Ultimate Rest -a review.

 A number of years ago I had a sea-change in my way of receiving communion and recently one of my colleagues in ministry confided that they had undergone a similar change. It was a move to recognising that it was all about the gift, about God's grace and allowing God in Christ to bless us. Previously he and I had been schooled in a free church sort of tradition that had the effect of making it all about our remembrance and somehow we'd imbibed the notion that we had to make it effective by having the right sorts of holy thoughts as we chewed and sipped. 

It seems to me that this approach is very consonant with what David Hewitt is exploring in this book: the change in posture from striving to receiving and resting.

The subtitle is 'The Essence of the Beautiful Gospel" and that is a helpful description. The beautiful gospel is that in Christ God as done everything to bring us into the divine life and so we rest in what God has done. As I read, the old song  'Do not strive' kept coming into my head. This book is an extended meditation and exploration of entering into God's Rest. It was good to be reminded latterly in the book that "if the version of the gospel you have heard doesn't sound to you like good news, then you've not heard the gospel". And I also found it helpful to be reminded that "the gospel has often been presented as a proposition, when in fact it is an announcement." I think that definitely bears reflecting on further.

The exploration and reflection takes us through various biblical passages and this is a strength of the book -that it is scripturally based but in a way that is not picking at minutiae but pulling out a major theme. I felt the approach to the early chapters of Genesis was helpful by focusing on the spiritual dynamics as they relate to contemporary readers which must surely be the right sort of approach.

I was intrigued by a reflection on the word 'insouciance'. David takes it positively as a state of mind of being unperterbed. This challenged me as my associations for the term are drawn from Peter Pan where the insouciance of youth is more focused on a sense of not caring about others.

I found the contemporising of Philippians 4:7 quite helpful too. 'Talk through everything at the beginning of the day or before things happen. And (if you cannot understand it all) be thankful for what you can see God is doing. God's peace becomes the hallmark of the day.' (Though I think that some of the meaning of the preceding verses is carried over into that rendering. The single verse goes like this: "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."). I felt that this was a useful peace of advice.

I think that this is a book to be read a chapter at a time and reflected on rather than read all the way through. As a reviewer I was asked to turn around the review in a month. I think I'd have liked to be able to take longer in order to really let some of the thoughts sink in before feeling I had to move one

I have to confess that I enjoyed too that this is a book written from a British context (Scottish to be more precise though he was brought up not far from where I was brought up in the English midlands) rather than north American. Not that I have anything against the latter but it was just nice to see something by a fellow Brit. I enjoyed too that the theological underpinnings of this mentioned names like the Torrance brothers and Karl Barth. Welcome too was the inclusion of insights by Julian of Norwich. There are a lot of quotes also from John Crowder.

I liked too that there are appendices with a practical slant and that these have been written by other people. I commend the collegiate approach especially in a book that has clearly been written from a community base.

I've also got some homework to do following on from reading this. David uses a couple of English language Bibles which I'd not come across before and I felt that their renderings of the passages discussed were helpful in putting things across and opening out layers of meaning. These weren't the only versons; David seems happy to use a variety (ESV, The Message ...) choosing according to which seems best to convey the meanings that he's wanting to emphasise. One of them I need to look up is The Mirror the other is the Passion translation.

I think whan I wanted more of was ways to help me/us to rest in God in practical terms. Now the appendices do this and there are nuggets of this in the text. It probably says more about where I'm at with it, but I did have a sense of 'yes, I know this' but what I am looking for is things that will help me to interrupt those times when I move away from acting out of peace or rest, to recall me. I recognise there are no easy ways in this respect; knowing the truth and picking oneself up to start all over again is the most likely rhythm of learning in this.

One of the strangenesses in the e-text as I received it, was the occasional changing colour of the typeface. I read white on black text most of the time because I tend to be reading these in the evening and I'm resting my eyes somewhat. So the fact that paragraphs, seemingly randomly (sometimes a sentence or two in) became grey or blue was disconcerting and sometimes required me to alter the light levels to see clearly. I imagine this as an artefact of the preparation of the text for publication which probably didn't show up to a proofreader who would have been simply reading in a more conventional way dark type on a pale background.

 

Links related to this review:

Ultimate Rest on Bookshop

Ultimate Rest on the Rethinking God with Tacos Podcast

Ultimate Rest on the Eat Me, Drink Me Podcast

David Hewitt’s Website

#UltimateRest

 

The Great Open Dance -a review

 What grabbed my interest in looking at this book was a bit of promo blurb:

"The Great Open Dance offers a progressive Christian theology that endorses contemporary yearnings for environmental protection, economic justice, racial reconciliation, interreligious peace, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ celebration. Just as importantly, this book provides a theology of progress—an interpretation of Christian faith as ever-changing and ever-advancing into God’s imagination.

Particularly was the idea of developing a theology of progress. In part this relates to something I've been thinking about for a little while (for quick way in, see here). So, what do I make of it? 

Well, from my point of view, there's a lot to like. It's well thought through and careful in explaining. I enjoyed the systematic sort of engagement and the wide range of it. It may fluster some and I raised an inner-eyebrow at starting with an exploration of non-duality and doing so by considering Hindu and Buddhist philosophies. But it is actually a really helpful starting place. I just fear that it means that I'd have to be careful lending or recommending it to some people I know who, I think, would actually really benefit from reading it. -That goes for the under-argued-for universalism about two-thirds of the way through. This is a bit of a shame because I think that Snydor makes a really good case for a biblically faithful, ultimately orthodox re-framing of Christian faith in a way that resonates for the age we're entering. 

I'm excited to see someone wrestling with the implications of emergence and integrating that into discussions of Trinity. I think he does a good job of understanding the frame-space that orthodox teachings about the Trinity are seeking to place around consideration of the concepts and then showing how the 'third way' offered by emergence and non-duality properly understood, is a help in this.

