C. S. Lewis: Love is an Undying Fire

Born at the edge of the 20th century (November 29, 1898) and died on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated (November 22, 1963), Clive Staples Lewis remains one of the most famous authors of the 20th century. I have read more of Lewis' writings than any other author except for Alexander Campbell.

What this Blog is Not About

C. S. (Jack) Lewis was born into a Christian family but through the influence of a skeptical teacher and then his college experience he became a committed atheist.  During World War I he was wounded in April 1918 in what seems to have been a friendly fire incident.  After the war he pursued his education at Oxford and became a Tutor in 1925. His love for literature immersed him in Norse, Greek and Irish which mythology soon provided God with the door back into his life. Lewis fought with the One he most did not want to meet.  In Surprised by Joy he relates,

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."

But he did embrace theism in 1929, and then Christianity in 1931, under the influence of J. R. R. Tolkien.  Lewis went on to become a first rate scholar and published many works that Evangelicals rarely read: The Allegory of Love, A Study in Medieval Tradition; A Preface to Paradise Lost; Studies in Words; The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature; and other works that show the true depth of Lewis' scholarship. But my blog is not about Lewis the scholar, Lewis the author of popular fantasy, or Lewis the one who saw to it that Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saw the light of day was published. This blog is about Lewis the man who quietly served and loved his fellow human beings.

What this Blog is About: Amor est ignis jugiter ardens

C. S. Lewis believed that love was the dynamic energy of the mind and source of creativity.  He wrote in The Four Loves "Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God." The Narnian lived what he confesses in a most humble yet dramatic way.

Lewis' friend Paddy Moore was killed in World War I.  C. S. Lewis took full responsibility for his widowed mother and his sister moving them into his own house to live with him and his brother.  Lewis kept this promise.  In her old age Mrs. Moore became verbally abusive and demanding.  C. S. Lewis took care of her till the day she died however.

Harry Blamires, a student of Lewis, recalled that his teacher was "personally interested in his pupils and permanently concerned about those who became his friends ... No one knew better how to nourish a pupil with encouragement." Lewis, as you can imagine, received mail from literally across the globe.  He believed that God wanted him to answer each and every letter with his own handwriting in spite of the massive demands on his already full schedule.  As a result over 12,000 letters by C. S. Lewis have been collected.  Some letters are to old women and some to young boys and everyone age in between.  Lewis treated them all with respect and equally.  The reason for this was because, as he says in The Weight of Glory, "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."

The theologian Austin Farrar was a friend of C. S. Lewis (sort of unusual because, unbelievably, many theologians did not like Lewis ... petty jealously finds fertile ground among all mere humans!).  He relates a story about Lewis in the book, C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table that again, I think, reveals the true greatness of Lewis and the depth of fruit of the Spirit in his life. First we all know that the Inkling opened his home to house children during World War II to protect them from Nazi bombs (the setting for the Chronicles of Narnia).  During the day, Lewis would work with some of the brightest scholars in the world and then come home and teach a young boy with severe learning disabilities to read using flash cards he made just for the occasion.  Throughout his career Lewis secretly funded the education for impoverished students stipulating that none could know of his contribution until after his death.

The story of C. S. Lewis is one full of wonder and wonderful. He loved hanging with his friends, The Inklings, at the pub (The Bird and the Baby it was commonly called) drinking beer from a stein and smoking a cigar discussing literature, politics, and theology.  He loved God and thought of his work as an act of worship to the Father of Jesus. And he loved people exemplifying the truth of agape because of this ...  (from the Latin Letters of C. S. Lewis) "In the poor man who knocks at my door, in my ailing mother, in the young man who seeks my advice, the Lord Himself is present. Therefore let us wash His feet."

Final Thought

It is my prayer that you and I can become lovers of the world as Lewis did.  If the church today could learn to be open, passionate, creative, and loving as the Narnian then we just might have a positive impact on this old world of sin and death.  May it be so.  Amor est ignis jugiter ardens - Love is an undying fire!

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God's Christ in Roman Asia: A Review of Richard Oster's Seven Congregations in a Roman Crucible

A person is often identified as a fool for entering waters he or she knows nothing about. That could very well be the case here.  I am not a scholar by any means, much less a scholar on on the book of Revelation, Roman Asia or the various issues surrounding the hermeneutics of that mysterious book. But N. T. Wright is not Bob Dylan either, yet decides to pick a guitar and sing (I do too) so perhaps I can slide by.

Revelation is one of those books, for better or for worse, that has always been on the select list of favorites in the Bobby V "canon within a canon" (Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Job, Psalms, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes,  Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, Jonah, Habakkuk, Tobit, Sirach, Prayer of Manasseh, Matthew, Romans, Ephesians, 1 Peter, Revelation)  I took an undergrad Revelation course with David Underwood back at Heritage Christian University and later one of my first grad courses with Dr. John Harrison (now at Oklahoma Christian University) while I lived in New Orleans. Recently one of my profs, Dr. Richard Oster (multiple courses), published a commentary on Revelation 1-3.  I will follow the basic IDeA (Identify, Describe, Assess) format that professor Carisse Berryhill encouraged us to use back at Harding School of Theology.

Reading Seven Congregations

Seven Congregations in a Roman Crucible: A Commentary on Revelation 1-3 (Wipf and Stock, 2013) is the fruit of Dr. Oster's mature scholarship.  Oster is widely recognized as an authority on Christianity in Asia Minor, Artemis, numismatic windows on the NT, he often corrects scholars not as grounded in the soil of history and, for former students, he is the master of all footnotes.

Seven Congregations covers the "Seven Churches," or the first three chapters, of Revelation in  two
hundred and seventy-six pages covering ten chapters and three appendices. The commentary is supplemented with one hundred "figures" most of which are photographs of illustrative coins, monumental architecture and iconography (more on these below). 

Chapter one, the Introduction, is the longest being forty-eight pages.  Rather than beginning with the ubiquitous discussions of authorship, date, and genre, Oster begins by noting the cultural influence of Revelation on such diverse people as Columbus, Luther and Newton. Further in the Introduction space is devoted to needed corrections of popular misunderstandings of the book (i.e. Antichrist, 1000 yr reign, rapture).  Believing that these concerns are foisted upon John's Revelation rather than mined out it. Oster offers his interpretive methodology that follows in large measure the historical-critical method of coming "within earshot" of John's authorial intent (p.6).  Oster could have quoted Alexander Campbell's seven rules for coming within "understanding distance" of the biblical author.

Oster is open to seeing a canonical (he does not use that word) coherence between the Revelation and the rest of the Story of God.  As I read through Seven Congregations twice, and parts more, it became obvious that Oster believes that the foundational bedrock for understanding John is the deep inkwell of the Hebrew Scriptures preserved in their Greek translation in the LXX. I appreciate his not merely citing illuminating texts but quoting them in full most of the time.   Second is the wider Second Temple literature of Judaism which would include the rest of the LXX not in the Masoretic Hebrew canon (Apocrypha), the Dead Sea Scrolls and some Pseudepigraphal materials. Finally the wider Greco-Roman culture is significant for understanding the text.  Oster is lavish in his quotations and references to all of these sources. This is one of the great strengths of Seven Congregations.

