Review of What about Evil? A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory by Scott Christensen

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Review of What about Evil? A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory by Scott Christensen

Christensen, Scott. What about Evil? A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory. Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2020, pp. 544, $30, hardback.

What About Evil

Scott Christensen, is the author of the highly acclaimed What about Free Will?, foreword by D.A. Carson (P&R, 2016). Scott worked for nine years at the award-winning CCY Architects in Aspen, Colorado; several of his home designs were featured in Architectural Digest magazine. Called out of this work to the ministry, he graduated with his MDiv from The Masters Seminary with honors. He pastored Summit Lake Community Church in southwest Colorado for sixteen years and now serves as the associate pastor of Kerrville Bible Church in Kerrville, Texas.

What About Evil?, by Scott Christensen, is a theologically rich resource that provides a defense of God’s sovereign glory and a reason for why God allows evil in the world. In seeking to answer the problem of evil, Christensen provides a robust solution that he calls the Greater-Glory Theodicy. In combining aspects of the Greater-Good Theodicy and fragments of the Best-of-All Possible Worlds Defense, the Greater-Glory Theodicy seeks to resolve the problem of evil in the backdrop of studying what brings God the greatest glory (p. 7). Christensen argues that Jesus’ redemptive work on Calvary is the work that most magnifies God’s glory, therefore, for Christ’s work to be necessary, there must be a good world that has been ruined by evil and calls out for restoration (p. 7).

In his introduction, Christensen takes a reformed perspective in arguing that the fall of humanity was no mistake but was planned by God to bring about the greater good of redemption (pg. 8). Christensen begins to exposit his thesis in the first section (chapters 2 – 6) by examining how the historical record has sought to answer the problem of evil. He demonstrates why past defenses and theodicies have lacked certain qualities that downplay God’s sovereignty, aseity, and omnipotence, specifically critiquing the Free-Will Defense. He then shifts in the second section (chapters 7 – 9) to extoling God’s meticulous sovereignty and power as the transcendent God of the universe and addresses some issues of how one understands the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. The heart of the book can be found in the third section (ch. 10-13) where he frames the Greater-Glory Theodicy in a monomyth narrative and provides a biblical defense for his theodicy. Christensen concludes the last section (chapters 14 – 17) by describing Jesus’ redemptive work on the cross and the importance of his incarnation to be the perfect substitute to accomplish God’s cosmic plan of salvation.

Probing more into Christensen’s thesis, that the greatest good is what will bring God the greatest glory (p. 281), he provides numerous examples from scripture that strengthen his argument. Psalm 115:3 and Romans 11:36 proclaim that God is free to create the world in any way He desires, and He specifically chooses to create the world for his glory and pleasure (p. 286). Christensen says, “Everything-absolutely everything Christ made-is ‘for him,’ to magnify his glory (Col. 1:16; 1 Cor. 8:6; Heb 2:10, p. 289).” Christensen’s God-Centered Theodicy exemplifies the specific need for people to know they are not the center of the universe and that God’s ultimate purpose is not to make man materialistically happy, but to glorify himself (p. 292). Ironically, this God-Centeredness is the vehicle that provides man with ultimate satisfaction and eternal happiness as Christensen concludes that God’s glory is our good for it is God’s desire to glorify himself that leads to him constructing and bringing about his plan of the redemption of his people through the blood of Jesus (pg. 294).

One inimitable aspect of Christensen’s argument is the use of describing God’s story of redemption as a monomyth. Building on J.R.R. Tolkien’s dialogue with C.S. Lewis decades before, Christensen says that the fundamental storyline of the Bible is how God’s glory is magnified in his response to evil through the sending of a redeemer, his beloved Son, Jesus Christ (p. 260). Christensen uses Freytag’s Pyramid that distinguishes the different plot points of a story to map out how the “One True Story” of the Bible falls nicely into Freytag’s five categories. In contrast to traditional stories of monomyth, the Biblical storyline does not follow a u-shaped storyline (where the blissful state at the beginning is ruined by a tragedy, only to be restored to its original paradisical state in the conclusion), but instead follows what Christensen calls a “J-shaped storyline” (pg. 285). This J-shaped storyline demonstrates that the conclusion of redemption in Christ and his work of overcoming the crisis of the fall is greater and more glorious than the original state of paradise at creation. The J-shaped storyline further buttresses Christensen’s Theodicy that the Fall and evil were “fortunate” to bring about an exceedingly greater good for mankind. In this acknowledgement, Christensen aligns himself Alvin Plantinga, who also argues for a theodicy utilizing the felix culpa motif. However, different from Christensen, Plantinga champions a free-will defense even though supralapsarianism (which is associated with a felix culpa theodicy) is traditionally more aligned and coherent with a reformed Calvinist perspective of theology (p. 299). Christensen claims that the reason for this incoherency with Plantinga may be due to him being raised as a Dutch Reformed Christian that held to a reformed view of the divine decrees (p. 300).

What About Evil?, is a book that adds tremendous value to the field of theology and apologetics for the theologian who is seeking to sharpen his or her knowledge of how to reconcile God’s divine sovereignty with human responsibility. Most readers will benefit specifically from Christensen’s critique of the commonly held Free-Will Defense. Christensen provides a charitable demonstration of the Free-Will Defense by listing its strengths and weaknesses but then demonstrates why it seems to fall short when examining the biblical data and storyline of Scripture in comparison to a compatibilist view of freedom; in both a compatibilism between divine decree and foreknowledge with human freedom.

Although not a key point in the book, readers will find the explanation of the necessity of Jesus’ incarnation to fully to accomplish the work of redemption for mankind’s good and God’s glory extremely helpful. Specifically, Christensen provides practical truth of how a Christian can cope with the problem of evil when he discusses the impassibility of God. Despite misconceptions about divine impassibility, Christensen communicates a high Christology making clear distinctions between God having affections but not having passions. By leaning on Scripture and the Reformers, Christensen demonstrates that Jesus in His divine nature did not suffer; but, in His humanity, he fully suffered and can sympathize with our weaknesses being our great High Priest (p. 378-389).

The audience most suited for this theological treatise would be a student, teacher, or pastor of higher education and/or training. The book is very steep in its doctrine and would be difficult to digest for the beginner in theology or average lay person of a church. As students interact with the book, they should specifically look for how Christensen methodically highlights the glory, grandeur, and transcendence of the Triune God in every chapter. Students should prepare for a rigorous dive into some difficult and heart wrenching questions about God, evil, and the Bible’s solution, being prepared to change one’s views if compelled.

Andrew Slay

New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary

Review of Christ and Revelatory Community in Bonhoeffer’s Reception of Hegel by David S. Robinson

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Review of Christ and Revelatory Community in Bonhoeffer’s Reception of Hegel by David S. Robinson

Robinson, David S. Christ and Revelatory Community in Bonhoeffer’s Reception of Hegel. Dogmatik in der Moderne 22. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018, pp. xv + 260, €69.00, paperback.

Christ and Revelatory Community

David Robinson was recently appointed as the R. Paul Stevens Assistant Professor of Marketplace Theology and Leadership at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada. The text under review is based on his doctoral dissertation at the University of Edinburgh. In it, Robinson seeks to recast Bonhoeffer’s reception of Hegel in a highly nuanced manner that is ultimately more positive than most previous appraisals. Rather than “demolition,” “revolt,” or “confrontation,” Bonhoeffer’s reception is seen as aiming to “repair” aspects of Hegel in “eclectic and Christologically intent” ways (pp. 11-12). For Robinson, such “intent” is especially apparent in Bonhoeffer’s transposition of Hegel’s “revelatory” notion of “God existing as community” to that of “Christ existing as community”—a significant move since this latter phrase is often a shorthand for Bonhoeffer’s overall program (p. 16).