There was an interesting discussion of slavery in the latter part of the book relating Christian attitudes to it to how scripture is handled. I think that this is a key point of reflection (as well as how the inerrantist doctrines are historically contingent and adrift of how Jesus and Paul used scripture). What gave me pause for thought was contrasting the experience and (Christian) response of Frederick Douglas to being enslaved vs the advice of the epistle of Peter. The former literally fought back against brutal dehumanisation, the latter appears to advise patient endurance of it as a salvific road. I thought it interesting that at this point we are not invited to consider Paul's letter to Philemon which seems to set an anti-slavery trajectory whilst being careful of the 'Overton window' of the time (arguably) which might have protected many Christian slaves in less unpleasant circumstances.

This is a stepping stone in the argument towards apparently espousing, at one point, an approach to scripture which, to be frank, I suspect Luther would have characterised as 'a wax nose'. And it felt rather dissonant with the way that Snydor actually uses scripture up to that point. I do agree with a lot of what he says up to that point, but I do feel that some safeguarding of the approach, methodologically, against wax-nosing would have been good. Though, perhaps that's not entirely fair: the main argument is that agapic interpretation should be the keynote -I agree. And by contrast, again I agree, noting that inerrantists also have a canon within a canon -despite protestations to the contrary. There is a brief run through of examples of inconsistency of approach. In practice, most of them also don't propose or support slavery (though Snydor mentions that some, in fact, do think it might be okay) and I'd suggest that a consideration of why most of them would decry slavery today would be worthwhile. And indeed, what kind of hermeneutics would underlie that?

I did like the spirit of the final words of the book:

When this book is forgotten, which it will be, I pray that it will be forgotten because it has been replaced by more loving theologies that are more faithful to our loving God. These theologies will correct every accidental offense I have committed due to my own immersion in a specific place at a specific time with a specific set of blinders. For those theologies, and for their eventual appearance, I thank God, who is forever leading us into the reign of love.

As a final offering, here are some more quotes I particularly liked.

historians report that church leaders have always worried about church decline, church membership has always fluctuated wildly, and attendance has always been spotty. Today is no different

a third of young adults complain, “Christians are too confident they know all the answers.” 9 Increasingly, people want church to be a safe place for spiritual conversation, not imposed dogma, and they want faith to be a sanctuary, not a fortress 

pluralistic nondualism, the belief that reality is composed of real difference harmonized into perfect unity. ... pluralistic nondualism differs from monistic nondualism, which argues that ultimate reality is absolute homogeneity without difference. ... In our view, nondualism means indivisibly united yet internally distinguished. Nondualism discerns the unity in difference that underlies all things. ... perennial philosophy erases difference. If all religions are basically the same, then differences in thought, feeling, and practice are irrelevant. Nondualism, by contrast, finds wealth in difference.... Ramanuja’s personalist panentheism, in which God is a full- fledged person, better serves Christian faith than impersonalist Platonic idealism,... If nondualism is a fundamental ontology of relation, in which the one and the many are perfectly harmonized, then the Christian Trinity is a form of nondualism. That is, the Trinity is not either three or one. The Trinity is both three and one.

Given Christ’s revelation of God as agape, the Christian tradition must justify itself as agapic. Agape need not justify itself as traditional

people want faith to give them more life, and people want faith to make society more just, and people want faith to grant the world more peace.

Love is not the Godhead beyond God, a singular, pure abstraction. Instead, love is the self- forming activity of the triune God, the most salient quality of each divine person, and the disposition of each person toward the other— and toward creation. 

Metaphorically, we could say that quarks function only in communion.

God is empty of any excluding, occluding self. 105 All separation is illusion and God, as all- knowing, is not deluded. As a result of God’s perfect wisdom God feels perfectly, which is to love perfectly. In other words, God feels what should be felt as deeply as it can be felt. 106 Within God there is no capacity for celebrating another’s pain or envying another’s success, because God is perfect. “Perfect” does not mean unchanging, but changing perfectly.

Exclusively male language for a gender transcending God misrepresents the divine nature; hence, it is theologically inaccurate.

The margins have the clearest perspective. The margins see the hypocrisy in hierarchy and realize that “what is prized by humans is an abomination in the sight of God”

Why does Jesus characterize a preaching that explicitly threatens the rich and powerful as “good news”? Perhaps because they (at least some of them, I hedge, because Jesus didn’t qualify his statements) need to be rescued from themselves

Theologically, the crucifixion of Jesus testifies to the unholy within the universe, useless suffering that freedom produces but God abhors. From the gift of freedom, something emerges in creation that is alien to Godself. God did not intend the unholy, but God allows it out of respect for our autonomy and moral consequence. Crucially, God suffers from this demonic fault in reality. God in Christ undergoes alienation from God through crucifixion.

Therefore, the church must seek truth in others, with others, and for others, including other religions, in an attempt to develop a common wisdom that will be validated by the flourishing it creates.

Prayer is a spiritual gift, but other spiritual gifts can become prayer, and prayer alone is never a substitute for action. When Joan Cheever was fined for feeding the homeless in San Antonio, she explained, “This is how I pray. I pray when I cook. I pray when I serve.”  

Links for The Great Open Dance  on Bookshop Jon Paul Sydnor on Google Scholar Jon Paul Sydnor on Facebook Tag #TheGreatOpenDance

About the Author Jon Paul Sydnor is Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Emmanuel College, theologian-in-residence at Grace Community Boston, and a podcaster at The Progressive Sacred. He studied at the University of Virginia, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Boston College, where he received his PhD. He practices theology in conversation with other religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism, whose concept of nondualism has highly influenced the trinitarian theology of this book.