Probably one of the most interesting parts of the Introduction for the contemporary reader unfamiliar with the Roman world is the discussion of what Dr. Oster calls "fictive globalism."  The ancients did not think the world was flat and frequently depicted the earth as a sphere in art and monumental architecture. I believe this imagery is part of Roma's self proclamation and self promotion ... a Roman "Gospel" if you will.  Dr. Oster clearly shows that the language is not necessarily literal in intent thus John when he uses it does not necessarily mean the entire planet  (pp. 27-43 and Appendix C). This lengthy discussion highlights the value of the historical background of the book for understanding and points out  what is often simply ignored in many approaches to the book, even by NT scholars.  (The Romans, btw, did not believe they literally ruled the entire globe, though their ideology proclaims that. Nor did the Romans believe the world was flat. And it will probably surprise a good number of people that the Empire had established sea trade routes with the civilizations of Asia).

Chapter two reveals to us that the Seven Congregations is really about God's Christ in Roman Asia and not simply the churches. While we learn that John is a prophet (he may or may not be the Apostle) in the spirit of the great prophets of the Hebrew Bible, the focus is upon the Christ of God who has a counter claim to Rome and demands exclusive covenant loyalty. There is a two fold thrust of the sword of Jesus.  The message of Revelation is "insider language," that is, it is intended for believers or Christians.  Thus the one side of the sword cuts at the claims of the fake Caesar and his idolatrous claims and the other side functions as a frightening warning to believers who have sought some kind of accommodation with the Roman Gospel. The Jesus revealed in Revelation 1 demands discipleship ... perhaps he was not kidding about taking up a cross and following him (Oster does not make that comparison but I think it fits with his exposition). The audience or hearers of John's Revelation are not new converts as may often be assumed.  Rather some of them may be up to third generation members of the Christian movement. Oster makes the fascinating reference to the "grandparents" of the Laodicean disciples reading Paul's letter to the Colossians (p.185).  Perhaps this helps explain why Jesus does not talk to these believers as if they are mere babes in the faith.

Perhaps one of the most important interpretive contributions Oster makes here is the emphasis on the Christophany, or appearing of Jesus, in 1.12-18 (pp. 72-89).  A basic suggestion (the rule of context) of reading the book from front to back, beginning to end, means that the Churches in chapters 2-3 hear, and see, THAT Jesus speaking to them not the slain Lamb who is not introduced until chapter 5.  This picture of Jesus is woven into all of the Letters except Laodicea, the last, and most condemned, congregation (pp.184-185). The Jesus knocking at the door waiting to have a gracious fellowship dinner (Rev 3.20) is the frightening Christ of God that made John fall down as if he was dead! Maybe that is why they did not open the door. 

Perhaps John begins with this frightening, even militaristic, picture of Jesus to the Seven Congregations because judgment begins with the household of God and not the world. And that is what Jesus does with these congregations he demands that they repent from selling out to the Roman Gospel.

Another especially enlightening feature of Seven Congregations is Oster's discussion of the "synagogue of Satan" and "Jews who are not Jews."  His exposition, solidly rooted in the earthiness of the late first century and not contemporary political sensitivities, brings to light the complex matrix of Jewish opposition to the nascent Jesus movement and its collusion with pagan power structures of the time. He likewise shows how this language is hardly anti-semitic within its historical setting showing that the question of who was a "real" Jew was a burning question for Jews of all strips after the Fall of Jerusalem and  perhaps even dating from the crises of the Maccabees (see pp. 118-125 and pops up in other places as well).  For more on Jewish "bashing" of Jesus and Christians see the recent study by Peter Schafer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton University Press, 2009). John's criticism of the "synagogue of Satan" and "those who claim to be Jews but are not"almost certainly implies that he sees himself and the followers of Jesus as the true synagogue and therefore are the true Jews (the word "Christian" never occurs in Revelation).  Far from being anti-Jewish he is, in his mind (it seems to me), pro-Jewish.  The warfare between ethnic Jews and emerging Rabbinic Judaism and the Jesus Movement that was (again in my view) akin to the Hatfields and McCoys ... so deadly precisely because of the family ties. The scars of this battle probably shape Christianity, as we know it, as much as anything in the "New Testament" itself.  Oskar Skarsaune traces both the inter-change and the conflict that shaped Christianity in his rich work, In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity pp 209-276. This whole book should be required reading for every serious Bible student and editor(s) of the Gospel Advocate ;-)).

A unique feature of Seven Congregations, at least among the commentaries known to me, is the wealth of photographs and illustrations from the largely unknown wider Greco-Roman world. I love this feature.  It reminds me of Othmar Keel's groundbreaking work The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms.  This book has not left my desk in probably ten years. The "material culture" of Rome opens up powerful windows of understanding into John's world and early Christianity (see the use of Pompeii as a historical laboratory for hearing Romans as a mid-first century Roman in Peter Oaks Reading Romans in Pompeii: Paul's Letter at Ground Level.  Here Oaks reconstructs the people who likely read the epistle from information known from Pompeii). From these kinds of remains we learn that divine rulers (like the fake Caesar) were often presented with rays of light emanating from around their head or body (John's uses this to communicate a direct challenge to Roma). Or that the number seven was regarded as divine by nearly everyone. And that temples just might have pillars in the shape of human beings. Likewise material remains document the influence of Judaism in Roman Asia to the extent that even some coins were minted with Noah and his wife on them.  Some of the illustrations present information that has never been presented to students of Revelation before and are thus of even more value (Figure 97 for example).

The illustrations are unevenly distributed through Seven Congregations.  The Introduction and chapters 4 & 5 are the most lavishly graced.  Chapters 7-10 have far fewer basically one or two each.  The photographs, most of which are taken by Dr. Oster himself during his travels to the sites, are reproduced well.  The details we need to see are clearly visible (sometimes not the case in books reproducing photos).  All the photographs are in black and white in the Commentary, however, Dr. Oster is making them available in color at this location: Color Photos for Seven Congregations. See this link as well: Color Photos for Seven Congregations in Roman Crucible.

Seven Congregations pulls the reader into hearing Jesus' call for discipleship.  Some of these calls are quite challenging for the contemporary American church. The Prophet John, after all, was not interested in producing a work of scholarship but in conveying the message of the "one I saw like a Son of Man" to God's people caught in a dangerous crucible. Assimilation is a constant threat and ever a challenge for American Christianity just as it was in Rome.  In many ways the USA is just as idolatrous as Rome and every bit as enticing to those who live in her and off of her.  It is not referred to as the American Empire for nothing. The Jesus of Revelation is not simply counter cultural  when it comes to Roman culture but he is as radically as counter cultural when it comes to present Evangelical church culture. Thus we read in Oster,

"From first to last the Christ of Revelation is an ecclesiastical Jesus, a Jesus for the congregations of God ... the Jesus Christ that John knows and proclaims is one for the collective people of God, the congregations of Roman Asia ... Christianity outside the 10/40 Window would do well to abandon some of its individualism, perhaps repent, and confess that Jesus is not a parachurch Messiah" (p. 89).

