A brief (again, brief by Book Review Geek standards) book review of Galatians and Christian Theology, Mark W. Elliott, Scott J. Hafemann, N. T. Wright, and John Frederick, editors (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), for NetGalley:
In this volume of papers from the University of St Andrews' fourth triennial Scripture & Theology conference (2012), the editors rightly note that getting the papers in a conference volume to "talk" to one another -- to convey to the reading audience something of the conversations that took place at the conference itself -- is a work in progress, but one in which they're improving. Many of the papers in this book are splendid examples of what it should look like when biblical studies and theology go hand in hand; many also reference and/or riff on one another, in richly integrated ways. That doesn't mean that the result is always easy to read: some of the papers are highly technical in their approach to biblical studies, theology, or both, so the audience likeliest to benefit from them will probably be at the level of graduate studies or above. But those who choose to invest (financially, intellectually, and even spiritually) in this book will find that it substantially reshapes their thinking about Paul's letter to the Galatians, as it has done with mine.
The volume is divided into three parts -- Justification, Gospel, and Ethics -- but even these divisions are more for convenience than rigid categorization, as many of their constituents participate in more than one category. To note just a few of (what I found to be) the book's highlights: first, having read co-editor Tom Wright's recent two-volume book on Paul, I was amused that he managed to fit several of his most vital points from that book into just (!) forty pages here, as when he repeats his incisive conclusion that "messiahship, like image-bearing humanness itself, was all along a category designed, as it were, for God's own use" (39). I also enjoyed John Barclay's studied description of Paul as living "in a face-to-face society where self-advertisement, rivalry, and public competition were a perpetual cause of tension," to which he responded with "a vision of communal life where the destructive features of this agonistic culture can be both recognized and effectively repulsed" (305). And the collective treatment of complex topics in Galatians (not just the principal headings of justification, gospel, and ethics, but also apocalyptic, for example) is highly nuanced, if (perhaps inevitably) repetitive at times. One caveat for Kobo users: I'm not sure whether the problem was with this book or on Kobo's end, but I found that the annotations I made in the text were randomly re-organized (i.e., not by date, position in book, or any other criteria that I could see), and some annotations were dropped completely. Perhaps this won't be a problem for other e-readers -- and it certainly won't be for those who will benefit from reading this excellent new book the old-fashioned way!
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Book Review: Nathan Foster's Making of an Ordinary Saint
Here's another brief book review for Baker Books Bloggers: Nathan Foster's The Making of an Ordinary Saint: My Journey from Frustration to Joy with the Spiritual Disciplines (Baker Books, 2014).
When reviewing a book, there’s a temptation to read quickly,
to skim for a quick grasp of the essentials. A good book on spiritual formation
won’t let you get away with that: you’d see the words but miss the wisdom.
Nathan Foster’s new book is no exception. In learning to embrace spiritual
disciplines that had previously frustrated him, Foster makes no attempt to
ignore his father’s legacy. Quite the opposite: not only does Richard Foster contribute
forewords to the book and to each chapter, he’s also present through discussions
that the author includes in addressing his own struggle with each discipline.
And of course, these are the “classical” disciplines as determined by his father’s
classic, Celebration of Discipline — fasting,
prayer, submission, worship, service, etc. — so in emerging from Richard’s
shadow, Foster the Younger journeys through each, but in refreshingly narrative
form. He shows deep honesty in assessing his own earlier failures (and gradual,
painstaking successes) in his chapter on the discipline of study, and again in
admitting his struggle to “unplug” from technological media while seeking
simplicity, and yet again in naming and confessing the addictive patterns that
have darkened his life.
