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The Gospel According to Isaiah 53 | a Review

29/10/2012
Book Review, Books and Reading
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I still remember the beginning of The Passion of the Christ. It started with a dark screen, haunting music, and then these words appeared from Isaiah 53 “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”

Although it did not cross my mind at the time, in retrospect it could seem peculiar to begin a film about the Passion with a quotation from anything besides one of the Gospels. It fit though, because Isaiah, and in particular its account of the Suffering Servant, has influenced Christian thought about the death of the Messiah to such an extent that it is often referred to as the Fifth Gospel.

However, the beloved nature of this passage can also lead to overfamiliarity, to our easily skimming over it because we, of course, already know what it has to tell us.

So, when given the opportunity to review The Gospel According to Isaiah 53, I decided the time investment would be worthwhile if I could shake off my too-comfortable familiarity with the text and be challenged afresh by it’s message. I was not disappointed.

Divided into three sections  – Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Interpretation, Biblical Theology, and Practical Theology – this book features a wide-ranging collection of essays on everything from the identity of “The Servant of the Lord” to “Preaching Isaiah 53.”

Of particular interest to me were two of the essays on the New Testament use of Isaiah 53, specifically Darrell Bock on its use in Acts 8 and Craig Evans on its use in Peter, Paul, and Hebrews. As usual I learned quite a bit from both Bock and Evans’ writing, and came to further realize just how pervasive the language of Isaiah 53 is in the New Testament, even and perhaps especially when it is not being directly quoted.

Also, I was intrigued by John Feinberg’s essay “Postmodern Themes from Isaiah 53.” Though not uncritical of postmodernism, Feinburg notes how this passage can be a place of productive commonality with its focus on narrative, community, and power through weakness.

The one part I did not anticipate when I began reading was the book’s emphasis on using Isaiah 53 for evangelizing the Jewish community. In fact, it turns out that part of the impetus for this book was to equip Christian leaders to minister to Jewish people. Though not a strike against the book, it would be worth knowing ahead of time, as the academic nature of the text did not lead me to expect to suddenly be reading about evangelistic technique.

Still, all said The Gospel According to Isaiah 53 was an engaging and worthwhile read, which casts light on a key passage for understanding the mission and death of the Messiah.

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Oh yes, I received this book from Kregal Publishing for the purpose of review. No stipulations were made on the content of said review, but I am required to note this to be compliant with FCC regulations.

Books and Culture Reviews “How God Became King”

13/08/2012
Book Review, Books and Reading, N.T. Wright
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Recently at Books and Culture, Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove reviewed N.T. Wright’s How God Became King.

The review is mostly quite appreciative, but does bring up some concerns which are worth hearing out, and which seem to reveal some of the distinctives of the neo-monastic and Anabaptist communities.

At the core of this book is an invitation to re-read the gospels—to hear them as the story of how God became King by paying attention to the ways they make claims about four themes that were central to the hopes and longings of 1st-century Israel. Those themes are the story of Israel, the story of Israel’s God, the hope of God’s renewed people, and the conflict between God’s rule and the kingdoms of this world. For all of its value as a clear and concise argument about the meaning of Christian faith itself, this book is at its best highlighting Wright as a Bible teacher. The gospels come alive in these central chapters, singing the song that all of creation longs for, flowing like living waters in a dry and weary land. I wanted to stand on the corner and read several passages aloud…

… after so many years of Christendom, the news that the gospels are really about “how God became King” may come to some—especially those who worry that the Western church is in decline—as an invitation to rebuild our institutions, renegotiate our relationship with the power structures, and reclaim a sort of theocracy. I live in the Christ-haunted South. We’re always susceptible to the promises of a Jerry Fallwell. But this is not the hope that the guys on our corner ache for, nor is it the good news Wright is proclaiming. “The implicit ecclesiology of all four gospels is a picture of the complex vocation of Jesus himself,” Wright says. It is “to be kingdom-bringers … first because of Jesus’ own suffering and second by means of their own.”

You can read the full review here.

Paul, Homosexuality, and a Narrative of Love

19/01/2012
Book Review, Books and Reading, Church & Culture, GLBTQ Issues, Love, Narrative Theology, Paul, Teachings of Jesus
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“A Christian culture dominated by believing the right things about Jesus too often forgets that believing in Christ and walking in love are inseparable. In this case, followers of Jesus have too often forgotten that articulating a position on homosexuality does not in itself answer the questions: What does it mean to love my homosexual neighbor as myself? What does it look like for me to do unto my homosexual neighbor as I would have done to myself?”

For quite a while now Daniel Kirk’s Storied Theology has been one of my favorite blogs [really, you should be bookmarking it now, I’ll wait], so I was excited to learn he was going to share some of his work in narrative theology and Pauline studies in the book Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? and agreed straight away when I was asked to participate in this blog tour.

The chapter I’m reflecting on is “Homosexuality Under the Reign of Christ” No easy task, as this is proving to be one of the most difficult issues facing the church today.

Daniel starts by laying out what the biblical text says about homosexuality, and honestly it’s not that much – far less than one would assume when you consider how much evangelicals in particular have tended to obsess over the issue.

Granted, what is said is uniformly negative, but even that is less straightforward than it might first appear. The infamous “abomination” line in Leviticus for example is hardly useable in current debates, as it comes in the midst of a whole list of other national laws that we no longer consider relevant, including another “abomination,” eating unclean foods (so next time you see someone eating a cheeseburger, haul out the protest signs).