Other than the fact that some readers will not know what the 10/40 Window refers too, this flies in face of so much that passes for "Christianity" in North America. (The 10/40 Window refers to North Africa through the Middle East and across Asia or between 10 and 40 degrees north of the Equator. Luis Bush coined the term in 1990).

God's Christ in Roman Asia does not like "cultural Christians."  One can not be a "Christian" in the privacy of one's own home but not in the marketplace.  Those who have thus made their peace with Roma are commanded, even demanded, to repent or else (p. 142f).

Finally Oster deals with the issue of crises for John in Appendix A.  Though Leonard Thompson comes in for censure the criticism could be leveled at a number of recent scholars like Adela Yarbro Collins, Crisis & Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse (my intro to that line of thinking). The claim is that John's crises was not rooted in reality for there was no official or sustained Roman persecution of Christians. But Oster demonstrates this is a simplistic reading of the evidence.  While there really was no Empire sanctioned pogrom one is grossly naive to think that no suffering occurred. This is a needed corrective (pp. 199-204).

Reflections and Assessment

I have often called Revelation the Bible's Disney's Fantasia on steroids. My view was strengthened years ago after I read the small, but enlightening, book by James Charlesworth called How Barisat Bellowed: Folklore, Humor, and Iconography in the Jewish Apocalypses and the Apocalypse of John (Bibal 1998).  Reading Revelation is a full sensory experience and it was intended (I believe) to be so. Oster notes that Revelation "strongly appeals to the senses" (p. 76).  Thus I would have liked to see some extended discussion, perhaps an appendix, on how the intention of the author to have his message heard (not simply read silently in our minds) and experienced in the context of corporate worship affects the use of symbolism. Is it possible that not every detail of a symbol has a specific meaning but contributes to the "experience" of the vision? Fantasia shows the modern American the emotive power of symbols even without the need of any explanation of them. Do the symbols make fun of (Charlesworth's humor) of Roman power and thus defang the potency of Roman imperial propaganda? How does that oral environment impact meaning (see Paul Achtemeier's "OMNE VERBUM SONAT: The  New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity" JBL 109/1 [1990] 3-27).

Dr. Oster has a very helpful overview of the Seven Letters (pp. 90-93). Here we note recurring elements in the letters and interconnections with the end of the book itself. While he confesses "This commentary assumes a holistic approach to the entire Revelation of John and to the seven letters and their integration with the remainder of the book" (p. 93). To this I am in one accord.  What remains unclear to me, however, is how the letters, and their themes, are in fact integrated into the rest of the book except the final two chapters.  I have in the past simply argued that the "apocalypse" of John does not really start until John is carried in the Spirit to the door of heaven (4.1-2) without necessarily grasping just how these parts of the book are interrelated. Perhaps in volume 2 Dr. Oster plans to provide a structural outline that helps in seeing the flow of the Revelation and the intertextuality of chapters 1-3 and 4-22.

Dr. Oster references two important artifacts from the wider culture, the bilingual inscription at the Temple of (Roma) Augusta in Ankyra Turkey and the Oracle of the Potter.  You can't have everything want the Rolling Stones sang, but it might be helpful to readers to have some insight into the content of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti.As I see it, this large inscription is the essential Gospel of Roma.  It is the public persona that Rome wanted the world to believe about itself. Rome is the very image of Virtue, Clemency, Justice, and Piety.  The text reads

When in the consulship of Tiberius Nero and P. Quintilius I returned to Rome from Spain and Gaul after settling the affairs of those provinces with success, the senate, to commemorate my return, ordered an altar to Pax Augusta to be consecrated in the Campus Martius, at which it decreed that the magistrates, priests, and Vestal Virgins should celebrate an anniversary sacrifice.

 

Whereas our ancestors have willed that the gateway of Janus Quininus should be shut, whenever victorious peace is secured by sea and by land throughout the empire of the Roman people, and whereas before my birth twice only in all is it on record that the gateway has been shut, three times under my principate has the Senate decreed that it should be shut.

 

After my victory I replaced in the temples of all the communities of the province of Asia the ornaments which my adversary [i.e. Mark Antony] in the war had, after despoiling the temples, taken into his own possession.

The whole of Italy of its own free will took the oath of fidelity to me, and demanded me as its leader in the war of which Actium was the crowning victory. An oath was also taken to the same effect by the provinces of Gaul, Spain, Africa, Sicily, and Sardinia.

I extended the frontiers of all the provinces of the Roman people, which had as neighbors races not obedient to our empire. I restored peace to all the provinces of Gaul and Spain and to Germany, to all that region washed by the Ocean from Gades to the mouth of the Elbe.

 

Peace too I caused to be established in the Alps from the region nearest to the Hadriatic as far as the Tuscan sea, while no tribe was wantonly attacked by war.”

In my sixth and seventh consulships, after I had extinguished the civil wars, having been put in supreme possession of the whole empire by the universal consent of all, I transferred the republic from my own power into the free control of the Senate and Roman people.” 

 

For the which service I received the appellation of Augustus by decree of the Senate, and the door-posts of my house were publicly decked with laurel leaves; the civic crown was fixed up above my gate, and a golden shield set up in the Julian senate-house, which, as its inscription testifies, was granted to me by the Senate and Roman people to commemorate my virtue, clemency, justice, and piety.” 

The Roman Gospel ... Virtue, Clemency, Justice, and Piety.  Roma did not have a self image problem.  Now contrast that with Revelation 17's "unveiling" of the true Rome.  Here is a direct challenge to the Roman Gospel from the Christian Gospel.

I have some lingering questions that may be helpfully answered in the next volume of Dr. Oster's commentary.  I agree that the Christophany is the controlling image of Jesus for the churches.  I also agree that this image is one that might even justly called frightening  (it did John). But this frightening Jesus tells John "do not be afraid" (1.17).  Some how the awe inspiring (indeed frightening) Christophany (like the theophanies in the Hebrew Scriptures, cf. Hab 3) are intertwined with the assurance that Jesus is still on our side.  Perhaps in a future volume Dr Oster can add some material on this point.  Related to this is the emphasis on Royal-Davidic Christology and its relation to the Lamb Christology.  What is it? There is, in my view, no doubt that the Lamb is very much woven into the structure of the Rev 5-22.  How can we affirm both? How are they interrelated? Does one interpret the other? The next volume will likely address this issue.

One last Reflection, and none of these are real criticisms but more like my wishes, has a missional thrust.  Much of the book of Revelation is anti-assimilationist and Dr. Oster brings this out forcefully at times. What might resisting the intoxicating culture look like today? John himself uses cultural idioms to convey his message of resisting the culture.  Is resistance limited to morality and meat sacrificed to idols? Probably not.  Is resistance based upon the pagan nature of the culture? Daniel is a very anti-assimilationist document as well yet the hero and his compatriots "seek the welfare of the city" to use Jeremiah's words.  So I would have really profited from a mini-theology of cultural resistance from Revelation (another Appendix!!). We are culturally enmeshed and sometimes it may be difficult for American Christians to know when their Americanism ends and their Christianity begins and sometimes we baptize the former and forget the latter.  So some guidance from a genuine NT scholar could prove helpful.  Books like Richard Horsley's Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder offer some challenging guidance but Horsley does not interact with Revelation even once.