Review: Undoing Conquest

 I'm doing a good bit of thinking lately about decolonisation and also about the Hebrew scriptures -among which is how to understand and take as scripture some of the horrific genocidal and ostensibly settler-colonial narratives. So this book got my interest. The commending blurb said, among other things: 

Undoing Conquest offers ways to incorporate archeological research into the life of the church to repair the harms of settler-colonialism and genocide, creating a more just future. Undoing Conquest interprets this new archeological research from feminist and decolonial theological perspectives and designs a new liturgical season, the Season of Origins. This season integrates archeological histories and centers justice work at the heart of the church’s annual rhythms.

... and that seemed to address my interests as stated above. 

I liked that it starts with a consideration of how the Christian social imaginary (and that term is explained) has at different times developed and how new discoveries and challenges affect what can be imagined. Noting that there is a kind of Overton Window (not a term used in the book -that's my analogy) whereby what is imaginible and usable by Christian disciples and publics needs to move by increments referring to what is already known or believed and not by complete breaks with the past. This is a smart move when trying to present and evaluate what new understandings of biblical origins are and how they might be assimilated. It was intriguing to learn of how the book The Tribes of Yahweh had played a part in liberation movements of the late 20th century, so it seems important to understand what the scholarship behind that book might offer to the wider Christian movement.

Of course, the elephant in the room for Judaism and Christianity when reflecting on Joshua 1-11 is genocide and the challenge of that elephant is how to handle it while still acknowledging the writings as Scripture. It's a more general question, but that part of the Hebrew Bible perhaps is paradigmatic in this respect. There is an issue for many more conservative users of the bible about how to think about scripture if/when some results of archaeological and historical research seem to show that things that had been considered more-or-less reliable history begin to look like just-so stories or quasi-mythological tales of origins. Is this in principle different from re-reading Genesis 1 in the way that Richard Middleton presents in The Liberating Image ? The big question for me is how to hear or read these stories as scripture in our context with our understandings of the world? Does reading them as in some way divinely inspired mean that we can receive them as other than historically accurate?

In this case, we are reminded that the archaeology appears to contradict the idea of a Conquest as a first-sight reading might lead the reader to imagine. We are invited rather to consider that these stories recount things "in ways that aim to shape culture and contribute to a shared sense of identity".

I found it helpful to be able to read a really well written overview of the the results of archaeology and reflection on it over the last century or so -much of which I only had a vague inkling of (because until recently, I was not as interesting the Hebrew scriptures as I am now).

There is a sketch in the penultimate chapter of how we might story for ourselves an archaeologically fair narrative which also allows us to take hold of the Exodus story in scripture. This is worth reflecting on -along with the call to find ways to bring this into popular Christian imagination. I think that this will be a tough job with the so-called Christian Nationalist crowd! That said, I'd want to see a bit more scaffolding to help more conservative readers to be able to rethink their own a priori understandings of what scripture is and how it 'works' in devotional and theological reflection. There are some pointers here, but it is not a strong thread.

I enjoyed the idea of having a liturgical season of origins to engender a liturgical and thus whole-church pedagogy. There's a reasonably detailed proposal for a Season of Origins. I'm taking it seriously as something to incorporate into my own Our Common Prayer in Climate Emergency liturgical collection. I felt that the proposal, though, needs to pay more attention to how such perspectives are made liturgical. Do it badly and the questions and skepticisms of the congregation will actually be counter-productive. (I'm reminded of the putative Josianic story that the book outlines -which succeeds, humanly speaking, because of it's political backing and the moment of history in which it is introduced). I suspect the idea of trying to give what might be seen as official credence to 'rejected' or 'dispreferred' texts of the past (non-canonical gospels etc), is not going to fly widely in the Christian world. I'd love to see a wider conversation about the idea, though, of a season such as this.

I'm also concerned because at the moment a lot of Christians are trying to encourage churches to adopt a 'new' Season of Creation. Another new season might be a bit hard to add to the pile of innovation -even though I've kind of been doing it myself with a season of Transfiguration in Our Common Prayer liturgies. The proposal is to situate the Origins season after Creationtide, in effect. -Though the existence of Creationtide is clearly not known by the author. So I'd want to invite a longer and wider conversation about how we're shaping the autumn Kalendar -I'd also want to discuss whether we should reconsider Advent and November (Kingdomtide) in terms of the foci of these seasons. That said, 'Origintide' after Creationtide seems a good fit -and then a contrast with the themes of death and decay that comes prominently in early November (Kingdomtide). Certainly the shape proposed for Origintide invites it to have a pentitential thread running through it which would be suitable since that thread has become so hard to maintain in Advent because of the wider societal context in which it falls. This means that in the northern hemisphere, the lengthening nights of  encroaching winter would be mirrored in considering the darkness in the moral world and our complicity in it.

While I was reading I found myself cross- referencing with the tales of Robin Hood and King Arthur -the former is briefly mentioned towards the end of the book. But it is worth considering how these stories originated (in as far as we know or suppose) and how they have at various points been picked up and reworked or elucidated with various ideological spins in them. This could help us to think about the stories of Exodus and Joshua before they become crystallised as scripture. -So that's another bit of further research for me!

In short, I have found this very intriguing and enlightening. What's more it is not a lengthy tome and while there are very thorough footnotes, it is not an especially academic dense text. I'd be pretty confident to put it into the hands of a reasonably educated non-specialist. There were some things being said which were repeated at times -but I guess that helps make for secure cross-referencing of materials in the book for some readers.

One of the things that this has done for me is make me want to dig into (pun intended) the archaeological findings and reflection on them. It's also got me wondering how this can inform and how it affects my own research on the way that The Powers and Principalities show up in Hebrew scriptures -given that I've been developing, in effect, a kind of corporisations narrative.