In comparison to earlier studies of the Bonhoeffer-Hegel question, Robinson’s approach differs in three ways (p. 17). First, whereas much of the previous scholarship placed inordinate attention upon Bonhoeffer’s second dissertation (Akt und Sein [1931]), Robinson’s approach is diachronic with regard to Bonhoeffer’s corpus (pp. 16-17). Second, Robinson seeks to more precisely account for Bonhoeffer’s and Hegel’s differing socio-political contexts rather than buying into to the “lingering insinuation that Hegel was a proto-apologist for the Third Reich” (pp. 17-18). Finally, each section begins with treatment of Hegel on Hegel’s own terms before moving to Bonhoeffer’s reception, avoiding conflation of Hegel “with the neo-Hegelianism of Bonhoeffer’s time” (p. 18). Robinson’s distinctive approach results in a weighty original study that deserves serious consideration by Bonhoeffer scholars. Others interested in an up-to-date, albeit advanced-level engagement with Bonhoeffer or Hegel will also find Robinson’s efforts pay great dividends.

The book unfolds in three parts. In part one, Robinson offers two instances in which Bonhoeffer’s unnuanced portrayal of “Idealism” as “self-confinement” has obscured how his thought is indebted to the “sociality of reason” in Hegel (p. 18). In this regard, chapter one traces how the “human sociality” correlated with Hegel’s “objective Geist” influences Bonhoeffer’s recovery of “Word before Geist” and “revelation in hiddenness,” and affects Bonhoeffer’s shift of subject from Hegel’s “God existing as community” to “Christ existing as community” as well as Bonhoeffer’s shifting of “ecclesial” action from Hegel’s reciprocal “confession” to “intercession” (pp. 26, 61). Chapter two then explores Bonhoeffer’s exposition of Genesis 1-3 in Creation and Fall (1932-33), revealing a dependence upon Hegel’s account of fallen humanity’s perpetually “cleaving” mind, i.e., “a drive for unity in the knowledge of good-evil that in turn divides the knowing subject” (p. 89). On this basis, Robinson observes that Bonhoeffer subverts Hegel’s supposed “knowledge” of “primal humanity as a volatile composite of nature and Geist” (p. 89). The ethical and political implications of this postlapsarian epistemological impossibility are hinted at, particularly through a contrasting of Hegel’s and Bonhoeffer’s respective usages of first-person pronouns and through comment upon Bonhoeffer’s employment of the Hegelian terms Aufhebung (noun) and aufheben (verb) in “critical response to Hegel” (pp. 89-90). Robinson’s treatment of the running debate over how Bonhoeffer’s usage of these terms should be rendered in English to consistently hold together the tension of their “negating,” “preserving,” and “elevating” senses, as opposed to the many instances in which translators have made unequivocal interpretive decisions for readers, is both thorough and convincing (pp. 59-61, 87-89, 121).

In part two, Robinson turns his attention to Bonhoeffer’s Christology lectures (1933). Chapter three argues that Bonhoeffer’s polemic against Hegel’s “docetic” distinguishing of “Idea” and “Appearance” serves as a foil in resourcing Bonhoeffer’s desire to begin with a united Christology rather than with abstract conceptualizations of the two natures (pp. 19, 124-25). While Robinson here covers whether Hegel should be suspected of “pantheism” (pp. 109-11), the anachronous but important question of Hegel’s relationship to what Karl Krause labeled as Hegel’s “panentheism” in 1828 could perhaps have been touched upon in a footnote, especially since many see “panentheism” as part of Hegel’s legacy for later theologies. That minor scruple aside, Robinson’s persuasive discussion surrounding Bonhoeffer’s Menschenlogos-Gegenlogos dialectic turns upon the divine-human Christ as the “counter-logos” (instead of earlier translations of Gegenlogos as “anti-Logos” or “against reason”), so as to establish “Christology as ‘the invisible, unrecognized, hidden centre of science [Wissenschaft]’” (pp. 117-19). Chapter four then discusses Christ’s “real presence,” not only with respect to the Eucharistic sacrament, but also Bonhoeffer’s view of the “disruptive” preached Word “as sacrament” (pp. 19-20, 152). As Robinson points out, Hegel emphasized the spirited community’s role in doctrinal transmission whereas Christ is “presence” rather than “doctrine” for Bonhoeffer (p. 20). Further, Hegel prioritized “the self-sufficient ‘Idea’” whereas Bonhoeffer stressed instead “the contingency of [the Word’s] ‘Address’” (p. 20).

Unlike most previous studies of Bonhoeffer’s reception of Hegel, part three moves the discussion into Bonhoeffer’s post-academic “confessing” period (p. 20). Through engagement with Discipleship (1937) and Ethics (early 1940s), Robinson pinpoints Bonhoeffer’s and Hegel’s differing political situations to show how Bonhoeffer’s “confessing” identity was formed in reaction to Hegel’s era of “deconfessionalisation” (p. 20). In view of differing interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount, chapter five traces Bonhoeffer’s diagnosis of Hegel’s “French revolutionary” Jesus as leading to a “docetic-Idealist ecclesiology” that eventually led to “state overreach” (p. 20). Bonhoeffer correctively posits “Jesus’ social teachings as the basis for a seminary community that could renew the distinction between church and state” (p. 192). Even so, Robinson argues that Bonhoeffer here was not truly anti-Hegel so much as he was against “a brutal, sub-rational Reich, the likes of which Hegel could not have foreseen” (p. 192). Chapter six then seeks to untangle Hegel’s “culturally prejudiced mind” with regard to Volk, race, and “world-history” towards a more nuanced reception that accounts for Hegel’s own criticisms of “nationalist expressions in his time,” including the notion that poor treatment of foreigners could cause the state to “forfeit its own principle” (p. 195). This is worth comparing to Bonhoeffer’s assessment of the Nationalist Socialist state’s “self-negation” due to its marginalizing of Jewish people (p. 195). A fascinating case study of W.E.B. Du Bois’s race-critical engagement with Hegel is offered as an alternative to the neo-Hegelianism that was contemporary to the Third Reich (pp. 199-202) before Robinson explores Bonhoeffer’s embracing of “an emerging global ecumenism” as well as “the difference between Bonhoeffer’s attempt to discern the ‘form of Christ’ in history and Hegel’s work to track the ‘shapes of Geist’” (p. 227). What ultimately emerges is Bonhoeffer’s “particular account of the whole [that] leads to a fuller reckoning with those on the ‘underside of history’, particularly diasporic peoples” (p. 227). Given all this, it is not difficult to see how the discussions featured in this third part can serve as a theological resource for contemporary dialogue surrounding matters of racial, multicultural, and religious diversity (pp. 236-37).

Overall, Robinson succeeds handsomely with regard to his sustained critical treatment of Bonhoeffer’s reception of Hegel. Renewed interest in both Bonhoeffer and Hegel in recent years makes the book timely, especially since publication of the critical edition of Bonhoeffer’s works in English was only finally completed in 2014.

Clement Yung Wen

China Evangelical Graduate School of Theology, Taiwan

Review of Theologies of Retrieval: An Exploration and Appraisal edited by Darren Sarisky

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Review of Theologies of Retrieval: An Exploration and Appraisal edited by Darren Sarisky

Sarisky, Darren, ed. Theologies of Retrieval: An Exploration and Appraisal. T&T Clark Theology. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017, pp. ix + 359, $175, hardback ($42.95, paperback).

Theologies of Retrieval

The present anthology is an essential read for those interested in the question of how classical texts within the Christian tradition can and should be theologically “retrieved” for the contemporary theological task. The volume’s editor, Darren Sarisky, previously served as Departmental Lecturer in Modern Theology at the University of Oxford before taking up his current post of Senior Research Fellow in Religion and Theology at Australian Catholic University’s Melbourne campus. Sarisky has done readers a great service by gathering a star-studded cast of scholars to guide readers through the thicket of representative figures, movements, and types of theological retrieval that have become prominent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

In his introduction to the volume, Sarisky rightly distinguishes between correlation and retrieval theologies—the “two main ways” that Christian theologians tend to engage with the present situation (p. 1). Whereas the former seeks “to correlate elements of the Christian tradition with aspects of modern culture” in a conversational manner for sake of helping the Christian message stay intellectually relevant, the latter is “less concerned to secure the plausibility of Christian theology … and more focused simply on attending to, indwelling, and commending what they take to be the most compelling articulations of the Christian gospel” (pp. 1-2). In curating these selected essays into a single volume, Sarisky aptly notes that theologies of retrieval are more “a set of overlapping concerns and substantive commitments” rather than “a monolithic system” or “well-defined school of thinking” (p. 5). The “exploration” and “appraisal” of such theologies here is thus meant to “further develop and refine theologies of retrieval,” so as “to nudge the whole debate forward” (p. 5).

