. Leithart invokes Aquinas and Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus, Augustine and Bulgakov, among others. It’s challenging reading, and important for its exploration of discussions of the being and nature of God.

It also sets us up for the radical turn in the second half from the reasonings of pagan and Christian philosophers to the revelation of Genesis 1. We find here no discussions of the Absolute, the One, or Being. The first thing we learn of God is that God is almighty Creator. Scripture does not know of a God “without interplay with creatures, without a created playground” (p. 150). Creation reflects who God is from eternity. God’s transcendence is over creation, never apart from it. Unlike Greek philosophy, there is no God unrelated to creation.

Furthermore, Leithart asserts, against those who propose that the “we” of Genesis 1 is a heavenly council, that Genesis 1 reveals a Triune Creator. There is a harmonious unity, creating, calling by Word, and forming or hovering–Father, Son, and Spirit. In this, the life of God is revealed as “justice, holiness, wisdom, power, goodness, and truth, all actualized in the infinitely mobile, infinitely lively, inexhaustibly energetic life of triune love, a;; actualized in relation to a contingent creation” (p. 209).

What then do we say of God’s being, the question of ontology. We often speak of God as “I am” as one who is self sufficient, but utterly other. Yet a Triune Creator is both utterly sufficient, but also utterly related to creation, which reveals the self-giving love of the Triune loving Creator.

Genesis 1 reveals a God who speaks and sees. Leithart notes: “All created action, all moments and periods and bodies of time, all created experience is suspended between God’s saying and his seeing.” A staggering thought indeed–that all of our existence is encompassed and sustained and directed by God’s saying and seeing.

My experience of this book was to move from exasperation with my efforts to follow philosophical arguments to exultation in worship of the Triune Creator who speaks and sees all creation–and that so much may be found in Genesis 1 that is not mere polemical ammunition in origins debates.

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

Review: Holiness

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Holiness: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Theology, Matt Ayars, Christopher T. Bounds, and Caleb T. Friedeman. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: A biblical, historical, and theological argument within the Wesleyan tradition for holiness understood as “entire sanctification” or Christian perfection, able not to sin and to wholeheartedly love God and neighbor.

This book caught my attention for the simple reason that it seems to have fallen out of fashion to speak of Christian holiness, often equated with a “holier than thou” attitude and a kind of Pharisaism of outer holiness and inner corruption. It is far more “authentic” to be honest about our sins than to discuss our longing to grow in Christlike holiness.

This is a book by a group of Wesleyan scholars who take seriously statements like “be holy as I am holy,” “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” and “may the God of peace sanctify you entirely.” They refuse to believe that these only refer to some post-mortem state but are possible to fulfill within this lifetime. They argue that this is not an idea only first propounded by John Wesley but is grounded in scripture and present throughout the history of the church. They also examine versions of holiness theology and argue for a “semi-Augustinian” theology and a “middle way” of seeking until one receives, recognizing the priority of divine grace.

The book is organized into four parts;

Holiness In the Old Testament. in successive chapters they examine the teaching on holiness in the Pentateuch, the Historical books and the Prophets, and the Wisdom Literature. The emphasis is on holiness as otherness and Israel’s inability to fulfill the law and the prophecy of a new covenant writing this law on the hear, empowering what is commanded.

Holiness in the New Testament. Chapters are devoted to holiness in the Gospels and Acts, the Letters of Paul, and the General Epistles and Revelation. The holiness of Jesus and his command to be perfect are discussed, the latter best understood as being fully developed in a moral sense through the work of Jesus and the power of the Spirit. Likewise, while Paul recognizes that people do sin, holiness is the norm, meant to be worked out in every aspect of life (entire sanctification) as the Spirit works within us and bears his fruit in our lives. The authors point to similar calls to holiness in the General Epistles and Revelation.

Holiness in Christian History. Three chapters discuss in succession early Christian history, the Middle Ages, and the Pre-modern and Modern Eras. They examine the differing ideas of the patristic writers and the shared sense that the love of God leads to freedom from sin, obedience to Christ and love of neighbor. They note the confining of perfection to the monastics in the Middle Ages and a renewed focus in the Reformation, culminating in Wesleyan and Anabaptist/Pietist Circles.