Seven Congregations in a Roman Crucible should be required reading for anyone studying that book and even late first century Christianity in general.  You will have a much firmer grasp on the realities of early Christianity and its struggles and thus also on our own. Dr. Oster succeeds in bringing us within "understanding distance" of John's audible vision.

 

Well I think I have probably worn out my welcome so I will bring these Stoned-Campbell musings to an end. Tolle Lege & Shalom. 

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Christmas is Made for BOOKS!! A 2012 Reader's List

"Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed." - Anne Rice

"We read to know we are not alone" - C. S. Lewis

"Books are to be called for and supplied on the assumption that the process of reading is not a half-sleep; but in the highest sense an exercise, a gymnastic struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself." - Walt Whitman

 "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." - Frederick Douglass

I am frequently asked about books and reading material. This year's Christmas list of the top ten books to get and read consists of works I have read this past year and have recommended to various people. My list will be eclectic this year with a few old numbers and current hits.  Each, and all, of these books are worthy of your attention and will bless your walk with the Lord as we seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness.

The book Christmas tree is in my office. It includes Homer, Taylor Branch, Martin Heidegger, Robert Burnham, Ernst Troeltsch,Walter Brueggemann, Dava Sobel, A. A. Milne, Alexander Campbell, Peter Gay, Gregory of Nyssa, W. F. Albright and a few others who would never be associated except in my book tree.  :-) 

1) Randolph Richards & Brandon O'Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible. This is probably the best work on biblical interpretation on a popular level of the year. Not just another book on theoretical foundations or why parables are not epistles.  This work introduces non-scholars to the "hidden" cultural assumptions in Scripture that shape its meaning is profound ways. The chapter on collectivism (communalism) vs "individualism" alone is worth the price of the book.  This emphasis in Scripture is completely missed by most American Evangelicals and radically distorts our vision the Christian faith.  While not a flawless work the authors have done a marvelous job of bringing Western, modern, post-Enlightenment believers to breath the air of the Eastern, ancient, pre-Scientific of the Bible. This work opens our eyes as Westerners to the world of biblical people and shows us how to "enter in." The prose are lively and the illustrations are clear and contemporary and make for a great read. Bible reading is at its most fundamental level a profoundly cross-cultural experience. We cannot but be more informed Bible readers by digesting this book.

2) Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin ed & annotated by Henry Louis Gates & Hollis Robbins. I first read Stowe in the late 1990s, revisited a couple years ago and have just finished it again as part of a larger project. In the last few years there has been some discussion whether it should be the quintessential American novel. If you have never actually read this classic (classics are "classic" but often not read) perhaps you should find out the reason why it was in fact the best selling book of the 19th century after the Bible and why - unlike the Da Vinci Code - it actually changed the world.You may be amazed that old Uncle Tom is nothing like the stereotyped "Uncle Tom" you have heard ... I will be posting a blog on Uncle Tom's Cabin and its use of Scripture in the next day or two.

3) Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God  Truly one of the great little books in the world. Small in size but St. Bernard is a feast for the mind and the heart. Each page, even paragraphs, have the potential of leading to hours of reflection. This is a book that must be eaten.

4) Mirsolav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response . Volf is one of the premier theological thinkers of the present age. He is Conservative and Evangelical and interested in taking the Christian faith into the public square. This is an incredibly important book which is surprisingly easy to read. Volf seeks a position that can foster the common good of peace in the world and yet honor the true differences between Islam and Christianity. He does argue, and I believe convincingly, that Christians and Muslims do in fact worship the same God - that is if monotheism is true.  This does not erase serious differences between the two in fact Volf does not mash us all together in one big happy family. However we can live peacefully ... from a Christian point of view ... in a pluralistic world. You will be challenged, you will think deeply, you will argue with Volf I promise you, but if you listen I believe you will be enriched and blessed for having read this stimulating book.

5) Sara Gaston Barton, A Woman Called: Piecing together the Ministry Puzzle Where do you come down on women preaching? It really does not matter to be blessed by this work.  Anyone who has, in their soul, felt that God has led them to a vocation in life will be enriched.  Barton takes us on a wonderful journey, though uniquely her own it is also one that I have shared as a minister of the word. This is one of the most recent books I've read and I confess I could not put it down. I had the whole book read in a single night. I, of course, made annotations to affirm my "amens," occasional "hmmmmmm" and even one or two "I'm not so sure."   The book sort of lures you into the narrative and takes the rarefied air of exegesis and theology and places it within the incarnation of a single woman wanting to serve God with all her heart ... and mind.  Suddenly we see that exegesis and theology actually have real life implications. It is a wonderful and even loving book. This is a book you should read though.

6) Edward J. Robinson, I Was Under a Heavy Burden: The Life of Annie C. Tuggle. My friend Edward Robinson continues to do a yeoman's task of resurrecting the history of African-American Churches of Christ.  This small biography, however, combines excavation in black history and women disciples of Christ. Here is the story of tragedy and triumph, of struggle against racism and sexism, of finding security in the Lord in the face of abusive marriage and divorce. While engaged in the struggle in her own life Tuggle sought to be a blessing to all around her.  She is one of the unsung heroes of the Churches of Christ.  If you want to be motivated by a cross-bearer then this is a book you should read.

7) Thomas Chatterton Williams, Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture  Williams is a "young" secular writer engaging in a work of "cultural criticism" while at the same time bearing witness to the power of the influence of a father in the lives of sons or daughters. I have personally given out eight copies of this book to different people.  If only we could learn to engage in the kind of reflection Williams has done with the additional lens of the kingdom of God.  This is a wonderful book and I pray it bears much fruit.

8) N. T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God  Wright needs no introduction to most of the readers of this blog, he is (IMHO) simply the foremost NT theologian of the present era. But Wright has never been content to remain within the ivory towers of academia rather he believes scholarship must serve faith.  And we find that in this book.  A revision of his earlier work The Last Word this title includes two new chapters and applications. Outstanding work that holds much promise for our use of the Bible in our fellowship.

9) Richard Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? The Answer that Changed My Life and Just Might Change the World. Richard Stearns is one of my heroes. He was successful by worldly standards (i.e. wealthy). Yet he found himself struggling with how his faith actually made any difference in the real world ... honestly it does not make any real world difference for some believers. Now the president of World Vision he challenges us to see the real "hole" in our gospel of comfort, gospel of success, gospel of "me," and embrace the massive amount of biblical teaching on changing the world and addressing poverty.  Easy to read but one of those books that will demand a response as you engage it. 