Nevertheless, though “exploring” and “appraising” theologies of retrieval are the book’s explicit aims, its chapters reveal that the work’s seven parts are much more weighted towards exploration than appraisal. In part one, John Milbank and Stanley Hauerwas reflect upon modernity’s genealogies in different ways (chs. 1-2). In part two, distinct confessional inflections regarding retrieval are proffered through essays by Andrew Louth on Orthodoxy (ch. 3), Michael Allen on the Reformed Tradition (ch. 4), and Jennifer Newsome Martin on the Ressourcement movement within twentieth-century Roman Catholic Theology (ch. 5). In part three, part two’s chapters are complemented by reflection upon three twentieth-century figures. In this regard, Paul Garvrilyuk writes about Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky (ch. 6), Kenneth Oakes writes about Reformed theologian Karl Barth (ch. 7), and David Grumett writes about Ressourcement theologian Henri de Lubac (ch. 8). Parts four and five then return to a more topical format. In part four, Michael C. Legaspi, Gabriel Flynn, and Darren Sarisky explore retrieval’s relationship to Scripture and Tradition from various angles (chs. 9-11). In part five, Fred Sanders, John Webster, and Nicholas M. Healy respectively showcase how retrieval might take shape for key doctrines like the Trinity, creation, and ecclesiology (chs. 12-14).

Despite the fact that the exploratory essays offered in part six are editorially branded by Sarisky as “test cases” for retrieval (p. 4), they come across as being heavily correlationist in tenor. This is because in this part of the volume, Brian Bantum, Ruth Jackson, and Gavin D’Costa respectively reflect upon theological retrieval’s relevance for “untraditional” conversations such as mulatto theology, gender and theology, and Christianity’s relationship to other religions (e.g., Roman Catholicism’s relationship to post-Holocaust Judaism) (chs. 15-17). Through what can be interpreted as an implicit suggestion regarding the methodological potential of a marriage between retrieval and correlation—or, better yet, retrieval as correlation—it is here in part six that the volume is at its most innovative and critically constructive. Bantum, for example, asks: “Is not Christian existence itself a retrieval project, a return to Judaic sources and structures while also reimagining them in their contemporary moment?” (p. 262). In furthering this point, Bantum seeks to relativize “traditional theologies” while elevating the status of “so-called ‘contextual’ theologies” by way of intentionally politicizing the crucial “question of which structures get retrieved” (pp. 262-63). Bantam then proposes that “theological retrieval in our racialized moment requires a mulattic theological mode” over against “reclamation of the Nicene Creed or orthodox formulations” as have normally been typical of the retrieval tradition (p. 263). Along such lines, a key source of retrieval for Bantum’s mulattic mode is the ubiquitously evil black experience of plantation that “does not allow us easy resolutions” (p. 275). Instead, such an experience serves as a signal “that we cannot be ‘post’ anything (racial, gender, Christian, liberal)” (p. 277).  Rather, “we must navigate the world, our bodies, our histories as they are, confessing the ways white supremacy has so deeply distorted our sight, while also negotiating the ways in which our lives are bound together” (p. 277). Further, Jackson, focusing in an arguably correlationist manner on gender’s relation to retrieval theology, adds to this kind of engagement through her asking of “how a retrieval approach to theology might work when concerns about gender become prominent,” particularly when not occasioned in reaction to “androcentric norms” (p. 288).

After seventeen exploratory chapters, the book concludes in part seven with only two “Critical Appraisals” via William E. Myatt’s essay on David Tracy’s critical theology of retrieval (ch. 18) and Martyn Percy’s pessimistic essay on the relatively recent “recovery” of the church’s healing ministry within charismatic circles (ch. 19). First, even Myatt’s essay can be seen as being more exploratory than appraising, as Tracy’s work—typically received as critical of retrieval theologies—is effectively reframed as its own critical type of retrieval theology (p. 330). Second, whether or not Percy’s argument rests upon hermeneutical assumptions which some will find ideologically dubious, Percy’s essay seeks to disavow one retrieval movement by way of its own act of retrieval. Percy’s liberationist insistence that Jesus’s miraculous works in the Gospels were intended to rectify the concrete political, religious, and societal injustices that underlay disadvantaged social groups is noteworthy. After all, it is on this basis that Percy claims the 1980s Signs and Wonders movement should not be described as a true instance of biblical “retrieval” (as its proponents have attested) but should instead be seen as a theologically suspect “bourgeois spiritualization of divine power” for middle-class individuals who are already healthy and wealthy (see pp. 337, 350).  Alas, since neither Myatt nor Percy are really engaged in the critical task of appraising the “Theologies of Retrieval” movement as a whole, the promise of “appraisal” made by the book’s title ultimately goes unfulfilled (unless, of course, we consider Bantum’s and Jackson’s exploratory chapters as inadvertently fulfilling this role by way of their subversion of retrieval’s traditional categories).

Sadly, there is no concluding editorial chapter to inspire next steps for readers. Even so, serious students of theology (new and old) will find much to gain and appreciate throughout the entire volume. The book’s employment of first-rate scholars to impart a thorough exploratory summary of the most important theologies of retrieval to date means that readers of this work will be well-equipped through it to directly engage the continuing conversation surrounding theological retrieval, both in general and in detail.

Clement Yung Wen

China Evangelical Graduate School of Theology, Taiwan

Review of The Lost Letters to the Twelve Prophets: Imagining the Minor Prophets’ World by John Goldingay

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Review of The Lost Letters to the Twelve Prophets: Imagining the Minor Prophets’ World by John Goldingay

Goldingay, John. The Lost Letters to the Twelve Prophets: Imagining the Minor Prophets’ World. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2022, 232 pages, $23.00, softcover.

12 Prophets

John Goldingay is Senior Professor of Old Testament, and David Allan Hubbard Professor Emeritus of Old Testament for Fuller Seminary. Goldingay received his Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham and his DD from the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth. He has published numerous monographs on Old Testament Theology and its study, and most notably, was the author of the Daniel volume for the Word Biblical Commentary series.

The Lost Letters to the Twelve Prophets: Imagining the Minor Prophets’ World sets out to explore the Minor Prophets by imagining letters to which the prophets were replying. Drawing on a similar model used in Epistles to the Apostle by Colin Morris, Goldingay sets out to create plausible conversation partners for various sections within each prophet (ix). The introduction includes a brief summary of the Old Testament timeline, what Goldingay calls the “First Testament,” and then a short annotation for the historical Sitz im Leben for each of the twelve books (xiii-xviii).

Each of the twelve Minor Prophets receives its own chapter and is laid out in roughly the same order. First, Goldingay gives a brief overview of the timeframe and ministry of the prophet. These overviews range from several pages, e.g. Hosea (1-4), to a single paragraph, e.g. Nahum (135). Goldingay then presents his various letters with their attendant replies from the biblical text. The author prefaces the letters with a bolded heading and seeks to draw from historically accurate locations and at least plausible naming conventions for them (x). Occasionally Goldingay inserts real people into these created letters; for example, one of the letters written to Hosea comes from “Jonah ben Amittay in Gat-hepher” (37). In reply to these letters, Goldingay inserts the relevant passage from the Minor Prophet and then offers a brief “Background and Foreground” section wherein he exegetes the passage. All Bible passages are drawn from his own work, The First Testament: A New Translation, which notably preserves the divine name with vowels, i.e. Yahweh.

After working through all of the Minor Prophets, Goldingay closes with his own personal letter to the collective group (229-230). In it, he views the works of the prophets as hyperbole, but hyperbole with a purpose, foreshadowing the coming calamities and days of Yahweh. This focus on calamity and restoration, he says, calls the reader to prepare themselves for the final and culminating Day of Yahweh. A small index of passages used follows and closes the book.