A Theology of Holiness. Three chapters discuss holiness and human sin, holiness and redemption, and the when and how of holiness. They begin with God’s intention for us, and the guilt power and being of sin. They discuss justification, sanctification, and glorification, and the possibility of entire sanctification, being perfect in love for God and neighbor, and allow that within such sanctification, there may be continuing progress toward maturity, as well as falling back. Finally they discuss the three ways–shorter, middle, and longer, rejecting the former as too dependent on human initiative, and the latter reflecting insufficient faith in the grace of God to transform.

I think this book makes an important contribution to highlighting the call of God for his people to be holy and for God’s empowering of the life to which we are called in Christ. It offers an attractive vision of unreservedly loving God and neighbor as within reach of the ordinary believer. They rightly observe that we can be far too accepting of sin that God would have us put to death.

I still find myself with questions that I would love to discuss with Wesleyan believers. Where is discussion of the idea of total depravity in the doctrine of sin (it is only mentioned in the final chapter in the context of discussing “semi-Augustinianism”), terminology that is avoided in the authors discussion? The pervasive presence of sin in every aspect of human existence raises question for me about the “perfection” of love. I recognize the ways I’m blind to sin apart from God revealing that sin, and the ways I self-deceive. How are such aspects of sin reckoned with in a doctrine of entire sanctification?

Likewise, I’m puzzled by “semi-Augustinianism.” Can something be semi-Augustinian without also being semi-Pelagian? It seems that the distinction is the role of prevenient grace in empowering human will. It points up to me a question that still would seem to distinguish Wesleyan from Reformed doctrines of sanctification, namely between those that prioritize grace, as do these authors and those that would contend that our sanctification, as is our justification, is all of grace.

At the same time, none of this should prevent the believer in the pursuit of a holy life and to experience liberty from not only sin’s guilt but its power in one’s life. Likewise, the authors emphasize not only what we are freed from but what we are freed and empowered to–namely the unrestrained love of God and neighbor–and that this is God’s intention for us in Christ. This is part of our rich inheritance in Christ that seems neglected or even denigrated in some quarters. I’m grateful for these Wesleyan voices bringing these matters for wider consideration.

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

Review: The Wood Between the Worlds

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The Wood Between the Worlds, Brian Zahnd. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, (Forthcoming) 2024.

Summary: An approach to the kaleidoscopic theological meaning of the cross. the center of the biblical story through the lens of poetry.

The title to this work captures what Brian Zahnd is trying to do. The reference to “the wood between the worlds” is to the wood of the cross, which stands between the world that is and the world that is to come. The language is poetic, pointing to the author’s project of exploring the theological meaning of the cross. He resists the attempt to reduce that meaning to technical prose statements, contending for a “kaleidoscope” of the “infinite number of ways of viewing the cross of Christ as the beautiful form that saves the world” (p. 3). And why his focus on the cross? He believes it is the interpretive center of all scripture that offers a lens through which one may interpret the rest of scripture.

What Zahnd offers us is a series of theolgical meditations couched in poetic language. Each chapter begins with a poetic epigraph. One of the key ideas in this work appears in an early chapter, “The Singularity of Good Friday.” Zahnd proposes that on Good Friday “the sin of the world coalesced into a hideous singularity that upon the cross it might be forgiven en masse” (p. 17). The cross is not where God punishes sin or appeases his anger but where God in Christ endured sin and death inflicted by humanity, revealing God’s love in revealing God’s forgiveness. In another chapter, reflecting on Elie Wiesel’s Night, he speaks of a God, who is in the Christ, was on the gallows, the focal point of human suffering.

Another chapter centers on John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” He speaks of all the Trinity as “co-crucified” in Christ rather than the idea of the Son as an object of the Father’s wrath. He contends that the cross reveals the supreme love of God. Zahnd portrays with great eloquence the beauty of God’s love revealed on the cross. I feel however that this is but a partial truth–that Zahnd (as many other contemporary writers) caricatures and then eviscerates the model of penal substitutionary atonement. He accepts the caricature of penal atonement as God punishing the Son and makes the only wrath that of human beings brought to focus on the cross. Gone is the idea of the cross as the place where God’s love and justice meet. I do not believe he does justice to the thoughtful proponents of theories of penal substitution that see this as a work of the Triune God working in harmony involving many of the elements the author dissociates in his portrayal of penal atonement and embraces for his own view. In his view, there is both identification with suffering and forgiveness, but no judgment, only love,