Kate Common’s Website
Undoing Conquest on Bookshop #UndoingConquest

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/i7u2ix4en0xb2l6kxrr93/ANcouHIrfzj7Ky6D7ucIsIw?rlkey=6l38lsatqxnv8iwp48kmkbyt0&e=1&dl=0

A review: One With The Father

I'm a bit of a fan of medieval mysteries especially where there are monastic and religious dimensions to them. That's what drew me to reviewing this one. My hope is that the history is well -researched and so the story gives, by its background a helpful view of the life of the times as well as hoping that the psycho-spiritual insights are well depicted and explored.

The blurb names well something of what I look for in general:

The mid-fourteenth century was a time not only of burgeoning towns, majestic cathedrals, and nascent universities, but also of debauchery and violence, the Black Death and Inquisition, torture and ordeals. In his encounters with noblemen and peasants, alchemists and hermits, monks and heretics, knights and revolutionaries, prostitutes and miscreants from the medieval underworld, Justin comes to realize that he is entirely on his own as he confronts his personal moral failings and struggles to find faith in a world where God no longer seems to exist.

So the question is, does this book do these things? 

Well, yes. And I quite enjoyed the moving from scenario to scenario which gave opportunity each time for characters and their circumstances and interactions to give expositions of the issues spiritually and political-economically. Admittedly there is a degree of anachronism in vocabulary, but that in necessary.

The revolt scenes brought home to me the issue of not having strategy or thinking through longer-term scenarios and I wondered if that was fair to peasant revolts -probably that is the way of things then: largely uneducated people with only hazy ideas of how the wider world worked might well have acted in 'haste' by today's standards and their vulnerabilities would have been viciously exploited by the powerful wealthy.  Also the human vulnerability to being carried along by emotional arousal which then dampens those who have misgivings from expressing them (to their/our own detriment) is portrayed and is salutary.

On the downside, I felt that I didn't quite feel I connected with the characters, perhaps they felt a bit not-fully three dimensional. I liked, for example, the hermit in the woods but I did feel he was a bit bombastic and not at all sure if I believed in him as a character. It was good though, to be reminded that people in the middle ages were not uniformly faithful Christians and of how much the established church worked as the propaganda arm of feudalism -also salutary given that there are forces abroad today which seem intent on getting us back into that sort of society -complete with appeals to divinely-ordained obedience to those in authority. I was amused, btw, when in the planning of the revolt a character who was presented as being very concerned for obeying authorities persuaded herself, apparently, to support her village's revolt reasoning that by electing the village elder to do this, he had become the authority to be obeyed. I wondered whether my skepticism about that move arose from feeling that maybe that way of thinking seemed quite 'modern' or whether our 'modern' sensibilities about such things actually do trace back to such perspectives back then (but among peasants...?)

It gave me pause for thought about how deep-set the deference to hierarchy seemed to be in the sense that the theory of feudal estates can be presented as a kind of covenant of mutual aid -but how easily it was subverted and became oppressive without real appeal or recourse when those at the pinnacles of the hierarchies failed to play their benign patriarchal role. I was shocked by the no-doubt accurate picture of a quota being presented as a having a share in produce when it was clearly nothing of the kind and resulted in imiseration of those producing the food when there were times of low harvest. The early chapters of Exodus came to mind.

The issue of anachronism for me came to a head when we were in the monastery. The Bartholomew character, and the prior, were mostly speaking in ways that would be more characteristic of mid-twentieth century evangelicals than medieval Roman Catholics -albeit with a deferral to the authority of the Church tacked on. I recognise the value of exploring the unhelpful answers and methodologies of evangelicalism of that kind and giving voice to the honest questions and puzzlements and even inconsistencies it raises. However, it did irritate me a bit. I guess I wanted rather to gain insight into how the putative thought-world of the novel would work rather than see it translated into more contemporary (and north American) idioms and even concerns. I did value the reaching past mere doctrinal rectitude and the noting of the polyvocalism of the early church fathers in reading scripture and it is important to bring that to the table.

As part of the review agreement, I have to post a review (however partial) within a month of getting the book and I'm still reading it! So it may be that some of my concerns are addressed as I read the rest. I am enjoying it and I may yet add to this review if there is more of significance to be said.

One with the Father on Bookshop
Richard Evanoff’s Website

#OneWithTheFather

I should put on record that I received this as an e-book for the purposes of review. I was under no obligation to review favourably or otherwise, merely to offer some kind of review within a month of receiving the book. 

This review was added to on 14 April to comment more on the monastery episodes.

A Natural History of Scripture -book review.

 Lately, I've found myself more and more talking with other people about the Bible in terms of a kind of evolutionary pressures understanding of composition and preservation. In doing this, I guess I take it as plausible that writings that helped people tend to get preserved and copied while those that didn't got 'lost'. This means that where people found something in a writing that resonated with their sense of God, they would go back to it, and commend it to others. Where they found things that expanded their understanding of God and God's ways, they would copy it and pass it on. Where they found that challenges were productive, they'd engage with them and teach others to do similarly. Sometimes, I guess writings would be commended, and passed on because they had gained an aura of authority or because authoritative figures commended them. 

For this reason, I think it is important to talk about not just storytellers, but also editors and especially hearers and then readers. There would've been a reciprocal relationship around texts between these various people. Storytellers would adapt their telling to audience reactions -what 'tells well' would become a normal telling. Audiences would by their responses, requests and questions influence what was told and became an informal 'canon'. Editors would collect stories and writings with such matters in mind. But also they would have an eye to social and political conditions. 'Inspiration' in this view doesn't just belong to a writer but to the dialogical processes of telling, hearing, retelling, refining, reflecting, commending> I like to think that at key points were people paying attention to the divine resonances so that stories were also sifted for their spiritual value. Somewhere in all of this would be considerations of teaching and learning: what stories and texts promoted good reflection and wise conversations? This doesn't preclude 'divine inspiration' but it does take the focus off original authors being uniquely inspired -a model which seems suspiciously like the Romantic movement's views around the time when doctrinal bases dealing with scripture were being discussed, debated and codified.