Positively, Goldingay has created a charming and easy-to-read book for an oft-neglected part of Scripture. The letters are interesting and varied enough to feel authentic as products of multiple writers from multiple contexts. Goldingay’s occasional insertion of actual historical figures into these letters aids this authenticity and helps highlight the historical interrelation between the prophets. Goldingay’s letters also give helpful windows into the troubles and contexts for each of the Minor Prophets, which is not always easy to do in non-technical work. Readers will appreciate this simplified presentation of the Book of the Twelve.

Despite its novel approach to engagement with the Minor Prophets, Goldingay’s work suffers from several critical weaknesses, the first of which regards its approach. While creating artificial dialogue could be helpful in an epistolatory context, that does not guarantee it works for other genres. Most books, but perhaps especially those with a narrative presentation, like Jonah (106-116), are deprived of their narrative style and forced into an artificial arrangement of responses to a letter. One may rightly ask, what value does this bring? It is dubious if Goldingay’s approach is helping the reader dig into the text, for the text is no longer as it originally was, either in genre or context. Even for those books which are primarily dialogical, this approach does not work well. For example, in Habakkuk, which contains speech cycles between God and the prophet, the prophet’s questions are ignored and replaced by Goldingay’s letters. Thus, the reader is given mere hypothetical letters in lieu of Habakkuk’s questions from the biblical text.

A second limitation of the book is that it is, necessarily due to length, selective and not comprehensive in its treatment of the Minor Prophets. A reader will be treated to the highlights and key points of the books, but they will not come away with a full survey of any text. In fact, according to Goldingay’s index, only Obadiah is exhaustively covered (232). This selective approach also leads to another problem. By using artificially created questions, Goldingay frames the text for the reader in specific ways. This means that Goldingay has assumed the responsibility for making exegetically significant decisions for the reader without informing them that he has done so. For example, the opening letter to Jonah and Goldingay’s subsequent exegesis frames the Assyrians as problematic because they “are an imperial power” and Jonah himself “give(s) no indication of being against foreigners” (110). Both assertations, however, are not in the text itself but represent an interpretive choice that may or may not be correct. A casual reader will be blind to other possible options because the text has been framed for them. If the book’s goal is to make the Minor Prophets easier to understand (ix), this represents a perhaps unfortunate choice in presentation.

Overall, The Lost Letters to the Twelve Prophets: Imagining the Minor Prophets’ World is an intriguing work whose value is not always matched by its style. Goldingay is to be praised for such a creative work and for bringing much-needed widespread attention to the Minor Prophets. Students can approach this text for inspiration on how one can creatively approach presenting the biblical text, but should look elsewhere for more robust and thorough treatments of the Book of the Twelve. Goldingay, himself, has more thorough works on the topic such as Hosea to Micah published by Baker Academic. Students might also consider The Message of the Twelve by Al Fuhr and Gary Yates for another helpful survey of these texts.

Brian Koning

Grand Canyon University

Review of Understanding Old Testament Theology: Mapping the Terrain of Recent Approaches by Brittany Kim and Charlie Trimm

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Review of Understanding Old Testament Theology: Mapping the Terrain of Recent Approaches by Brittany Kim and Charlie Trimm

Kim, Brittany, and Charlie Trimm. Understanding Old Testament Theology: Mapping the Terrain of Recent Approaches. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2020, 177 pp., $14.99, paperback.

Understanding Old Testament Theology

In Understanding Old Testament Theology, Brittany Kim and Charlie Trimm provide an up-to-date survey of approaches to Old Testament theology. Their volume self-consciously flows in a similar vein as Klink and Lockett’s Understanding Biblical Theology, but the latter focuses primarily on New Testament issues and scholars (p. 2). Kim serves as a professor at North Park Theological Seminary and Northeastern Seminary, and Trimm as a professor at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. Both are products of the Ph.D. program at Wheaton College.

After an introduction that includes a brief history of the field (pp. 4-7), Kim and Trimm propose their cartographical metaphor of Old Testament theology as a diverse mountain range. As a mountain range has different peaks, each of which offers a unique vantage point by which someone may view the landscape, so Old Testament theology has different peaks. Among the peaks, some are closer and more alike than others.

Following the mountain range metaphor, the book is divided into three main parts. Part one, History, includes Old Testament theologies grounded in “biblical (hi)story” (p. 13) and historical-critical Old Testament theology. The approach of biblical (hi)story (e.g., Alexander, Goldingay, Gentry and Wellum) sees the Old Testament as a continuous story, generally takes the historicity of the events at face value, and often sees Old Testament theology as prescriptive. Conversely, the historical-critical approach (e.g., von Rad, Barr) often uses scholarly reconstructions to craft a chronology of composition and in some cases could be categorized as the study of the history of Israelite religion rather than any kind of prescriptive theology (pp. 39-44).

Part two, Theme, consists of “multiplex” (p. 55) thematic approaches and central thematic approaches. Practitioners within the multi-plex approach (e.g., Routledge, Walton) highlight numerous themes and do not limit the Old Testament to a central organizing idea. Conversely, interpreters within the central thematic approach (e.g., Dempster, Hamilton, Kaiser, Kaiser Jr., Wright) seek to find a single thematic thread that ties the Old Testament together. Scholars searching for a single theme often come to very different conclusions about what comprises the center of the Old Testament (pp. 78-83).

Part three, Context, is the most varied of the three parts and surveys Old Testament canonical theology, Jewish biblical theology, and postmodern Old Testament theology. Canonical theology (e.g., Childs, House, Sailhamer) focuses on reading the text as Christian scripture, and studies the text in its final form. Jewish biblical theology (e.g., Gesundheit, Goshen-Gottstein) highlights diversity within the Old Testament and examines topics that Jewish writers feel most pertinent (e.g., law and land, pp. 115-19). Finally, the section on postmodern Old Testament theology surveys a wide panoply of interpreters (e.g., Brueggemann, Trible) with a divergence of methods and conclusions. The book ends with a summative chapter that includes a word about the future of Old Testament theology and an invitation for students to climb the mountain, as it were, and continue their studies.

One clear strength of the book is its organization. Each chapter follows a similar format, beginning with a clear definition and summary of the approach in view. Each chapter also includes a bibliographic chart that informs the reader of the works to be examined, as well as an examination of points of tension within each approach. An appendix (pp. 161-62) provides a convenient and comprehensive chart of each approach for quick reference. Readers will welcome and benefit from the clarity of the authors’ presentation.

In addition to the survey of various approaches, the authors examine how each method engages with the book of Exodus, particularly the giving of the Law on Sinai. This practical exercise helps to put meat on the bones, so to speak, of the methodologies, and shows how they differ in interpretive conclusions.

While Kim and Trimm’s categories are sound, some works they examine could easily fit into multiple camps, as the authors recognize (p. 9). For instance, Jackson Wu’s essay “Biblical Theology from a Chinese Perspective: Interpreting Scripture through the Lens of Honor and Shame” is placed within the postmodern Old Testament theology. As Kim and Trimm note, Wu does not deny the importance of authorial intent, the possibility of objective meaning, or biblical authority (pp. 138-39). In that sense, his work does not fit perfectly into the postmodern category. Quibbles about how well works might fight within each category speak to the inherent difficulty in the task of organizing ideas.

Kim and Trimm at times offer incisive but gentle critique. For instance, they shrewdly ask why proponents of canonical Old Testament theology often do not place a greater emphasis on the canonical order of books (p. 103). Kim and Trimm write with the kind of charitable spirit that earns the right to be heard in evaluation. Should Kim and Trimm publish a second edition, readers would benefit from a more direct evaluation of the pros and cons of the various methods, especially in the sections where the authors examine Exodus as a test case.