This criticism noted, I would also hasten to say that this work sparkles with insight. He challenges us to consider and live into the grotesque beauty of the outstretched arms on the cross, living lives of cruciform love. He offers a fascinating study of Pilate in literature, in contrast to Christ, and our likeness to Pilate in our embraces of violence. He offers a compelling treatment of the choice between the cross and power in a chapter on Tolkien’s One Ring and the illusions about wielding its power. He renders an interesting introduction to the work of Rene Girard on the scapegoat and, in a subsequent chapter, citing James Cone, on how the lynching tree became the cross for Blacks, and they became our scapegoats.

There is a beautiful reflection on Mary, neglected by Protestants, on the swords that pierced her life, culminating with the cross. He discusses Yeats “centre that does not hold” and how the cross is the place where the center does hold. He considers the slain Lamb on the Throne in the place of the Lion in Revelation and how he conquers, not by violence, but undoes death by dying.

Zahnd’s theopoetics certainly challenges tired theological formulations with theological imagination. The title image of the cross as the wood between the worlds is a compelling one. His focus on the cross as central to biblical interpretation challenges our “flat” approaches to the Bible. I think he gives the lie to caricatures of penal theories but I wonder if a reading of the best and not the caricatures might further enrich the kaleidoscope. What he does do is offer a rich collection of theological meditations, one that may make for nourishing Lenten reading.

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

Review: Reading Karl Barth

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Reading Karl Barth: Theology That Cuts Both Ways, Chris Boesel. Eugene. OR: Cascade Books, 2023.

Summary: A synopsis of the major themes of Barth’s theology and theological ethics, showing how his theology “cuts both ways” against the theological left and right while it centers on God’s “Yes” to us in Christ.

Chris Boesel offers in this book a synopsis of the main ideas one might find in reading the massive works of Karl Barth. A critical part of his approach is to contend that Barth’s theology cuts both against theological liberalism and theologically conservative evangelicalism, coming out approximately where progressive (post-) evangelicals might.

He begins with the centrality of Christ to Barth’s theology. Boesel uses the language of Jesus or Jesus Christ, rather than just Barth’s “Christ” to emphasize that God’s one word to us is Jesus the incarnate one who enters our situation as a lowly babe, which he terms “the last, first,” phrasing to which he recurs. This emphasizes the concreteness of this Word. Furthermore, Jesus is God’s “Yes” to humanity. The good news is truly unqualified goodness. Wrath, judgment, and condemnation are what God reserves for the evil that keeps people of God, freeing them to enjoy God’s yes.

For Barth, the Bible is God’s authoritative human witness, rather than God speaking and acting, which he has done in Christ alone. It cuts against liberalism as being the authority for faith and life, yet also against conservatives in being only a relative authority to the absolute Word of God in Jesus. Barth would see Jesus as not falling somewhere on our liberal to conservative spectrum but speaking into both from another place. The logic of Barth’s theology is centered on God’s initiative, God’s grace. This cuts both against human effort and limits on who may be a recipient of grace. Does this make Barth a universalist? Boesel would argue yes and no. It is a no to all human ways of salvation but a yes to God’s freedom. Humans can say no but Barth would reserve the freedom of God’s yes over the human no. Perhaps a hopeful universalist?

Does that mean we have no agency? Barth would hold that those bound in sin have no real freedom. Freedom comes in receiving God’s yes and the life lived in response to that yes, to live with gratitude toward God and love toward neighbor. Barth considers the integral bearing of this theology on our ethics, and particularly a progressive ethic. He grounds this in the “last, first” character of Jesus, the divine Word, supporting economic justice, anti-colonialism, gender equality, and upholding the place of LGBTQ persons. On this last, Boesel notes his difference to Barth. He believes Barth grounds sexuality in natural theology to which Barth has elsewhere said “Nein!” and that a “last, first” ethic would uphold LGBTQ expressions of sexuality. In turn, it seems to me that Boesel ignores both Jesus’ “yes” to marriage between man and woman and the imagery of marriage reflecting Christ and the church.