10) Alister McGrath, Mere Apologetics: How to Help Seekers and Skeptics Find Faith. McGrath has been, over the last 10-15 years, one of my favorite authors. He is a man with not one but two PhDs.  One is in microbiology and the other in theology.  I had been reading McGrath for years and profiting from his historical and theological studies before I knew that he was actually a former atheist.  This work is now one of a number McGrath has authored on the subject of apologetics.  In this one he looks at our cultural situation and helps understand that apologetics and evangelism are not necessarily the same thing. One valuable aspect of Mere Apologetics is the recognition we live in a postmodern world. This work sees itself in line with C. S. Lewis' classic Mere Christianity and it is evident that McGrath has absorbed much of Lewis's legacy.  This is a good book and I believe you will be blessed through wrestling with it.

Bonus Books.  For me, one of the most fascinating books I read this year likely will never become a best seller.  That book is Larry Hurtado's The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins. This book is not simply about textual criticism though it clearly has relevance for that.  Rather Hurtado suggests that early Christian mss are witnesses to a Christian culture and that culture sheds light on the nature and history of early Christianity that is overlooked and even outright neglected by both NT scholars and church historians.  What do the texts themselves tell us about the people who made them and read them? Why did Christians adopt the codex so early and so universally? Do the texts testify that early Christianity was an integrated community ... that is one that was in contact with itself in various parts of the world.  The surprising answer to that is yes!  A wonderful chapter is on the phenomena of the nomina sacra in early Christian texts.  This book is a unique window into the world of Christianity in the second and third centuries and probably even the first.  I loved it.

Don't forget my own books if you are looking for a stocking stuffer :-).  Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James A. Harding and also A Gathered People: Revisioning the Assembly as Sacred Encounter.

Tolle Lege,
Bobby Valentine

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The Aryan Jesus: Reflections Part 2: Give Me Jesus the Jew

Read The Aryan Jesus Part 1 HERE

As I continue to reflect on Susannah Heschel's important work, The Aryan Jesus, I begin with some ...

Quotable Quotes

"Judaism and Jesus are at completely opposite poles to each other" (Wilhelm Boussett)

"Why can a lovely flower not grow on a heap of dung?" (Friedrich Anderson on why the "Old Testament count not possibly have been the heritage of Jesus")

"There is hardly any fact as certain as the fact that the religion of Jesus could not fasten to any roots within Jewish and Semitic ground. There must have been something in this religion that is related to the free Greek spirit. In a certain sense, Christianity has remained Greek until the present day" (Adolf von Harnack)

The above quotations could be multiplied by hundreds. Though these come from German Protestants the ideology is easily followed throughout the shameful history of Christian antisemitism. What is truly shocking here is that scholars of such caliber as Harnack could hold such a view. Such disparaging views on the Hebrew Scriptures and Jews are not difficult to document even among Restoration Christians.

De-Jew-ing Jesus

De-Jew-ing Jesus has been been a "Christian" pastime for almost as long as there has been Christianity. Among the first were Gentile converts who embraced Docetic Christology by denying the actual enfleshment (Incarnation) in space and time of the Son of God. John inveighs against these misguided disciples in 1-2 John. These were followed by the Gnostics who majored, it seems, in denying the Jewish heritage of Jesus. The infamous "Gospel" of Judas is but just one example. It is ironic that a Jewish scholar feels it necessary to teach Christians about their own faith. A. J. Levine writing about those who have fallen in love with Judas and other Gnostic texts writes "Those who prefer the Gospel of Judas over the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because they see it as eliminating anti-Jewish views from Christian origins would do well, instead, to see how Jesus fits into his Jewish context, and that includes the notice that Judas does not, in the Gospels, represent 'the Jews.'" [1]

Though Jews have frequently been scapegoats for nearly every ill under the sun throughout the history of European Christianity it has only been in recent centuries that some one actually denied Jesus was a "Jew." The root of the problem, however, is the rich soil of historic antisemitism. In order to de-Jew Jesus however one must first separate him from his Semitic heritage most clearly, but not exclusively, seen in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.

The modern assault upon the Jewishness of Jesus may be found in Friedrich Delitzsch's famous series of lectures "Babel und Bibel" begun in 1902. For Delitzsch the sabbath had its origin in Babylonian ethics, the Lord's name (YHWH) appeared first in Babylonian texts and biblical monotheism was an expression of a more noble Babylonian ideal. Later Delitzsch, a world renown "Old Testament" scholar, would recommend the first testament being excised from the Christian Bible [2] Writing in The Great Deception (Grosse Tauschung) he opines,

"The so-called "Old Testament" is entirely dispensable for the Christian Church, and thereby also for the Christian family. It would be a great deal better for us to immerse ourselves from time to time in the deep thoughts, which our German intellectual heroes have thought concerning God, eternity, and immortality."

As an aside many modern Evangelicals, and Restorationists, that have never heard of Delitzsch actually are one with him in practice. How many Restorationists carry around only a New Testament? How many go the the Gathering with only the NT? The NT is what "matters." Beloved think about the implications of caring around a "pocket" NT (and possibly the ubiquitous Psalms). This is the practical implementation of Delitzsch point of view ... I counsel against such anemic Marcionite theological practice.

The religion and ethics of the Old Testament are inherently inferior and Jesus could never have been rooted in them. It was obvious to Delitzsch that Jesus was probably of Babylonian (i.e. Aryan) descent because the Assyrians had settled the area of Northern Israel.

Susannah Heschel does not review the scholarship of Delitzsch in The Aryan Jesus but she could have. What she does do in a troubling chapter titled "Inventing the Aryan Jesus" is show how this degraded view of the nature of the Hebrew scriptures, and the Jews of Jesus day, set up the idea that Jesus was basically antisemitic himself! Jesus' theology, spirituality, nor his ethics could be rooted in the Jewish people. The Semitic race was inferior to the Indo-Aryan races in every way. Jesus did not have inferior blood flowing in his veins. Predating Delitzsch slightly, Ernest Renan declared "I am the first to recognize that the Semitic race compared to the Indo-European race represents in reality an inferior composition of human nature" (Heschel, p. 35). Jesus was truly great because he overcame Judaism! So Jesus became a Buddhist, Aryan, a German ... one could say white or American ... anything but Semitic. The German Christian catechism probably says it best

"Who is the enemy of the German essence? The enemy of the German essence is the eternal Jew ... Was Christ a Jew? It is the greatest lie that the Jews have brought into the world, that Jesus is a Jew ... Jesus's life and teaching is a great challenge against the Jewish spirit ... What do we think of the Old Testament?" (Heschel, p. 127).

As I close this section of this blog let me say I believe that much of the so called historical Jesus research is inherently antisemitic. The Criteria of Dissimilarity demands, almost a priori, that Jesus was a freak. Neither making sense in his social context and no connection with the church afterwards. N. T. Wright has commented on the troublesome relationship between the Jesus Seminar style scholarship and German portrayals of Jesus. "Have the New Questers, and the advocates of the Cynic Jesus, come to terms with the politically problematic analogy between themselves and those German scholars who, in the 1920s and 1930s, reduced almost to nil the specific Jewishness of Jesus and his message?" [3]

Jesus' message seems only valid in this line of thought if he is removed from his historical heritage and setting of Judaism, its prophets, its rabbis and its traditions. Jesus can only have a message if he is seen in opposition to the "Old Testament" and Jewish heritage. He certainly could never actually agree with the Jews! But the rejection of the Hebrew Bible and the Jewishness of Jesus leads to horrific results.