One observation that could perhaps be seen as a weakness is the lack of discussion on recent advances in narrative/literary criticism in Old Testament studies (e.g., Altar, Sternberg). While narrative criticism may be distinct from Old Testament theology proper, it dovetails with the approaches enough to merit attention. As an example, narrative criticism helps demonstrate the cohesiveness of the biblical narrative in a way that arguably supports the conclusions of the biblical (hi)story camp and adherents to canonical criticism. While it might be difficult to place the contributions of narrative criticism within a single category, the target audience of the book (e.g., students being introduced to Old Testament theology) would benefit from being alerted to the influence of narrative criticism and its importance in modern Old Testament studies.

Overall, Kim and Trimm have provided a valuable resource that is ideal for students first engaging with the field of Old Testament theology. Professors or teachers looking to provide students with a clear, accessible introduction to the field would be hard-pressed to find a better option.

Timothy Howe

Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Heritage Baptist Church, Lebanon, MO

Review of The Scandal of the Gospel: Preaching and the Grotesque by Charles L. Campbell

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Review of The Scandal of the Gospel: Preaching and the Grotesque by Charles L. Campbell

Campbell, Charles L. The Scandal of the Gospel: Preaching and the Grotesque. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2021, pp. 120, $33, paperback.

The Scandal of the Gospel

Painters have their colors and canvas, sculptors have their clay, and preachers have their words. And words are powerful. As the Bible so often indicates, Scripture has the power to build up and to tear down, and this is especially so in the ministry of preaching, as Charles L. Campbell discusses in his latest book, The Scandal of the Gospel: Preaching and the Grotesque. Campbell is James T. and Alice Mead Cleland Professor Emeritus of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School. He is a past president of the Academy of Homiletics, a highly sought-after lecturer, and he is well published in the field.  Most of the content for this latest book comes from his 2018 Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School; only the fourth chapter contains new material.

In the forward, Campbell explains that he is not seeking any consistency or system; rather, he says that he is “simply trying to make some homiletical connections between preaching and the grotesque” (p. xiv). This concept of the grotesque subsequently stands at the center of the book. The term is borrowed from the world of visual art, where it originally referred to paintings found in ancient Roman grottos, i.e. grotto-esque. These “murals presented unsettling, disorienting hybrids that transgressed accepted categories. They distorted what was considered ‘normal’ or ‘beautiful.’ They messed with accepted patterns. They were, as they came to be called, ‘grotesque’” (p. 6). This description encapsulates the homiletical vision that Campbell sets forth in these chapters, i.e. preaching that is unsettling, disorienting, that transgresses accepted categories and norms, that is “grotesque.”

In the first chapter Campbell considers how this concept of the grotesque fits with the scandal of the Gospel. Taking his cue from 1 Corinthians 1:23, he explains that the Gospel confronts with the destabilizing pairings of opposites: God-cross, life-death, repulsion-fascination, horror-hope. A God that is violently crucified on a cruel Roman cross is inherently “grotesque.” In chapter 2, Campbell explores how the grotesque is often weaponized in the act of preaching. Specifically, when one compares sociological and/or theological opponents with non-human objects, one is using the grotesque to dehumanize and minimize them in order to maintain one’s own particular understanding of order. In chapter 3, Campbell offers an alternative to this kind of weaponization by explaining how the grotesque creates preaching that is “open, protruding, irregular, secreting, multiple, and changing” (p. 55). Preaching that is grotesque welcomes input and insights from a variety of voices, and not merely biblical and theological ones. It is preaching that “becomes real when truth happens among the cacophony and incongruities of diverse voices and diverse lives” (p. 57). Finally, in chapter 4, Campbell imagines how the grotesque could be employed in preaching to address the environmental crisis.

Campbell’s application of the grotesque to the discipline of preaching is provocative to say the least because it stands in such stark contrast to the kind of preaching that is the focus of Campbell’s critiques. Sermons that offer simplistic principles for improving marriage, managing finances, or raising godly children attempt to “give people a nice focused nugget to carry home – not the shocking unresolved contradictions of the grotesque gospel” (p.11).  This kind of preaching is neat, clean, even idealistic. The problem, however, is that “when we rush to order, when we avoid the interval of the grotesque, our preaching may become shallow, unreal, cliched. We don’t go deep enough. We’re not honest enough. And we end up falsifying both the gospel and life itself – we end up imposing false patterns” (p. 12). Life is so often the opposite of the neat and clean categories we attempt to impose on it from the pulpit. It is complex and messy; it is “grotesque.” Campbell would have readers embrace these tensions rather than attempting to resolve them.

Though he rightly critiques this “humanistic” (his label) approach to preaching, the alternative that he proposes is inherently more so. Grotesque preaching is “shaped by the dynamic and open life of Jesus’ grotesque body. Grotesque preaching calls the church to be open to the world and calls the pulpit to be open to different bodies and new voices” (p. 56). It springs forth from the lived experiences of people rather than from the authoritative Word of God. What is glaringly absent from Campbell’s vision for preaching is how it relates to the principle of “Thus saith the Lord.” Christian preaching springs forth from the fact that God has spoken. The Apostle Paul instructed his protege Timothy to “Preach the Word” (2 Timothy 4.2). God has spoken; therefore, we speak. In other words, the purpose of Christian preaching is to exposit the declared Word, “giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was read” (Nehemiah 8.8). It is not merely to listen to people’s stories or to appreciate the diversities and complexities of the human experience.

In the final analysis, Campbell’s invitation for preachers to approach the complexities, difficulties, and tensions of life with greater compassion is a welcomed alternative to the idealistic naivete that characterizes most preaching today. That being said, his alternative is essentially void of the very resources that God has provided to address those complexities and difficulties. In other words, grotesque preaching, as Campbell envisions it, comes off merely as a way to exalt and platform human experiences over the Word of God. However, it is ultimately powerless as a homiletical method for proclaiming the inspired Word of the one true and living God. In my view, preachers would be better served by attending to the text of Holy Scripture, giving its meaning through systematic exposition, than by any clever attempts to be “grotesque.”

Phillip Powers

South Caraway Baptist Church

Jonesboro, AR

Review of Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology

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Review of Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology

Gallaher, Brandon. Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp.318, £98, hardback.

Freedom and Necessity

Brandon Gallaher is senior lecturer at the University of Exeter, specializing in twentieth century Orthodox theology and modern theology more broadly. The breadth of Gallaher’s interests are on display in this fine monograph. Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology dialogues with three generative modern theologians each representing a distinct tradition: Sergei Bulgakov, Karl Barth, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. The book is organized round a set of questions related to the form of modality applicable to God’s immanent and transitive acts, but these particular issues offer an entryway into some of the most pressing debates in contemporary theology related to divine aseity, divine freedom, the reliability of our knowledge of God, and the relation between God in Godself and God’s acts in the world.

Gallaher begins outlining three sorts of freedom and three corresponding forms of necessity. These versions of freedom and necessity provide an interpretive grid according to which his three dialogue partners are interpreted and then critically assessed and evaluated. In view of space constraints, I will move directly to summarize the dogmatic conclusions for which Gallaher advocates throughout the book. While some limitations arise in leaping straight to Gallaher’s conclusions and moving briskly past his learned interpretations, his account of each dialogue partner is shaped at every turn by his constructive aims.

Gallaher worries that a monistic collapse obtains if the form of necessity pertaining to Godself likewise applies to God’s decision to create and redeem. He affirms therefore that God could have refrained from creating without being essentially different than God is. However, Gallaher also worries that to straightforwardly affirm the contingency of creation might disconnect theology and economy, introducing an unreliability into God’s revelation and undermining the integrity of God’s loving action in the world. He therefore argues that once God has contingently decided to create, creation becomes necessary for God. This necessity is described robustly as an “internal reality for God as God” (p. 221). I suspect statements such as this aim to rule out that creation is merely hypothetically, rather than absolutely necessary (hypothetical necessity implies that creation is necessary insofar as God has willed to create, but because creation is necessary only on the hypothesis that God has freely willed it, rather than being necessary for God’s ontological completion or fulfilment, creation is not and never becomes absolutely necessary). His three dialogue partners are evaluated by their ability to secure these dogmatic affirmations. In radically truncated summary, Gallaher thinks Bulgakov and Barth fail to secure God’s genuine freedom to have refrained from creating, whereas Balthasar fails to consistently affirm that creation becomes necessary for God.