An evolutionary approach suggests to me a survival of the fittest, and in this case that would mean that texts that were fittest for connecting people with God and God's purposes, would be the most likely to survive. 

Anyway, I thought I recognised in the title and blurb for this book, an approach that may help me to think about this approach more. So, I read with a question about how far this book would help me to develop and challenge this kind of approach.

Adkins sees what we now call Genesis 12:1-4 as the originating, kernel, story. And he spends some time in giving a potted version of the bigger narratives of the Hebrew scriptures. The book spends quite a lot of space retelling in summary the narratives and history of the accumulation of scriptures with some comment, history and framing to give a sense of development. I was intrigued by the naming of the NT as the Christian Sequel and will consider using this naming from time to time, myself. The rehearsal of the writings that become the bible raises the issue of canon, and canonisation is one of the matters that is touched on, as well as the non-canonisation of other writings.

I'd consider putting this book into the hands of people who were curious about the sweep of biblical history and open to consider how what we now call 'scriptures' interrelate with history. I think that there are challenges her to those who have a 'take it as it comes' approach to the writings of the Bible, and the author doesn't offer much to help such readers to consider and understand the critical scholarship which implicitly questions the 'straight forward' /face-value reading which doesn't really entertain the possibility that the texts we now have might have a back-story and not be written in the kind of way that someone now writing a novel or a textbook might write a complete work. Admittedly, something of the overview of critical scholarship comes when the history reaches the 1800s.

One of the interesting things that this book does, is to not only consider the formation of Jewish and Christian canons, but to incorporate consideration of the Qur'an alongside consideration of the Jewish Mishnah and Talmud. I think that this is a necessary consideration if one is taking a 'natural history' approach. The other interesting approach here, for me, is not to consider the Christian canon closed until the reformation is well underway. And indeed he points out that until the council of Trent, the 27 books were not considered a closed canon. It is also important that it considers the matter of translations and textual history which in actuality are big parts of discussions today about bible and authority in some parts of the church.

So, I didn't get my desired exploration of the kinds of forces that would drive 'natural' (cultural) selection nor a theology of canon, reception and inspiration that would take account of it. There are hints, to be sure, but mostly this is a historical summary of 4,000 years of story and reflection. It's a fair introduction but the further reflection I was hoping for is not part of it.

I may have to do that myself ...

Links

A Natural History of Scripture Website
Keith H. Adkins’ Website 

#ANaturalHistoryOfScripture

I should give a declaration of interest here. I received a pdf of this book as part of an agreement to review it, even if only briefly. There was no implication or explicit agreement that I should make the review favourable or otherwise. So I have simply stated what interested me and given my reactions.

A More Christlike Word -a review

 One of the biggest problems I think I come across in Christian education is what I think of as a flat reading of scripture. By this I have in mind treating the whole bible as some kind of text-book: all one kind of writing, pretty much all of it giving propositional truths. Even bits that are obviously poetic and literary are treated as if the poetic form is merely a more aesthetic delivery system for what are really, at base, propositional statements. Related to that is the way that the differences of time, human writing and collecting and the history of receiving a text is banished to a far horizon (I think this is touched on at p.115: "literalism is generally tied to believing that truth is reduced to actuality, factuality, and historicity, whether or not the human or the divine author intended any such thing [p.115]"). This mind set is deeply uncomfortable with different parts of scripture apparently saying contradictory things because 'contradiction' means falsity in some part. Though of course if your definition of falsity is in large part leaning on a limited idea of 'propositionally true', then, yes; you are in trouble. Of course, a lot of this could be stood-aside from by simply being less prompt in equating "God's word written" with a kind of uniform concept of propositional truth. To turn the matter around: if scripture is in some way 'God-breathed' (I'm happy to start there, as is Dr Jersak), then what kind of way does it speak to us in the different 'notes' it is breathed through? As in music, cannot the dissonances also speak? If God speaks in Scripture, what do the differences and divergences tell us? -It's not good, in the end, pretending they're not there.

So a related question about how the early Church read scripture starts to bob up to the surface. They didn't have what we now call the New Testament, only that pesky hard-to-understand Old one. Can their readings of those writings help us to do a better job of reading scripture to tune into God?

I'll confess that for me the Anglican liturgical practice (retained from its pre-reformation form) where we  stand for the Gospel (and indeed face the gospel book and its reader) has helped me in this. Symbolically, to me at least, it says, "Christ is the centre -the rest is commentary". The Word (who was at the beginning) is the heart of the word of God written, the rest is commentary and context enlivened by the Spirit of the Word. (interestingly echoed on p.97: "... the “divine liturgy” of the church is a medium that functions to frame the Scriptures within the canon of faith—the message of the gospel—showing how they work together within the drama of redemption that inexorably points to Christ crucified and risen")

My hope was that this book might help me to think this through more, perhaps give me a resource to pass on to people I converse with about such things from time to time and /or perhaps deepen or re-found my line on the matter.

While above I mentioned as the way I think of a certain approach to reading scripture -'flat'- is the word used in this book too -in a fairly similar way. I think this word is going around in discussions about how we receive scripture and I've clearly picked it up too.