Why Does It Matter if Jesus is Jewish?

The God of the Bible has chosen to reveal himself through the history of Israel and in Jesus of Nazareth. The God Jesus reveals is the God that spoke to Abraham, wrestled with Jacob, destroyed Pharaoh, pronounced his Name in the hearing of Moses, heard David's cries, shed tears over the faithlessness of his bride Israel, and was with the people in exilic dark days. The One Jesus called Abba is that God and no other. The connection between Jesus of Nazareth and the history of Israel is inseparable and to attempt to sever them results in heresy. So why does it really matter that Jesus was born a Jew, that he was raised by Jewish parents, that he lived as a Jew, that he worshipped-prayed-studied the Bible as a Jew, that he died as a Jew ... and I submit that he was raised as a Jew.

First it matters because the Incarnation matters. Let's call it the "scandal of particularity." In the NT one of those early heresies was that Christ only seemed to be "human." All of the Gospel accounts torpedo this in their own way but it is the Epistles we call 1-2 John and Hebrews that destroy this notion. Jesus was, and is, a particular human rooted in a particular time and a particular place. To deny his concrete literal human nature is to be an anti-Christ. For the Hebrew Preacher it is not a "divine" Jesus that is the focus at all. Rather only a truly human being could be "our MAN in heaven" ... that is a Priest on our behalf. A non-Jewish Jesus is a non-human Jesus.

Second to separate Jesus from his heritage is to introduce both conflict and categories of thought that simply do not exist for him - thus we distort the message we pretend to honor. Jesus at a most fundamental level is part of a long biblical line of prophets. His teaching no more repudiates previous biblical teaching than Moses, Elijah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah or Jeremiah did. More familiarity with, not simply the words of those prophets but the patterns of thought in those prophets sheds tremendous light on the words and actions of Jesus. Like all prophets before him he engaged in more than simply preaching but in prophetic "drama" or action. When Jesus opened his mouth and spoke the thoughts he expressed were shaped by the words of Scripture, the Jewish rituals he had participated in, and other writings of his heritage like the Apocrypha. He sounded Jewish to his contemporaries. This is so critically important for when Jesus spoke on such things as kingdom or resurrection or faith ... he did not invent words that had no meaning. Without keeping Jesus rooted in his Jewish heritage Gentiles have not infrequently tended to define not only Jesus' teaching but also Paul's in pagan terms!!!

Thirdly it matters because the message of salvation that Jesus embodies is the message that was promised to and through Israel. Luke and Paul stress this repeatedly in various ways but note two examples. At the birth of Jesus Luke has Mary and Zechariah speaking in incredibly rich and very traditional Jewish language. Mary sings, regarding the promised birth of Jesus, that God has finally acted to "help his servant Israel ... according to the promise to our ancestors" (1.53f) and Zechariah uses virtually identical language (1.69-72). The coming of Jesus is not only God helping/saving Israel but of God showing that he is truly a faithful God. He has not abandoned his servant. Paul speaks in almost the same language in Romans 1. Connecting Jesus to David and the "gospel promised previously through the prophets" Paul refuses to separate the Christ from his Jewish roots. And it is that prophetic witness that infuses the Gospel with meaning. That there are new dimensions to the message is a truism but the new dimensions are shaped and rooted in the same Jewish soil.

If one would like to see a radical difference between a Jewish Jesus and a pagan Gnostic view of Jesus and the difference it makes I simply ask my blog readers to take the time to read through the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Judas. Most of our non-Jewish readings are not as blatant but they are nevertheless insidious.

Conclusion

My blog has grown but I could add many many more reasons why it matters that the Son of Man is Jewish. It is often said that Jesus is a man belongs to the world. Perhaps we should say rather that Jesus is the Man who is for the world. One of the most interesting books around is by Jaroslav Pelikan called Jesus Through the Centuries, His Place in the History of Culture. I bring this blog to a close by quoting his words on these lines.

"And the central figure does indeed belong to the people of Israel, but he belongs no less to the church and to the whole world -- precisely because he belongs to the people of Israel.

For the question is easier to ask than to answer, and it is easier to avoid than it is to ask in the first place. But ask it we must:: Would there have been such anti-Semitism, would there have been so many pogroms, would there have been an Auschwitz, if every Christian church and every Christian home had focused its devotion on icons of Mary not only as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven but as the Jewish maiden and the new Miriam, and on icons of Christ not only as Pantocrator but as Rabbi Jeshua bar-Joseph, Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of David, in the context of the history of a suffering Israel and a suffering humanity." [4]

Do not miss the point because of unfamiliar language. That Jesus is Jewish matters if Christianity is going to be ... Christian!

+++++

A note about the picture. This picture is a CGI creation for a BBC program on the "historical" Jesus in the early 2000s. It is based upon forensic and anthropological studies of Galilean Jews from the first century AD. This is far more likely what Jesus "sort of" looked like than anything present in Western art.

NOTES

[1] Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (HarperOne, 2006), 7-8.

[2] For an insightful overview and critique of Delitzsch's legacy from both a Christian and Jewish perspective see, Bill T. Arnold and David Weisberg, "A Centennial Review of Friedrich Delitzsch's 'Babel und Bibel' Lectures," Journal of Biblical Literature 121 (2002):441-457

[3] N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Fortress, 1996), 79, note 233.

[4] Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (Yale University Press, 1985), 20.

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The Aryan Jesus: Reflections Part 1: Give Me the HEBREW Bible

I recently read Susannah Heschel's The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. In fact when I finished reading the book I read it again in its entirety and have marked it up pretty well.

Susannah, the daughter of the late Jewish rabbi Abraham J. Heschel, has written a very important volume that American Christians need to read and wrestle with. As I was reading, over and over I found myself distressed by the familiarity of the rhetoric employed by Nazi Christians. The attitudes toward the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, Judaism as a whole and the merging of nationalism/patriotism with "Christianity" are disturbingly common themes in my experience. I plan on doing at least two posts in response to Heschel's Aryan Jesus: one on the OT/Judaism and the other on nationalism.

Early on in Heschel's study of the German Christian sponsored "Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life" she made this, to me, shocking statement. "In the writings of the Institute's theologians, Nazism became a symbol for Christianity, specifically for the pure and pristine original Christianity that they claimed they were recovering from the distortions of history" (p. 16). It was a "restoration" movement!! In order to restore pure Christianity as these theologians understood it, the eradication of the influence of the Old Testament with its Jewish worldview had to be curtailed. Indeed in order to separate Jesus from the Jewish people it was necessary to to separate him first from the Hebrew Bible. Nazism is, my friends, the end result of rejecting the Old Testament.

The last statement is true. When the church looses the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible it looses its most basic teaching concerning God's relationship to the world and opens the door to the naturalistic understanding of god in Nazi pantheism and much American piety. It is not unusual to hear of people, even conservative Christians, seeking God in the world of nature and supposedly finding him in the beauty of the trees and mountains and to "feel closer to God" in that rustic setting. But it follows, my friends, that if the American countryside "reveals" deity to us in a superior way then it follows that the same is true for the ancient Canaanites or the Nazi's.