Foster does well in inviting readers along on his journey, but
there are brief missteps along the way. Some of the “portrait” sections that
conclude each chapter feel tacked-on, not fleshed out fully enough to do justice
to the lives of those highlighted there; the inclusion of Jane Addams as an
exemplar of service surprised me, perhaps because another very recent book from
a Baker imprint (Scot McKnight’s Kingdom
Conspiracy, which I reviewed a little while ago) severely criticized Addams for diluting and over-socializing
the gospel. Foster’s references to Scripture sometimes seem offhand, and in the
one case where he highlights a specific Greek word from 1 Timothy, he’s simply
wrong: Paul uses another word entirely. That said, many readers will find
welcome ways of encountering the disciplines here, as I have. Foster’s adaptation
of the monastic experience of the early church fathers and mothers — coming to
recognize difficult moments through which God guides us as “my desert to
embrace” (pp. 155-61) — struck deep in my heart and spirit, and I know that
what he’s shared throughout this book will encourage me as I encounter the “deserts”
and the joys ahead.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Book Review: McKnight's Kingdom Conspiracy
Now it's Brazos Bloggers' turn. This is a brief review -- well, brief for someone used to 1200-to-2000-word reviews, anyway -- of Scot McKnight, Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church (Brazos, 2014).
I enjoy reading Scot McKnight's work, even when I disagree with him (usually on relatively minor points). And I don't disagree with him here, for the most part. What he's trying to do, and largely succeeding at, in his new book is to reconcile two Christian views of "kingdom" -- as theology, as language, and as activity -- that have tended to diverge over the past century and are doing so again today. McKnight casts one stream of thought and practice, which tends to aim its "kingdom" work toward "the common good," social justice, and culture-making, as "skinny jeans kingdom" people, and the other, the kingdom-as-personal-salvation camp, as "pleated pants kingdom" people (including, cleverly, "the arch-Pleated Pants scholar" George Eldon Ladd, p. 10). Those who recognize themselves as falling into one camp or the other will find their views and practices represented well here, both in strengths and weaknesses. For those folks, and for the rest of us who find ourselves somewhere between the two extremes, this book serves as a fine biblical theology of church, kingdom, and mission. It's very readable, too: the most challenging words in the body of the text are perhaps eschatological and parabolic, while readers who want to go deeper can plunge into sources recommended in the endnotes (as when McKnight notes Tom Wright's recent two-volume work in its entirety in partial support of a point on first-century use of "Son of God" imagery, p. 132!).
Throughout Kingdom Conspiracy, McKnight nicely balances his attention to many facets of kingdom thought and action, including the tensions of its growth in this world (classically, the "already" and the "not yet", and as both "realm" and "reign"); the biblical (and deeply contextual) story that it encapsulates; and what it looks like to live out the kingdom in mission, in vocation, and in public and political presence -- or, simply put, what it means to embody the kingdom in and as the church. There are moments when the author nearly loses that balance. I wish he'd added more nuance to his study of the New Testament's view of "the world" and Jesus' confrontation with its idolatrous worldviews (pp. 17, 60): a brief focus on the way that Rome saw the world (as the oikoumenē, the inhabited world/culture that it had inherited from Greece) might have strengthened McKnight's discussion of culture and counterculture, both here and through the rest of the volume. But that missing nuance does little to hurt his overall argument. This book is highly recommended for anyone -- no matter how close or distant their relationship with "church" -- who has ever struggled with how the church is to embody God's kingdom in the world.
I enjoy reading Scot McKnight's work, even when I disagree with him (usually on relatively minor points). And I don't disagree with him here, for the most part. What he's trying to do, and largely succeeding at, in his new book is to reconcile two Christian views of "kingdom" -- as theology, as language, and as activity -- that have tended to diverge over the past century and are doing so again today. McKnight casts one stream of thought and practice, which tends to aim its "kingdom" work toward "the common good," social justice, and culture-making, as "skinny jeans kingdom" people, and the other, the kingdom-as-personal-salvation camp, as "pleated pants kingdom" people (including, cleverly, "the arch-Pleated Pants scholar" George Eldon Ladd, p. 10). Those who recognize themselves as falling into one camp or the other will find their views and practices represented well here, both in strengths and weaknesses. For those folks, and for the rest of us who find ourselves somewhere between the two extremes, this book serves as a fine biblical theology of church, kingdom, and mission. It's very readable, too: the most challenging words in the body of the text are perhaps eschatological and parabolic, while readers who want to go deeper can plunge into sources recommended in the endnotes (as when McKnight notes Tom Wright's recent two-volume work in its entirety in partial support of a point on first-century use of "Son of God" imagery, p. 132!).