The idea of Christ being the centre and re-establishing in our thinking and attitudes that the Word is primarily, first and foremostly, Jesus is also robustly expounded here. One of my other favourite terms comes in here too: seeing the scriptures as witnesses to the Word. And from there he quickly gets into noting the hard questions prompted by the dissonance between the Abba of Jesus and some of the frankly genocidal commands in, say, Deuteronomy. And in relation to this issue, I found myself very much resonating with this:

I would not opt for the functional Marcionism of inerrantists who ignored the “toxic texts” or pretended they don’t exist. Nor could I follow the biblicists —literalists who were willing to throw the character of God under the bus, painting him as a monster and calling it “good” without blinking. Nor could I follow many progressives who had seen the problem but left the Bible behind altogether—and with the Bible, sometimes Jesus too! (p.45)

I like the way that the author keeps the Emmaus Road encounter as a paradigm case. Though I must admit that his putting the prodigal son story as a master text by which to interpret and weigh all others much surely have vied for the headline label, but I guess that "the Emmaus way" is probably more disclosive in that role than, say, "the prodigal way".

I was a little shocked that the fundamentalist /literalist way of reading scripture was labelled a heresy -a modernist heresy, but I must admit that I have gone a long way down the road already to thinking that there is something in that label. I found the characterisation of this in this sentence, very arresting: " seeing Christ thrown under the bus again and again through an agenda-laden, simplistic misuse of our sacred text..."

So, I think that I found that overall, the book was confirming me in where I'd come to, and that I would want to have this book to hand to commend or pass onto people I talk with about scripture and spirituality and Christian formation. I read with a sense of recognition of both the problems being identified and of the ways forward trough the network of issues raised. It is good to have a winsome book which goes through things systematically, with clarity and in a way that shows clearly that this a a 'faith seeking understanding' issue not one to be mistakenly characterised as 'disobedience', unbelief or deception.

It's quite a fat book -over 280 pages- but not a hard read at all; it covers a lot of ground in a winsome way with occasional turns of phrase that help to attract and hold the imagination. It doesn't labour points but feels to give enough information and argument to outline the main points and there are useful further reading and resources signalled along the way where the reader can follow-up things that become of particular interest.

The first parts of the book look at how the bible gets misused and misinterpreted and in what ways flat readings are inadequate and downright unhelpful, while making a case for a biblical strategy for reading scripture chistotelically. The second parts of the book cash out the theory. I was particularly taken by the chapters on rhetoric and diatribe -so far I'd only seem them in fairly scholarly books, it's good to see an author widening the audience and appreciation of these ways in which scripture is full of texture which is easily missed. The second moiety of the book moves more into the nature of God in relation to scriptural language. The key thought to emerge is that God is love and that we need to be wary of language about God, especially 'wrath'. We are also treated to some of the writings of the early Church supporting this. The main point, though, seems to be that by flattening out the scriptures, there's no way to put characteristics asserted of God into order and so a mean-spirited wrath is put on a par with love.

One of the things I gained from reading this book which I didn't expect was the challenge to read more of early church writers like, well more specifically, Origen and Melito of Sardis (being introduced to an online version of his On Pascha seem like a good place to start). I noted too that there's a really helpful 'further reading' section.

Lines I liked

The Word of God is inspired, inerrant, and infallible. And when he was about eighteen years old, he grew a beard (p.29)

  if there is a God (forever a faith statement), that God is Love. And God is Love only, for every other attribute of God must ever only be a facet of that one pure diamond lp.56]

I invite you to make an honest inquiry of how the so-called “toxic texts” function as a mirror that reveals the human condition and our habit of projecting our own un-Christlike images onto God, especially in the form of religious violence. [p.58]

seeing Christ thrown under the bus again and again through an agenda-laden, simplistic misuse of our sacred texts... [p.114]

... whatever unrecorded words Jesus relayed on the road to Emmaus, they did not fit into the historical-grammatical-literal approach (i.e., literalism) of my education. Frankly, I felt ripped off [p.129] 

Imagine Jesus saying, in all humility, “I hate to make this all about me...BUT, yeah, it really is.” [p.142]

 

Thoughts I found helpful

An Emmaus reading of their accounts sees these agendas. When the authors rationalize bloodshed, we ask, “How do they prefigure the Sanhedrin’s rationale for Jesus’s crucifixion?” And when they problematize violence, we ask, “How do their critiques anticipate Christ’s denunciation of violence?” As I read any given text through Christ, I need to con-sider whether the author’s perspective reveals a veil that Christ has since removed or an unveiling that foreshadows his revelation of God [p.84] 

Imagine that the whole Bible is simply an incredibly long version of the parable of the prodigals. And conversely, imagine that the parable is Jesus’s ingeniously brief summary of the whole Bible, distilled into short-story format. We can do this because both offer us the same gospel narrative...one in an expansive library and the other in a tight paragraph. So, here’s what we can do: turn the parable into an imaginary walk-in closet organizer for every section, every book, and every chapter of the Bible. [p.97]

The traumatic training offered in the Bible’s R-rated material should not be read as the threats of a violent deity but as the loving (and dramatically memorable) warnings of a good Father in good faith. The people of God made countless missteps that become vivid moral lessons for avoiding landmines. God wastes nothing... because of Jesus’s instructions on loving, forgiving, blessing, and praying for our enemies, and his explicit rejection of retaliation, vengeance, and violence, we must never use a text where the Philistines are slaughtered to call for the slaughter of “infidels.” Rather, we might see how they foreshadow Christ’s victory over the nonhuman enemies of satan, sin, and death, and our personal battles with the spirit of pride, malice, and other un-Christlike attitudes within ourselves.[p.133] (Personal note: this has been the only way I have been able to appropriate these texts)

I will say this to all Christians, Jewish or Gentile: we have no business in the Jewish sacred writings without reference to our Rabbi and his Emmaus Way of reading them. And that way of reading always points to and prostrates before him... Christotelic reading  [p.141]

So, as we read Old Testament narrative, we are invited to watch and see:

•When the people of God experience suffering, Christ suffers with them.