If God is accessible through the depths of such experiences to all who have such experiences then there really is no need for the work of God in Jesus Christ. There is no gulf of sin, separating humans from deity that needs to be bridged by the death and resurrection of the Jewish Messiah. The loss of the theological (i.e. doctrinal) content of the Hebrew Scriptures is deadly poison. The New Testament connects (as does the Hebrew Bible) the Redeeming God to the Creator God! Paganism and Gnosticism have gutted that truth upon which every other truth in the Bible is erected upon. The Old Testament is in fact our inoculation against paganism!

Corresponding to the Hebraic doctrine of God in the Old Testament is the doctrine of humanity ... which is essential to biblical faith. When human life is cut loose from its moorings in history and humanity is no longer understood to be a creature WHOLLY dependent on the Creator God then the inevitable temptation is to see ourselves almost as semi-divine. We have an "immortal soul" with a "divine spark" one who claims permanence and absolute rights. Practically speaking this leads to a loss of the New Testament faith itself. Many conservative Christians hold the belief that every person has an immortal soul and after death the soul lives on in communion with deity. Therefore the proclamation of the resurrection of the body is "spiritualized" (paganized) into an affirmation of the immortal nature of humanity. In short the very heart of the New Testament proclamation is simply ... unnecessary! The very nature of "salvation" is redefined.

I am convinced that we need the Hebrew Bible. It is not background to the Christian faith but the very marrow of the faith. I am not suggesting that we do more character studies on a few select people (Joseph and David the good guys and Ruth and Esther the good girls! None of these are presented in Scripture as "examples" btw!). What I mean is sustained engagement from the pulpit in Genesis, the Exodus, the Prophets. What does it mean to speak of "creation" ... and that is not simply a denial of Darwinism. How does Gen 12.1-3 function as a sort of thesis statement for the whole mission of Israel, Jesus and the church? What is the Exodus and how is it a paradigmatic moment of the Gospel of Grace? We need to see in the Story of Israel our own story with God. Thus when I say we need to embrace the OT I do not mean simply making a pious confession that it is inspired rather we need to embrace the OT to understand what it means to be the People of God!We need it to understand GOD

As I pointed out earlier the removal of the Hebrew Scriptures lead to the separating of Jesus from Judaism and seriously distorts what we mean by the word "Christianity." The Institute wanted to "dejudiaze" Christianity ... how do we unknowingly join such an unholy project? Here are some brief reasons that we can work on in our own lives and our congregations.

1) The old canard that the God of the Old Testament is a god of wrath and the god of the New Testament is a god of love. It is not only incorrect but also heretical for Christians to distinguish between the God of Israel and the God of Jesus. There is no personality shift in deity from Malachi to Matthew. Such a belief betrays a serious lack of reading ... and understanding ... of both Testaments.

2) Closely related to the first heresy is the one that is frequently asserted that the Old Testament, or Old Covenant, was a covenant of LAW and the New Testament or New Covenant is of grace. In this scenario the word "law" is basically equivalent to the word "legalism." This one is nearly as hard to grasp as the first heresy. The old covenant contained law but it is not law. Here "law" means what it does in the Hebrew Scriptures: torah. Yet how anyone can read Genesis and think Abraham's relationship with Yahweh is a matter of "law" is difficult to see. Or how Israel's relationship with Yahweh is a matter of "law keeping." The Ten Words/Commandments are not soteric in nature. The Bible calls the Old Covenant a "Covenant of Love" (Deut 7.9, 12, NIV) not law or legalism. There are no legalists in the Hebrew Bible ...

3) Again closely related to the first two heresies is the caricature of the Old Testament as "fleshy" and the New Testament as "spiritual." Of the Old Testament as a matter of externals and the New Testament a matter of the heart. The word "heart" occurs in the "heart of the torah" ... the book of Deuteronomy at least 25x. "And now O Israel what does the LORD your God ask of you ..." the answer is "love him with all your heart." To "serve him with all your heart." In fact Moses calls upon the Israelites, in view of God's incredible grace, to "circumcise your hearts" (Deut 10.16, see 30.6). May these heresies DIE never to be resurrected again.

4) Let me offer a note of observation on the origin of the above three heresies. They arise in most of our churches from a faulty hermeneutical approach. Christians tend to the read the Hebrew Scriptures in the bad manner they read the New Testament Scriptures ... piecemeal!! Reading bits and pieces does an injustice to both. "The Torah" is a nothing less than the STORY of the Creator God becoming the Redeeming God ... of that God bringing his "Adams" back into fellowship with him. Yes, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy can be spliced apart to be individual books. But only in the same sense that the Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King are individual books. None are complete without the others because they are all part of the same story. The Torah tells a single unified STORY. A story of intimacy with God in his Temple Garden, to violation of the sanctity of that temple, to the deity in the Temple reaching out to live with his created "Adams" once again. This is the story of Genesis to Deuteronomy! Leviticus is not an end to itself. It functions in the context of the Story. Leviticus is given both chronologically and theologically AFTER the Creator God has become the Redeemer God in the Exodus event.

Jews around the world read the Torah from Genesis to Deuteronomy over and over ... I have never met a Jew that imagined Yahweh was a God of wrath and the covenant was anything but the love of God Exodus comes before Sinai ... just as Calvary comes before Pentecost.

5) My post has grown long so let me wrap this up. The loss of the Old Testament means a loss of what the New Testament actually teaches. The loss of the Old Testament results in gross anti-Semitic characterizations of Jesus own teaching, the Judaism of his day, and even of early Christian history. Elders need to demand, yes DEMAND, solid (and faithful) instruction from the pulpit and other means to protect the church from the kind of paganism, masked in the garb of Christian faith, that results, honestly, in Nazism. Susannah Heschel has published a great book. We in the church who claim to follow the Nazarene need to take the lesson of history to heart and ask just how it all happened. The answers may be a bit disturbing to those of us who were taught all our lives some of the grossest of errors in the name of restoring first century Christianity. But the Bible of the first century church was none other than what became called the Old Testament.

Jesus of Nazareth and his work have meaning, according to the New Testament documents, only in relation to Israel, and unless the modern teacher makes that relation clear, I suggest he cannot preach Jesus Christ as the New Testament writers knew him and understood him.

Shalom,
Bobby V

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Seeking Asylum in the Savior: A Brief Review

I recently received a book titled Seeking Asylum in the Savior: The Road to the Cross is not a Cul-De-Sac from its author Steven Clark Goad. I want to begin this brief review by thanking Steven for his kindness for the book and also thank him for helping us to reflect on our Lord in a powerful way.

Seeking Asylum is a work of devotion in more ways than one. The work is devoted to helping Christians focus on Jesus in a more concentrated way and it is also attempting to help disciples become imitators of the one they confess. Steven is a great word smith and he paints some really moving pictures through the book.