To concretely express these largely formal dogmatic affirmations, Gallaher engages in some audacious trinitarian speculation, positing that God’s ontological completion ‘awaits’ the human act of Jesus of Nazareth electing the Father as his Father which constitutes the divine being. In order to secure the genuineness of God’s dependence upon Jesus Christ—and therefore God’s dependence upon creation since Jesus is a creature and a representative of creation—Gallaher suggests that the Father draws a veil over divine knowledge of what Jesus will decide. There is genuine uncertainty both in God’s knowledge and in God’s ontological self-determination until Jesus has determined the divine being. These constructive proposals are well adapted to secure what Gallaher thinks an account of the relation between theology and economy and divine freedom and necessity needs to affirm but nonetheless, questions remain.

For example, Gallaher is invested in a dialectical approach in which seemingly contradictory claims are set alongside one another without clear harmonization. This strategy has an important pedigree in modern theology. However, as other reviewers like Tom McCall have noted, there is little control over what counts as a valid dialectical juxtaposition for Gallaher. At many points, Gallaher faults his dialogue partners for remaining merely at the level of “assertion” rather than offering a robust defense of the coherence of their views (pp. 88-9, 160, 229, 232). Yet one might think his own dialectical approach likewise resides at the level of mere assertion, in that he asserts two seemingly contradictory claims without demonstrating how they can be reconciled.

For example, one of Gallaher’s central claims is that while God needs the world this does not undermine divine aseity because this need is rooted not in external coercion but a free divine act of love: “This need . . . is not for God Himself (his self-development) but for love of the world” (p. 222; see also p. 240). Yet if God by a divine act of will decides to make the world and the free choices of a creature or creatures necessary to the actualization of the divine being—as Gallaher affirms—then it becomes the case that God depends upon something outside Godself for divine self-development. This means that something external to God comes to exercise a coercive determination upon God, since it is not wholly “up to God” who God will be essentially. Furthermore, Gallaher affirms that God wills “creation to enrich Him[self] as an additional gift” (p. 222) and that “God necessarily must ecstatically love beyond Himself to be Himself as love” (p. 184). If creation enriches God, enhancing divine love, then one might think either God becomes more perfect than God would be without the world, or God’s love for creation is disconnected or at a distance from God’s being. This latter claim is something which all three of Gallaher’s dialogue partners and Gallaher himself are keen to avoid. But in that case, for God to be the perfect God God is, God needs the world, not merely for the world’s sake but for the sake of God’s own perfection. This lacuna drives straight to the heart of Gallaher’s central claim that while God makes the world necessary for Godself, God need not have done so to be the God God is (pp. 22-3, 34-5, 88, 165). Either God’s love for the world adds nothing to who and what God is essentially, which Gallaher denies, or the world enhances God insofar as it enhances the actualization of God’s love. In that case, God needs the world for the sake of God’s own ontological perfection not merely for the sake of an altruistic love for the world. Unless this highly dialectical—i.e. seemingly contradictory—set of claims can be reconciled, there is a danger that Gallaher’s view implies against his intentions that God is free, only in that God could have been less perfect because less loving than God actually is in creating the world. This amounts, for those who affirm with Anselm, Barth, Balthasar, and many others, that God essentially is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived,” to a seemingly nonsensical claim that God could have willed to be worse than God is and therefore to have willed not to be God.

That I have pressed these matters is a testament to the erudition and creativity of Gallaher’s proposals. There are a host of merits to Gallaher’s work, including the way in which he situates each of his dialogue partners within post-Kantian idealism and the creativity and sensitivity of both his interpretations and his constructive theological arguments. It is invigorating to read a book whose theological proposals are this bold. The monograph eminently repays careful attention, offering a lasting contribution to central questions in contemporary systematic theology.

Jared Michelson

University of St Andrews

Review of Being Saved: Explorations in Human Salvation edited by Marc Cortez, Joshua R. Farris, and S. Mark Hamilton

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Review of Being Saved: Explorations in Human Salvation edited by Marc Cortez, Joshua R. Farris, and S. Mark Hamilton

Cortez, Marc, Joshua R. Farris, and S. Mark Hamilton, eds. Being Saved: Explorations in Human Salvation. London: SCM, 2018, pp. 361, $56, paperback.

Being Saved

Being Saved is a collection of essays circling around the twin topics of “theological anthropology and soteriology” (p. xiii). The essays explore classic systematic theological categories while also engaging with other disciplines of enquiry about the human condition. The editors acknowledge that this creates a wide variety in the essays, but they seek to avoid “a homogenous approach to this multi-levelled discussion” (p. xv). This approach makes clear several different modes of theological enquiry for Christian theology. By juxtaposing them in one volume, it serves as a sourcebook for contemporary questions about soteriology and about the interaction between soteriology and philosophy. Although a four-part division provides structure to the book, some essays fall more neatly into the given categories than others.

The first section, “Sin, Evil and Salvation,” centers on cosmic issues, or those outside the individual person. After initial forays into God and time (“Identity through Time,” R. T. Mullins) and idealism (“Divine Hiddenness,” Trickett and Taber), there are three essays on sin and atonement. Jonathan Rutledge rejects “Retributivism”, defined as the claim that “the punishment of wrongdoers is required because wrongdoers deserve to be punished” (p. 41). He argues retributivism as a philosophical position is open to several objections, and then interprets the book of Romans as coherent without retributivism. Thus, retributivism and its theological counterpart, penal substitution, are to be rejected and replaced with a “restorative” purpose to God’s punishments (p. 51). Joshua Farris and S. Mark Hamilton (“Reparative Substitution”) probe how their own view of the atonement is “efficient”, that is, how it accomplishes something definite. While acknowledging that Christ’s death is a type of substitution, they wish to focus attention on the repayment of honor to God rather than on the endurance of a penalty. Daniel Houck engages with Abelard on original sin, but perhaps a next step would be to apply this to contemporary ways of expressing the doctrine.

The second section is the “The Nature of Salvation” and asks about the ontology of salvific change. What is God actually saving? Contributions from Oliver Crisp (“Theosis and Participation”) and Myk Habets (“Spirit, Selfhood and Salvation”) continue larger projects for these authors. Crisp’s desiderata for a definition of “participation” in God are insightful: (1) a model that is closer than our closest human relationships, (2) one that unifies us with God, but (3) one that does not result in the loss of the individual human. Adonis Vidu (“Ascension and Pentecost”) addresses the sending of the Spirit as part of the divine missions. He seeks to avoid saying that Christ “merits” the sending of the Spirit since this introduces a sense of compulsion into the godhead. Kate Kirkpatrick (“Saved by Degrees?”) finds that the early Augustine viewed salvation as continuous, “an ongoing process of becoming” (p. 135). The payoff from such a focus on “being” is somewhat undeveloped. Benjamin Arbour (“Virtue Epistemology”) calls for deeper interaction between theology and epistemology.

The third section, “The Process of Salvation,” uses the traditional categories of the ordo salutis. Andrew Loke (“Doctrine of Predestination”) defends Molinism against an objection centered on the physical conception of new human persons. How and in what way is God involved in the individuation of new human beings? He believes a Molinist account can draw from both Creationism and Traducianism for explaining God’s involvement, but the “creationist” side is unclear—since it seems, in his view, that the shapes of individual humans (particularly that of Judas Iscariot) exist apart from God’s creative decision. John Fesko (“Priority of Justification”) continues his work of showing how traditional categories of justification and sanctification are distinct yet unified. His interaction with Marcus Johnson evidences how recent discussions that emphasize “union with Christ” are helping to refine a traditional Reformed position on the process of salvation. Adam Johnson (“Barth and Boethius”) emphasizes Barth’s account of salvation primarily through the lens of a “representative substitute.” A consistent emphasis on human identity in Christ should lead to a form of wholeness and security. W. Madison Grace (“Being Christ”) explores Bonhoeffer’s “communal notion of personhood” with special reference to the church as the place in which Christ exists in the world. Such a view should lead Christians to view salvation in communal terms, but the implications of such a view are unclear. James Arcadi (“Redeeming the Eucharist”) uses Edward Schillebeeckx as a resource for exploring the eucharist and justification. “Transignification” means that God “deems” the bread and wine to be body and blood, and so they are. While avoiding questions about substance and accidents for the eucharist, transignification would need to answer (or embrace!) the charge of “legal fiction” when speaking about justification—another form of “deeming.” Paul Helm continues his work analyzing Jonathan Edwards in regard to regeneration (“Regeneration and the Spirit”). There is no doubt that Edwards’s tone and vocabulary differ from earlier Reformed representatives such as Stephen Charnock. Helm appears to see weaknesses in Edwards’s use of the “new simple idea” as a term for the crucial change that brings about conversion. Evaluation of Edwards on this point is still ongoing: if he has appropriated categories from John Locke, in what ways do these categories make his view of regeneration more or less helpful?