And this goes to my critique of this work. While it does reflect some dominant ideas in Barth, I fear Boesel reads his progressive post-evangelicalism into Barth. Furthermore, he doesn’t offer the reader help in her own reading of Barth but simply gives us his. I thought we might find in this work suggestions for reading Barth, which I think might be valued by those of us who aspire to read more of Barth.

That said, I think some of the most helpful material explored how Barth’s theology may “cut both ways” with our theological and cultural divides. Do we not all need this Word which lays bare the various ways we are captive to sin in all its expressions–liberal, progressive, and conservative, socialist and nationalist alike? Do we not all need to hear the good news of Christ, of how he is God’s “Yes!” to us, the revelation of God’s extravagant love for us?

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

Review: The Meaning of Singleness

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The Meaning of Singleness, Danielle Treweek, foreword by Kutter Callaway. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: A theology of singleness, rooted in a vision of the future, offering meaning, significance, and dignity in living as a single person within the Christian community and in the world.

Singleness. The very word carries for many a negative connotation. A single person is not married. Especially within the church. In the culture, it may mean “anything goes” and “utter freedom”, both in terms of sexuality and more generally in how one lives one’s life. For the church, singleness is often problematized. One’s sexual longings were considered so powerful that self-control and a chaste life is not thought possible for any length of time, and therefore, singles better get married. Along with this, marriage is treated as this relationship where one is “completed” in a combination of romance and sexuality, and all licitly with regard to Christian morality. Singles are just in a holding pattern, waiting for “the one.” Choosing to remain single is even perceived as an attack on marriage.

Danielle Treweek believes both marriage and singleness express important truths that anticipates the union of Christ and his church. Marriage offers a picture of that union and when the reality comes about, marriage will be no more. Likewise, singleness anticipates this future in which we all will be the bride of Christ, forgoing marriage now to live chastely and missionally, and to proclaim the future community where none of us are married but all loved by Christ.

Treweek first analyzes the contemporary context of both society and its expressive individualism of “anything goes” and the church’s context that problematizes singleness. She then proceeds to what she calls a “retrieval of singleness.” She does this by looking at singleness throughout church history, in biblical exegesis of Jesus’s interaction with the Pharisees on the resurrection and no giving in marriage in heaven, and Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians about singleness, and in Christian theology through the ages. Among many other things:

  • We discover that in the church, virginity was thought possible for both men and women, and an honorable state, and that also spoke to the married to living continently.
  • Marriage is not the remedy to burn with lust! That is not the “burn” Paul had in mind.
  • The “gift of singleness” is not some spiritual booster that means the single no longer wants sex or has supernatural self-control. Rather, whatever state you are in is God’s gift and if you are single, you have that gift and are called to live godly in our sexuality and other aspects of life.
  • Theologically, we set singleness and marriage within the movement from creation to new creation, the already and not yet in which we live our lives.

In the concluding section, Treweek works out the implications of what was retrieved. She envisions the church as a “teleosocial” movement” in which both singles (both never and formerly married) and the married recognize that Christ has formed a new society, living into its destiny, its end. It means we think of growth not only through procreation but also though discipleship of new believers in which singles (and married) can be spiritual parents. Singles also attest to our sexuality being about far more than genital experience, over and against the culture and the church’s capitulation to it.

All of this is good for the meaning of marriage as well, freeing Christian marriage from the culture’s romantic-sexual fantasy to be seen as portraying Christ’s and the church’s love and union, something far richer than what the culture has on offer. It also means re-thinking a church not formed around nuclear families, but functioning as a larger, more diverse family of singles, marrieds, widows, and children.

This is a scholarly rather than inspirational treatment of singleness, an adaptation of Treweek’s doctoral dissertation. That means working through some dense material at points. Rather than offering comfort while one “waits,” exhorts to marriage, or simply says “suck it up,” Treweek takes us on a deep dive of thinking critically about both contemporary and church culture, explores historical, biblical, and theological resources through history to retrieve riches suggesting a much richer set of resources than our culture offers. She offers a vision of singleness as whole persons with a purpose within God’s story and among God’s people.

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

Review: Divine Love Theory

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Divine Love Theory, Adam Lloyd Johnson. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2023.

Summary: Proposes that the love within the Trinity serves as the objective basis and foundation for living moral lives and engages the competing atheist theory of Erik Weilenberg proposing an objective basis for morality apart from God.