Seeking Asylum is divided up into eight chapters: Our Awesome Savior; The Savior Who Blesses; The Savior Who Understands; The Savior Who Weeps; The Savior Who Creates; The Savior Who Smiles; The Savior Who Frowns; and The Savior Who Gives & Forgives. Each of these chapters is made up of short essays that sort of touch on the main theme in that chapter. If you are familiar with Jim McGuiggan's Jesus, Hero of My Soul the pattern is similar.

Some of the images are captivating, Steven has a spiritual gift for story-telling. I love verbal portrait of "my Lord with sawdust in his hair and calluses on his hands" (p. 22). Or picture of getting over our narcissism in "The Church of Goad" (pp. 124-126). Or evangelism as "one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread" (p. 186). Another short chapter that I have already referred to my classes is "What Kind of Church Is This, Anyway?" One of my favs in the book "Is it Ok to Ask Why" (pp. 96-99) is one every parent, Sunday school teacher and preacher needs to drink deeply from ... the Bible is literally filled with the question of "why." Steven is writing healthy stuff here.

I had only one "footnote" I added to the book and it came near the beginning. In an outstanding chapter, "The Power of the Resurrection" (pp. 30-32). Steven writes, "The power of the resurrection testifies that souls are saved!" For the record I am with Steven in calling attention to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus is absolutely central and needs more and more and more emphasis. We need to talk about the resurrection on more than Easter. Yet "salvation" is so often understood in Evangelical circles in terms that flirt with either neo-gnostic or platonic understandings. The resurrection of Jesus is promise from God that my own body will be saved not simply my soul. Paul speaks of "the redemption of our bodies" not the salvation of our souls in a Platonic sense (Romans 8.9-30, esp. v.23) The resurrection of Jesus is God's promise that he has not abandoned creation. Now Steven does not deny any of that. He statement just participates in a way of talking that encourages Christians to believe all that matters to God is something we cannot see ... and of course I know Steven does not believe that.

Overall I think Seeking Asylum in the Savior is a book that can help us do just that. Its memorable pictures and humorous way of commenting on the Christian life will help us steer clear of any journey stopping cul-de-sacs. I suggest the best way to encounter this book is not to simply read it all the way through in one setting. Rather I recommend reading one chapter a day with a friend or spouse and mull over the story. I believe by the end you will indeed find yourself finding a safe place with Jesus on the grand adventure we call discipleship ...

Shalom
Bobby Valentine

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The Greatest Books in Christian History

I recently read a list of what purported to be the 100 Greatest Christian books ... I was, frankly, surprised by many of the titles that were on the list. Conversely I was shocked by the absence of others. Out of the entire list not a single book dedicated to the "Old Testament" - the ghost of Marcion is still a poltergeist in the Protestant psyche. So I decided to make my own list.

Of course my list will be flawed too. I am sure some will scratch their head over a few selections. Yet what follow here are my selections for the 100 greatest Christian books of all time. I have tried to pick works that have impacted Christian thought and life in important ways ... and also works that have helped shape me personally even though I do not always agree completely with a given book. I would recommend to any Christian looking to build a library that these books deserve a place on their shelf (or kindle) ... but not only the shelf they deserve to be devoured. I have attempted to avoid what C. S. Lewis termed "chronological snobbery" but there may be more modern titles. I will offer an older title and then newer as my approach. I will offer the title with no justification for it.

1) The Apocrypha

2) J. B. Phillips, Your God is too Small

3) The Apostolic Fathers (ed. Michael Holmes)

4) Jacques Ellul, The Meaning of the City

5) Origen, Hexapola - now this work I do not have and does not exist as known today but if it shows up on Google books let me know

6) Martin Luther King, Jr, Letter from a Birmingham Jail

7) Justin, First and Second Apology

8) Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

9) Irenaeus, Against Heresies

10) Walther Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crises

11) Tertullian, Apology

12) Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus

13) Eusebius, Church History

14) William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

15) Augustine, The Confessions

16) Augustine, City of God

17) G. Ernest Wright, God Who Acts

18) Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People

19) Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis

20) Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word of God

21) Jerome, The Vulgate

22) Richard Foster, The Celebration of Discipline

23) Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care

24) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

25) Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs

26) Jacob Spener, Pia Desideria

27) Thomas a'Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

28) Francis of Assisi, The Writings of Francis of Assisi

29) C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

30) Anselm, Cur Deus Homo

31) Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker

32) Erasmus, In Praise of Folly

33) Erasmus, Greek New Testament

34) Martin Luther, Selections from His Writings

35) William Tyndale, English New Testament, Old Testament (Pentateuch and Jonah)

36) William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man

37) N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God

38) Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

39) Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East

40) Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle

41) Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms

42) Thomas Campbell, The Declaration and Address

43) John Foxe, Foxes Book of Martyrs

44) John Bright, The Authority of the Old Testament

45) B. F. Westcott & F. J. A. Hort, Greek New Testament

46) Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative

47) Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets (2 Vols). I know Heschel is a Jewish author but his work still ranks among the richest exposition of the biblical text.

48) Abraham J. Heschel, The Sabbath

49) John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress

50) John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus

51) Ronald M. Hals, Grace and Faith in the Old Testament (one of the finest little gems of a book I've ever read)

52) George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land

53) Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth

54) William Wilberforce, Real Christianity

55) C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

56) Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All its Worth

57) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

58) The Desert Fathers

59) Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World

60) Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses

61) Gordon D. Fee, God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul

62) Lancelot Andrewes, Private Devotions

63) F. F. Bruce, New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

64) Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy

65) Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections

66) John Stott, The Cross of Christ

67) Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

68) Lewis Smedes, The Art of Forgiving

69) Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission

70) Bonaventure, The Life of St. Francis

71) Ray Bakke, The Urban Christian: Effective Ministry in Today's Urban World

72) Willard Harley, His Needs, Her Needs

73) Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament

74) Marva J. Dawn, A Royal 'Waste' of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World

75) Terence Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective

76) Gustaf Aulen, Christus Victor

77) F. F. Bruce, History of the Bible in English

78) T. S. Eliot, The Wasteland

79) T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

80) Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

81) John Donne, The Holy Sonnets

82) Michael Green, I Believe in the Holy Spirit

83) N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God

84) John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology: Israel's Gospel

85) Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages

86) Stanley Grenz, Created for Community

87) Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus Rediscovered

88) C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

89) Marvin Wilson, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith

90) Mark A. Noll, America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln

91) Robert Wolgemuth, She Calls Me Daddy

92) Helmut Thielicke, The Trouble with the Church: A Call to Renewal

93) Dallas Willard, Divine Conspiracy

94) Leonard Sweet, Postmodern Pilgrims

95) R. T. France, Jesus and the Old Testament

96) Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament

97) Oswald Chambers, The Love of God

98) Richard Lischer, The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present

99) Philip Yancy, Disappointment with God

100) Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger

There you have it. There are many more good books but these ones made the list today. If these are not the 100 Greatest books in Christian history they are at least one hundred books that have molded and shaped my own thinking and walking in profound ways. If you have not read these books I encourage you to get them and devour them. There is no book on this list I would not gladly read again ... in fact all (save Origen) have been frequented by me over the years. Some I like because I argue with them so much ...

Tolle lege,
Bobby Valentine

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