•When God’s people cause suffering, Christ suffers in their victims.

•When the people of God achieve victory, Christ is the victor.

•When God delivers his people, Christ is the deliverer.

•When the people go into exile, Christ goes with them.

•When the people of God are led out of exile, Christ leads them.

•When the priest offered a sacrifice, Christ was the priest.

•When the lamb was sacrificed, Christ was the lamb.

•When God appeared, that was Christ.  [p.158]

 ... new consensus has been emerging around what we are calling a “Christ-centered hermeneutic.” This term describes what we have been discussing throughout this book: that we must read the whole Bible through the lens of Jesus. Christ is the chief cornerstone—the Canon par excellence—so that all Scripture is received as authoritative only after passing through the life, teachings, and gospel of Jesus [p.196]

Rather, the best theologians are those who analyze and describe what the praying and worshipping community has come to believe through its corporate experience of the reality of the triune God. In other words, worship precedes theology, often by several decades. As we experience the presence of God in prayer and worship, we begin to compose liturgies and songs that express what we have come tosee. Eventually, theologians become observant and follow suit. Teachers may begin to confirm the implications of what the congregation has already been singing and praying (which is to say, believing) over the past decades. Ironically, the first generation of these teachers are often regarded as heretical, sometimes even by the very congregants who spawned theoriginal revelation. Why? It may be that the congregation is still under the spell of previous teachers whom they regard as their authoritative prescribers of the truth.  [p.197]

 The voices of sacrificial religion that permeate the story of Scripture are at least threefold in tone and content. Sacrificial religion speaks to readers as “the voice of the accuser,” “the voice of the victim,” and “the voice of the law.” Each voice makes particular claims and demands ..a fourth voice emerges in the biblical text, corresponding to the revelation of sacrificial love. I call it “the voice of the Lamb.” The voice of the Lamb—the voice enfleshed in Christ as self-giving love—proclaims the way of the cross vis-à-vis the worldly religious way of the sword. [p.204-5]

...biblicism regularly fails to delineate between the omniscient Author and the limited or unreliable narrator. However, there are many examples in literature where we are required to do just that. For instance, in Don Quixote, Cervantes constructs an epic tale of a very strange protagonist—but he also writes the tale through multiple genres, stories within stories, and a famously unreliable narrator. That is, the true author (Cervantes) knows exactly what he is doing, but he tells the story through a narrator who does not. Thus, the author is not truly the narrator. Narrators are actually extensions of the character they’re describing or evenan independent character who speaks from a particular perspective. [p.218]

Quotes I want to put 'out there'

 the first Christians would not have asked whether the Bible was authoritative. Instead, they would have said that Jesus was their authority, and then they would have asked, “Which books testify to this?” Those that did were chosen for inclusion in their written canon, [p.76]

I confess to finding the pastoral and evangelistic damage literalism causes upsetting. The edge comes from seeing Christ thrown under the bus again and again through an agenda-laden, simplistic misuse of our sacred texts...with the ironic claim that this constitutes faithfulness. [p.114]

literalism is generally tied to believing that truth is reduced to actuality, factuality, and historicity, whether or not the human or the divine author intended any such thing [p.115]

Modernist literalism... constantly stumbles into thinking that if a text (such as Genesis 2, Job, or Jonah) is not accepted as factual history, then it isn’t true. But consider this: is the parable of the prodigal son not profoundly true? Is Christ’s story of the good Samaritan not supremely true? [p.123]

... the redactors who gathered the Hebrew canon consciously incorporated texts that challenge and subvert other texts across the Scriptures... without imagining that this might undermine or threaten the authority of their Bible. The narrative is allowed to stand as is, confirming the integrity and genius of the story of God and God’s people.[p.201]

I used to flip right to the “good stuff” in Job until I started seeing how “good” the foolish counsel seemed to me. Some of it appears to make good sense. Exactly! The important function of the friends’ speeches is to shine a light on our own idiocy. The friends’ speeches are an inspired revelation of our own error, not a divine thumbs-up to their error. [p.207]

Side note: Paul commissioned the female deacon Phoebe to deliver (preach!) his sermon to the Romans in person. He would have prepared her to communicate the tones such that his first audience picked up on the diatribe [p.245]

The emotional pairing of the terror of judgment offset by the relief of escape is effective(ish). But if our message focuses on fear that makes God the cause or agent of fear, we’ll either run from God or turn to him but have no desire to draw near to him. Spiritual Stockholm Syndrome

True justice for the prophets is the beautiful restoration of the shalomic state by means of mercy—defined as every manifestation of divine goodness. In that case, justice and mercy kiss [p.269]

Provocative or intriguing quotes

Origen included within his literal sense the need to discern and distinguish (1) actual history from (2) fictitious history (when we can) composed by the Spirit to communicate more-than-literal truth. In either case, the message the story conveys is true [p.130]

If we don’t see that Christ is the point, then the whole Bible remains Old Testament, but if we do, then the whole Bible becomes New Testament [p.218]

Link-Love for Review

A More Christlike Word on Amazon
A More Christlike Word website
Bradley Jersak’s website 

#AMoreChristlikeWord

I should say that I received this e-book as a review copy via the Speakeasy review scheme. I'm not obliged to say nice things about it (or the reverse, come to that), just to comment on it within 30 days of receiving it. Which I've done. 

Ephesians and All that Jazz -A review

Lately, I've been finding myself appreciating poetic writing more, and that's what drew me to the description of this book: I really delight in fresh expressions of thought and feeling that connect those concepts with different areas of our experience and throw light on them. That was the hope I began reading this book with as some of the blurb said "A fresh, new meaning must be created within the heart of a believer before these words can be understood and lived out. Objective truth must be internalized. The Word must become flesh once again. This is the essence of transliteration and what the Holy Spirit yearns to do in each heart, regardless one’s tradition. Jazz can begin to open up the possibility of God to a hungry heart." 