The New Testament statements, almost exclusively from Paul, come in the midst of vice lists that lay out a classically Jewish diatribe against practices that seen as the symptoms of paganism and idolatry. They do indeed portray homosexual acts in a negative light, a fact which Daniel insists we refuse to brush aside, but there is more going on linguistically and hermeneutically than we often want to admit.

So we are left with a picture of the Biblical testimony that is far more nuanced, and gives no justification for singling out homosexuality as somehow different or worse than any other sexual sin, but is still essentially negative.

Where do we go from there?

In the aside “Arguing for Homosexual Practice,” which is directed at those who affirm homosexuality either for textual reasons or because they believe the Spirit is doing something new in our day, Daniel suggests that if you take this path it must go hand in hand with the Biblical narrative of fidelity and lifelong commitment. So that GLBT affirming churches should at the same time fight against the cultural trends towards easy divorce and casual hookups.

But the real thesis of the chapter, the theme that (rightly I think) trumps everything else, is love.

Central to our calling as Christians is love of others, and it is here that much of the church has failed spectacularly in its approach towards the GLBT community.

Jesus sums up the entire law with “Love the Lord your God with all your … and, love your neighbor as yourself” and then when asked who this neighbor might be, Jesus tells a parable which turns all the audience’s expectations upside-down and shows a hated outsider as more faithfully following the way of Jesus than the religious insiders.

“No clearer story could be told to show us that our predilection for keeping our love restricted to ourselves runs counter to the way of Jesus. When we restrict our love to those who roughly fall within the boundaries of those who are living lives pleasing to God, or when we use biblical regulations as reasons for excluding ourselves from the duty of providing for a person in need, we violoate the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.”

Daniel continues by bringing this story to bear on the discussion of homosexuality,

“the homosexual is the Christian’s neighbor, and Christian’s duty is to love homosexuals as ourselves. If the result of our biblical convictions is that we stand on the streets with “God Hates Fags” signs, we are not holding a Christian position but are using a Christian idea to prop up our rebellion against the life that Jesus calls us to.”

So what does it look like to love our homosexual neighbor as ourselves? The last few pages of the chapter wrestle with that admittedly complex question. I won’t delve into specifics at the moment, but the general thrust is this – is it loving the GLBT community as we would want to be loved if we deny them rights that we would never want others to deny to us?

We’ve failed miserably in our treatment this group of people, but the Christian narrative of love and self sacrifice might just point a way forward.

Daniel begins this chapter with a quote from Love, Love, Love by The Mountain Goats, and I can think of no better way to close out this post than by sharing that song with you as you perhaps wrestle anew with what it means to love others as a follower of Jesus.


*Baker sent me a free copy of this book as a participant in the blog tour – no stipulations were made on the content of my review, but if you think I can be bought off with free books then this information might be relevant to you. And with that I think I’ve fulfilled my FTC obligations.*

Peter Rollins and Sour Beer | A Review of Insurrection

09/09/2011
Beer, Book Review, Doubt, Emergent / Emerging, Peter Rollins, Pyrotheology
3 Comments

Peter Rollins’ writing is like a sour beer.

Sour beers are daring, provocative, and shake up all your preconceptions of what a beer can be. They are also not the sort of beer you are going to want to recommend to a novice, or to drink on a regular basis.

That would be, more or less, how I felt while reading Rollins latest book, Insurrection.

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In the pages of Insurrection, Rollins challenges us to ask what truly motivates our faith, and then deconstructs our idolatrous images of the divine.

Using continental philosophy, postmodern critique, and a fair bit of existentialism, Rollins makes a provocative suggestion – many of us who claim to have faith are in fact using God as a means to an end. Faced with our own mortality and unfulfilled desires, we create for ourselves a deus ex machina, a divine being who steps in to ensure our life has comfort, meaning, and hope.

It matters little if we actively believe in this god, because others (our church, the pastor) believe on our behalf, and by entering into the play-acting each week we are able to attain all the same advantages whether we truly believe or not.

But instead of running from the pain and despair of life, Rollins insists that the Cross and Resurrection lead us to embrace them and in doing so rob them of their power.

He argues that while religion is the giving up of all for God, at the Cross we give up even God himself, joining Christ in his cry of forsakenness, and in the process experience the presence of God in his very absence. Resurrection then becomes a fresh start where we see God not as the one who calls us to love, but as the one present in the very act of love itself.

As the book continues Rollins leverages these ideas in a number of ways, but his central point seems to be this – we affirm our beliefs not through our words but through our deeds, and the role of theology is to be a pyrotheology which is always burning down the structures of our faith and in the process finding truth.

In his words “The truth arises in the very conflict itself, the conflict that drives us onward.”

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Truth be told, I quite enjoyed Insurrection. Rollins is a talented writer, with a knack for telling stories, and it did indeed set fire to some old assumptions while encouraging me to examine the motives of my faith.

But like I said, it was also a bit like drinking a sour beer. There’s a place for it, and it can even be a needed change, but it’s not what I’d build a foundation on.

In fact a foundation is exactly what Insurrection does not provide. It is an incendiary work, an act of theological arson, and while that may be necessary at times I find myself  growing tired of constant deconstruction that leads to…more deconstruction.

We can burn down the wreckage of the old structure, but are no better off until we build something new in it’s place.

Also, I’m not as sold on existentialism as Rollins seems to be. It has it’s place, but when used as the lens through which we view our faith, it seems liable to lead us in all sorts of unhelpful directions.

So, would I recommend Insurrection? Yes, it’s a thought provoking book and a worthwhile dialogue partner. Just don’t make it your session beer.

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