The final section, “The Body, the Mind and Salvation,” includes more interaction with philosophical perspectives on the nature of human being. Carl Mosser (“Two Visions”) presents transhumanism as a rival eschatology to traditional Christian views. He finds an alternative in the Christian idea of “deiform perfectibility,” that is, a form of deification. Hans Madueme (“Theological Musings on Mental Illness”) addresses the challenge of mental illness for the Christian category of sin. He calls on psychologists to recognize the importance of sin and sanctification for mental healing. The crucial insight is that sin “truly discloses our hearts” (p. 298 n34), whether or not the act of disclosure is conscious and willed. Joanna Leidenhag (“Saving Panpsychism”) believes that Christian soteriology can be helped and extended by viewing soul as the fundamental reality of the created universe. Such a view would extend hope that a saving experience exists for non-human creatures who have minimal subjectivity. Marc Cortez (“Body and the Beatific Vision”) concludes the volume with an analysis of the resurrection body and the beatific vision. Jonathan Edwards, among others, suggested that the body was necessary for a proper vision of God, but Cortez finds these reasons unsatisfying. Better to speak about the resurrection body as fulfilling other purposes of God such as the image of God and human life in embodied community.

The studies in this book cover a huge swath of contemporary questions on soteriology and theological anthropology. The editors acknowledge the diversity of approaches (p. xv), and especially the different uses of philosophy and theology. A particular difference appears about whether the analytic philosophical tradition can provide a mode of discourse to evaluate theological vocabulary—even when the theological positions have not utilized that mode of discourse. Being Saved sets a full table of options and topics and will be a useful resource for Christian theologians.

Jonathan Hoglund

Hanoi Bible College, Hanoi, Vietnam

Review of Old Testament Use of Old Testament: A Book-by-Book Guide by Gary Edward Schnittjer

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Review of Old Testament Use of Old Testament: A Book-by-Book Guide by Gary Edward Schnittjer

Schnittjer, Gary Edward. Old Testament Use of Old Testament: A Book-by-Book Guide. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2021, 1098 pages, $58.00, hardcover.

Old Testament

Gary Edward Schnittjer is the Distinguished Professor of Old Testament for Cairn University’s School of Divinity. Schnittjer received his doctorate from Dallas Theological Seminary and has completed post-graduate studies in both Hebrew and Aramaic from the University of Pennsylvania and Westminster Theological Seminary, respectively. He has published numerous articles in various aspects of Old Testament Biblical studies as well as another monograph, The Torah Story.

Old Testament Use of Old Testament: A Book-by-Book Guide represents the culmination of two decades of research into the intertextual and linguistic connections within the Tanakh by Schnittjer. The book is a cataloging, book-by-book, of exegetical allusions between the books of the Old Testament, rated according to their strength (read: confidence level). Material for the work was compiled from manual research and material generated from an originality program, iThenticate (xlvii).

In its introduction, Schnittjer provides the basic definitions used in the field of intertextuality and his work, such as revelation, allusion, and exegesis (xviii-xix). Surveying the work and methodologies from scholars like Hays, Kugel, von Rad and Fishbane, Schnittjer lays out his criteria for determining allusion and model for interpretation, siding more closely with Hays than the other three (xli). The remainder of the introduction lays out the content and form of the subsequent chapters. Before closing, Schnittjer has this to say to scholars. “Is this reference study comprehensive? No and yes.” By no, Schnittjer means that a total cross-reference of intertextuality for any book, much less the Tanakh, is impossible. By yes, Schnittjer means that this work does seek to capture every leading use of Scripture in every book of the Hebrew Bible. After this aside, there is a brief listing of other sources and lists of intertextual links.

The bulk of the book takes up the charge of implementing that methodology. Following the Tanakh ordering of the Old Testament, as opposed to the traditional Christian arrangement, Schnittjer lays out each chapter similarly. First, there is a listing of the siglia, followed by a condensed summary of all significant detectable links within the book. Schnittjer then adds in the hermeneutical profile for the book which gives a broad overview on how that book intertextually relates to others. Critical issues regarding the identified links and peculiarities of the book follow. Each chapter ends with a more verbose discussion of significant textual links, broken out by the context of the link, and their meaning for the book as a whole.

After finishing the books of the Old Testament, Schnittjer adds in one final chapter, which casts a vision for how the Hebrew Bible leads into the New Testament. This chapter is refreshingly rich and brings out the concept of the canonical consciousness and how Scripture seeks to bear witness to the Spirit and Word (872). Schnittjer highlights those multifaceted contexts and horizons that the New Testament authors use to bring the story of Scripture to its zenith in the coming of Jesus. A brief discussion of common linked themes, what Schnittjer calls networks (873), and a glossary appear at the end of the book.

Positively, this book represents a treasure-trove of academic effort. Schnittjer’s work has created an impressive reference text of intra-Old Testament linkage in a field that previously lacked any such comprehensive catalog. If not a complete catalog of every significant intertext in the Hebrew Bible, it is assuredly nearly that. Schnittjer elevates his work too beyond just a mechanical record through his detailed notes on how each book tends to use intertexts and relates to others. Readers are left not only knowing where significant links occur but also why the biblical author has used other texts. Old Testament Use of Old Testament should be a core reference text for any scholar doing substantial work in the Old Testament.

Schnittjer too should be praised for his introductory chapter, which provides one of the most straightforward and broad introductions to the field of intertextuality that this author has read. Intertextuality is notoriously tricky to pin down succinctly. It is a discipline that has shifting definitions between authors and can prove troublesome to the uninitiated. Schnittjer’s introduction offers potential students of the field a boon with his work as it is an excellent starting point covering all of the critical considerations and positions in a short space. Furthermore, Schnittjer’s engagement in the field is refreshingly non-sectarian and robust. The text engages with leading authors from numerous backgrounds and traditions, and this only aids its value as an introduction to the field. To provide just a sample, Schnittjer references: Fishbane, Hays, Kugel, Kynes, Miller, Schultz, Sommer, von Rad, Witherington III, and others just in the introduction.

Critically, one may question the rating system employed by Schnittjer because the method, at points, is driven by the evidence and not the evidence by the method. For example, the B level of confidence, the second-best link quality, requires only a single Hebrew root to define a link. Why such a low bar? Schnittjer explains, “It may seem disappointing to have such a low threshold of evidence: one term. Unfortunately, there are a few cases that require this” (xxiii). That means though, that Schnittjer has tailored the method to fit the evidence, contrary to sound practice. While the link given as evidence for this, Josh 9:6-7 cf. Dt 20:15, may be a significant link, this is a weakness in the principles undergirding the method and may weaken Schnittjer’s data, allowing weaker links to appear stronger than they are.

A second criticism may be leveled at the omission of some potential intertexts. There are occasional gaps in Schnittjer’s list that are present in the works he lists as possible parallels. One example is the linkage between Hab 1:2 and Job 19:7. These two texts share several roots, and indirectly share every noun and verb. This link is not mentioned by Schnittjer, who instead links Job 19 on weaker evidence to Lam 3:6-9 (557), despite the Hab-Job connection being covered by Anderson, whom Schnittjer lists as a resource for Habakkuk. Such omissions are to be expected in such pioneering and expansive work, but also point out that continuing efforts are needed in this area.