What struck me as I read the first pages is that it seemed to be a kind of midrash -especially in the way it offers a verse-by-verse 'commentary' but a commentary that is playful, sometimes poetic, always trying to connect with contemporary language, idioms and thought-forms. I guess that's why the word 'jazz' is in the title -it points well to the approach to the text. It comments not by looking into history or etymology or even intertextuality but rather by expanding, rephrasing and re-framing -riffing, you might say. That all makes for a lively, stimulating and sometimes intriguing and insightful read.

I think I'd classify it as devotional literature. It might be useful to refer to in sermon preparation because it might help shake loose an insight or a way to say something. It could also be helpful if  you're preparing to lead prayers referring back to Ephesians.

Links for this Review Ephesians and All that Jazz on Amazon Tom Anderson’s Website Tom Anderson Podcast Interview Tom Anderson Text Interview #EphesiansAndAllThatJazz Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this e-book free through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own

The Green Good News | A review

What drew me in to reading this was that this description rang important bells for me as someone who since my teens in (winces) the 1970s when I joined what was then the Ecology Party and shortly afterwards, became a follower of Christ, The latter in part because my understanding of what was needed for a just and sustainable lifestyle implied, to my mind, also challenging and dealing with the inner life that drives or supports unsustainable living. We need people to become less materialistic in the sense of seeking after more consumer goods and more materialistic in the sense of valuing the material of the world that God has made and upholds, and co-operating with the systems of sustenance that God has caused to be: cycles of water, gases, bacteria, fungi and all the rest; networks of mutual living and dependence. For us to live otherwise is to sin against neighbour and so against God.

The description that got my attention was this:

The Green Good News |  The Green Good News finds a fresh take on the Gospels, painting a picture of Jesus as a humorous and subversive teacher, an organizer of alternative communities and food economies, as a healer of bodies and relationships, and as a prophet who sought to overturn an empire and restore a more just and joyful way of life.

I think this is a fair, accurate, summation of what the book does and the kind of perspective it generates in a willing reader.

One of the things I've been enjoying in reading this book is that it feels like it is developing with or out of a reading of the gospels which resonates strongly with Ched Myers' Binding the Strong Man (which is explicitly drawn on and referenced) or the historical background work on the gospels that we can see in Dominic Crossan's work. This is so nicely reworked with attention to the ecological implications and interweaving. Much of the book is, in effect, an extended meditation on the linkage between exploitative systems which impoverish many and their extractive effect also on the environment. This is a critique on the current models of doing business and distributing resources: they are unsustainable environmentally and murderous in their slow-burn effects on humans.

The long look at parables (and I like the phrase "the pedagogy of the parables" to capture the way that parables in general open up issues by implication and reading them against Empire context) and helping us to unpick them from being sewn to authoritarian and exploitative habits of interpretation, and that's really helpful because we have a lot of unpicking to do.

I also enjoyed the insight about gardening being referred to Jesus in the Garden (of Gethsemane). It made me think of the strand of interpretation of Genesis 2 which reminds us that the best understanding of where the Garden of Eden was supposed to be is north east Palestine -and Gethsemane would be part of that. Then there is the play with the figure of the risen Christ -mistaken by Mary for the gardener -except that it's not a mistake for he is, in a sense, the prototypical gardener, it's just that it's not the gardener she thought it was.

Quotes I liked

to dwell with Jesus as a branch of the vine will require the loss of certain parts of themselves — the loss of their illusions of independence, the loss of the promise and security offered by the Empire, the loss of their numbing agents, the loss of the rhythms of their past life. But as both the images of pruning and cleansing underline, this loss is an addition by subtraction. It is a loss that makes possible fruitfulness and that is made possible by self-giving love (p.59)

We are called not just to teach a man to fish rather than simply giving him a fish. Teaching him to fish will not feed him for life if the lake is polluted and his community is decimated (p.62)

By telling them that they will fish for men Jesus is not recruiting them into the shirt-and-tie, door-to-door business of saving souls. Rather he is taking a repeated image out of the prophetic tradition and telling them that they are going to overturn the whole imperial order. In Jeremiah the Lord, in disgust at the idolatry and iniquity of the elite of Israel says: “I am now sending many fishermen, says the LORD, and they shall catch them... For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight” (Jer16:16–17) ... So to be made “fishers of men” is to be agents of justice who will fish out and remove the elite who have oppressed the poor and broken covenant with God. [p.67]

I enjoy the prayerful task of getting on my knees in the bulk food aisle and filling up our reusable containers with organic grains, beans, and flour. During the summers our small town holds a farmers market where we can purchase produce grown locally and regionally  [p.72]

Handing the hungry person a box of processed foods is a bit like the Roman Empire pretending they are feeding the fishermen by giving them back a small fraction of their catch in the form of fish sauce. These acts of charity that are taken to be the solution to the problem rely on the unsustainable food systems that are producing enormous ecological debt for future generations and are built on the backs of impoverished food workers [p.85]

What effect does it have on our understanding of the Creator, creation, and creatures, when we repeatedly hear stories that portray the divine as a vengeful slave owner, a profit-seeking businessman, a condescending rich man, a petty and murderous king, or a capriciously forgiving ruler?Alternatively, what vision of God and creation leads us to read a story of terrible violence and exploitation and assume that the perpetrator is ametaphor for the divine? And yet, this is how the parables are too often still read. [p.116]

By looking around, instead of up, we can come into different relationships of trust, solidarity, and love that help us find wholeness together [p134]

Link-Love for this Review

The Green Good News on Amazon
The Green Good News Website
T. Wilson Dickinson on Facebook 

#TheGreenGoodNews