In campus ministry, one of the questions we would sometimes pose to engage dialogue was “can we be good without God?” Actually, at least by the world’s account, atheists sometimes run moral circles around Christians, though I think none of us live up to whatever standards of goodness we set for ourselves. But then the question can be raised, on what does one base one’s morality if not on the character of God? For most, the response is one’s own subjective sense of right and wrong, a sense that we observed drew extensively on theist capital.

This book takes the conversation further in two ways. One is, that for me, it acquainted me with the work of atheist philosophers who argue (often against other atheists) for an objective basis for morality beyond ourselves. This work particularly focuses on that of Erik Weilenberg who has proposed the idea of godless moral realism, proposing that moral values and duties exist as abstract objective realities, apart from the existence of God. The other is the author’s proposal that moral reasoning and life has an objective basis in the loving character of the relationships within the Triune God. Most ideas of objective foundations for morality deal with God monotheistically. Johnson, by contrast considers the relational character of the Trinity and its defining quality of eternal love, that makes sense of the biblical claim that “God is love.”

One of the things I appreciated in this work is the careful, academic argument by which Johnson makes his case for Divine Love Theory. He begins with a historical survey of moral theories, the disagreement between objective and subjective theories, and the difference within objective theories between theistic and atheistic theories. He then elaborates the work of Erik Weilenberg, of godless moral realism. He notes three features of the theory: its reliance on brute ethical facts, his focus on making relationships in which natural, nonmoral properties instantiate moral properties, and that it is non-natural, that is not grounded in naturalism.

He then elaborates his Divine Love Theory, that objective morality is grounded in God’s Trinitarian nature. He notes how his work borrows from Robert Adams approach to divine command theory which first focuses on moral value modelled in God’s nature that is then expressed in commands creating our moral obligation. Johnson believes that the loving inner-trinitarian relationships are at the heart of our understanding of the goodness of God and the basis for both moral value and at the center of God’s commands, reflected in the commands to love God and neighbor.

He then identifies and responds to various objections to Divine Love Theory: concerns with loving relationships within the Trinity relating to the distinction of persons, concerns from Divine Will theorists, from Natural Law theorists, concerns about God’s will being arbitrary, and concerns with Platonism. Having answered objections by competing theorists, he outlines his contention that Divine Love Theory offers a stronger objective basis for morality than Weilenberg’s godless moral realism. He argues that his theory provides an exemplar for moral value, a human telos for moral obligation, a social context for moral obligation, and a personal authority at the head of a chain of moral obligation, features absent in Weilenberg’s theory.

He then considers problems with Weilenberg’s theory: a bloated ontology, a lack of evidence for brute ethical facts, and problems with his “making relationship,” particularly that cognitive properties can instantiate objective moral properties. Finally, he responds to a critique Weilenberg makes observing unexplained necessary connections (a problem with his own theory as well). In the case of theists, it is the connection between God’s nature and God’s commands. Johnson observes that with his own theory, there is direct connection between God’s loving nature and the necessary commands to love God and others.

The last section of the book discusses the “lucky coincidence” objection to Weilenberg’s theories and whether theistic approaches to objective morality are subject to similar criticism. The basic question is how our moral beliefs would ever line up with objective truths that are causally inert–it being a lucky coincidence that they would. It also discusses an unrelated issue, a discussion of whether the obligation of obedience to commands can be grounded in the obedience within the Trinity and whether this entails functional subordination. Since this is problematic, Johnson proposes two alternatives: the idea of the eternal generation of the Son and the idea of inner-trinitarian love, that our love that obeys resembles and imitates love within the Trinity.

I thought this a valuable work for several reasons. It extends a growing emphasis on Trinitarian theology into the realm of moral theology and philosophy. The tri-unity of God ought affect all reality including moral realities and Johnson draws this out well. Second, Johnson elaborates, defends, and shows the superior explanatory power of his theory with clarity and careful reason, offering an excellent resource to the Christian apologist dealing with arguments for objective morality apart from God. Finally, Johnson models scholarly charity in engaging Weilenberg, with whom he has a warm relationship (Weilenberg is one of the book’s endorsers!). He offers an outstanding example of rigorous disagreement about ideas that remains civil and gracious. We could use more works of this character!

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