Overall, Old Testament Use of Old Testament is a significant work in the fields of intertextuality and Old Testament biblical studies. It provides a reference point for future investigations into how the Hebrew Scriptures built upon themselves and how Scripture interprets itself. Students should approach this text as a model for how scholars can weigh and determine the strength of exegetical links in a text. Schnittjer provides not only a model but also extensive reasoning and discussion of significant links. This text will help students become familiar with the field of intertextuality as well as the critical questions faced within the sub-discipline. The quality of scholarship and breadth of material easily makes Schnittjer’s Old Testament Use of Old Testament a first-tier reference work for scholarship.

Brian Koning

Grand Canyon University

Review of Baptism: Zwingli or the Bible? by Jack Cottrell

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Review of Baptism: Zwingli or the Bible? by Jack Cottrell

Cottrell, Jack. Baptism: Zwingli or the Bible? Mason, OH: The Christian Restoration Association, 2022, 163pp, $14.99, paperback.

Baptism: Zwingli

Jack Cottrell, arguably the most prolific writer and influential theologian of the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, tackles the topic of baptism in yet another accessible book, Baptism: Zwingli or the Bible? This text incorporates Cottrell’s primary insights on how the Protestant Reformer Huldreich Zwingli (1484-1531) changed the course of church history by creating a new view of the meaning of baptism from salvific to merely symbolic. Although this concise book contains previously published material by Cottrell, it is good to have an overview and summary of Cottrell’s critique of Zwingli’s view of baptism in one small volume. It is certainly handy for the student as well as the scholar and teacher.

Cottrell divides this work into three parts: (1) a review of his Princeton dissertation on Zwingli, (2) his personal views on “Zwinglianism,” and (3) a reproduction of “Connection of Baptism with Remission of Sins.” (Part Three is the work of the nineteenth century Christian Church theologian J. W. McGarvey which was originally included in his New Commentary on Acts of the Apostles [1892] but omitted from later editions.)

Part One is divided into two chapters. The first is a rehearsal of Cottrell’s first chapter found in Baptism and the Remission of Sins: An Historical Perspective (College Press, 1990), edited by David Fletcher. Cottrell briefly surveys some primary New Testament texts on baptism and statements by the church fathers, and then argues that all of church history taught that baptism is the time the sinner receives salvation. This is what Cottrell terms the “biblical consensus” on baptism.

Chapter two is when Cottrell brings his main point into focus that reflects the title of the book: Zwingli discarded the biblical consensus on baptism, creating a brand-new view. With one big stroke, argues Cottrell, Zwingli proclaimed that all church fathers were wrong when they connected baptism with salvation.

Cottrell provides thorough documentation showing how and why Zwingli reaches this new view on baptism: Zwingli (1) denies the Roman doctrine of ex opere operato, claiming that all the doctors taught this before him, (2) argues that a sacrament can never save, only the blood of Jesus saves, and (3) assumes a platonic view of matter and spirit, thus concluding that water cannot save because it is inherently inferior to spirit. Additionally, Cottrell discusses Zwingli’s theological reasons for rejecting the “biblical consensus” on baptism, such as his views of divine sovereignty, different kinds of baptisms, and divine election.

Finally, Cottrell elaborates on the development of Zwingli’s new baptismal theology. Since Roman theology taught the doctrines of baptismal regeneration and original sin, this led to the Roman doctrine of infant baptism. But Zwingli had now rejected the consensus view on the meaning of baptism, so why baptize infants if not for original sin? Cottrell contends Zwingli invented a new reason for pedobaptism, namely, for a sign of the covenant. From this, Zwingli developed an entirely new theology known as covenant theology (or unity)—that there is only one covenant, one people of God, and one covenant sign for all time. In relation to the covenant sign, it was circumcision in the Old Testament, and it was replaced by baptism in the New. Hence, infants ought to be baptized in the New Testament as they were circumcised in the Old.

Although Cottrell focuses on Zwingli’s concept of covenant unity up to this point, his primary concern, which is always in view, comes more into focus in Part Two: that Zwingli is the one who rung in the totally new view of baptism as merely symbolic and not salvific. He critiques covenant unity and finds it biblically untenable, but he spends two of the three chapters in this part arguing how baptism is not a work of man but a work of God (echoing Martin Luther).

Chapters four and five are practically equivalent. In these chapters, Cottrell maintains that baptism is never defined as a “sign” or “work of law.” It is always in context of salvation by faith. Interestingly, Cottrell highlights that a more precise definition of “work” is needed when discussing salvation by faith vs. works. If “work” always means “anything we do,” then Jesus and Paul contradict each other since Jesus says in John 6:29 that “the work” one must do to be saved is to “believe in Him whom He has sent” (NASB). Paul, then, cannot mean that “to be justified by faith apart from works” is equivalent to “to be justified by faith apart from anything we do.” Paul must be using the term “work” in a more nuanced way, namely, “works of law,” i.e., following a law code to be saved.

Cottrell concludes that defining baptism as the time the sinner receives salvation is not salvation by works. Is it something “we do” in the general meaning of the word? Yes, but it is not a work of law (cf. Paul), as if someone can save himself by following a moral code. Baptism, as faith and repentance, is something “we do” to be saved, Cottrell contends. This distinction in the way “works” is used by Jesus and Paul, Cottrell emphatically states, is the most important theological discovery of his career.

This small tome is helpful in numerous ways. The discussions on covenant unity, baptism as merely symbolic, and Paul’s use of “works” raise some good questions. It is uncanny that Zwingli’s radically new approach to the meaning of baptism has often been overlooked in evangelical scholarship until more recently (see, e.g., Believer’s Baptism, B&H, 2007; M. Haykin, Amidst Our Beloved Stands, B&H, 2022). Cottrell’s work on this topic has been around for decades with little or no interaction, even in the works just mentioned parenthetically. Cottrell has made significant contributions to this discussion. It is time to interact with it.

Red flags, however, may be raised for some. Cottrell consistently refers to Zwingli’s view of baptism as merely symbolic as “heresy” and says that Zwingli’s covenant theology brought about “demonic results,” i.e., a new view of baptism (p. 77). For many, such language may be considered overly exaggerated. “Heresy” is typically reserved for teachings like Arianism and the like. Another overstatement may include “most Evangelicals have adopted Zwingli’s new rationale for baptism” (p. 79). This seems strained. Many evangelicals view baptism as an outward sign of the salvation internally realized, which Zwingli outright rejected (as Cottrell even notes).

Others may find one of Cottrell’s main points objectionable: that Zwingli rejected the “biblical consensus” on baptism and created an entirely new one (p. 49). Cottrell argues that Christians had always taught baptism was for salvation and never as a symbol of salvation. Here, one might point out, for example, that Basil of Caesarea (AD 330-379) referred to baptism as a symbol (e.g., see On the Holy Spirit, 15). Of course, others have, too, throughout history before Zwingli. Some may conclude that Cottrell overstates his case or needs to nuance his views a little more.

Finally, a word might be said on Cottrell’s brief survey of the church fathers’ view of baptism. To support his “biblical consensus,” Cottrell refers to Thomas Aquinas and Tertullian. Some may question the use of these fathers, considering that they have traditionally been understood to support the Roman Catholic view of ex opere operato, or baptismal regeneration. Certainly, this is not Cottrell’s view. His view of baptism as salvific is much more nuanced, and he rejects baptismal regeneration. But, then, one may wonder why he employs Aquinas and Tertullian to support his view?

Cottrell’s book is not a deep, academic study, but it is surely a good addition to the discussion of baptism. If the student or theologian wishes to understand Cottrell’s baptismal view succinctly and interact more with Zwingli’s influence upon this doctrine, this book will accomplish these goals. It is written primarily for those in the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, so those outside this tradition may find the biblical, theological, and historical discussion unconvincing or perhaps too shallow. For a deeper study, Cottrell’s PhD dissertation and two chapters in the book edited by Fletcher (cited earlier) are highly recommended.

Peter J. Rasor II

Grand Canyon University