Throughout Kingdom Conspiracy, McKnight nicely balances his attention to many facets of kingdom thought and action, including the tensions of its growth in this world (classically, the "already" and the "not yet", and as both "realm" and "reign"); the biblical (and deeply contextual) story that it encapsulates; and what it looks like to live out the kingdom in mission, in vocation, and in public and political presence -- or, simply put, what it means to embody the kingdom in and as the church. There are moments when the author nearly loses that balance. I wish he'd added more nuance to his study of the New Testament's view of "the world" and Jesus' confrontation with its idolatrous worldviews (pp. 17, 60): a brief focus on the way that Rome saw the world (as the oikoumenē, the inhabited world/culture that it had inherited from Greece) might have strengthened McKnight's discussion of culture and counterculture, both here and through the rest of the volume. But that missing nuance does little to hurt his overall argument. This book is highly recommended for anyone -- no matter how close or distant their relationship with "church" -- who has ever struggled with how the church is to embody God's kingdom in the world.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Book Review: Next: Pastoral Succession That Works
I've written short book reviews here for Speakeasy and LibraryThing.com -- and I'll be starting to add some for NetGalley, Brazos Press Bloggers and Baker Books Bloggers. This will be the first example for Baker.
Next: Pastoral Succession That Works, by William Vanderbloemen and Warren Bird (Baker, 2014).
From its first words -- "Every pastor is an interim pastor" -- to its diverse potential audience, there's much to commend about Next. The authors have clearly done their homework concerning the challenges of transitioning from one pastor to the next; in fact, it's their work with pastors and churches whose transitions didn't work well (and many others that did) that drives their concern. Whether the reader is a newly appointed pastor, one approaching retirement or a move to another post, or a new or longtime church board member, there are lessons worth remembering here. The authors are also aware that many of their readers will find themselves in more than one of the above roles over the course of their ministerial lives -- which makes this as valuable as a later reference text as it is for a first-time reading.
Vanderbloemen and Bird wisely note that there's no single formula for a successful succession from one pastor to the next, but they aren't afraid to name names in recounting disastrous transitions, either (nor to protect anonymity, when necessary); and to their credit, even as they gather lessons from such disasters, they're careful not to make too much of the scandal involved, but to call their readers toward greater expressions of grace. They also explore the close interconnections of pastoral vocation, church mission, and personal identity, which (when undervalued) can make pastoral succession such a sensitive issue. And as the spouse of a pastor just entering her second year of ministry at our church, I appreciate that at least some of their stories involve female pastors (notwithstanding the males shown in transition on the front cover!). I did wish that more of their examples drew from smaller churches, but I recognize the difficulty of getting accurate data there. I wondered, too, if there wasn't too much emphasis on "seamless" transitions: a succession should hopefully be smooth, yes, but isn't there a potential idol to be dealt with in wanting it to show no seams, no visible places of continuity (or healthy discontinuity!) at all? That said, there's a great deal of wisdom in this book, including the "Next Steps" at the end of each chapter -- many of which will offer helpful challenges to anyone with a role to play in their church's next pastoral succession.
Next: Pastoral Succession That Works, by William Vanderbloemen and Warren Bird (Baker, 2014).
From its first words -- "Every pastor is an interim pastor" -- to its diverse potential audience, there's much to commend about Next. The authors have clearly done their homework concerning the challenges of transitioning from one pastor to the next; in fact, it's their work with pastors and churches whose transitions didn't work well (and many others that did) that drives their concern. Whether the reader is a newly appointed pastor, one approaching retirement or a move to another post, or a new or longtime church board member, there are lessons worth remembering here. The authors are also aware that many of their readers will find themselves in more than one of the above roles over the course of their ministerial lives -- which makes this as valuable as a later reference text as it is for a first-time reading.
Vanderbloemen and Bird wisely note that there's no single formula for a successful succession from one pastor to the next, but they aren't afraid to name names in recounting disastrous transitions, either (nor to protect anonymity, when necessary); and to their credit, even as they gather lessons from such disasters, they're careful not to make too much of the scandal involved, but to call their readers toward greater expressions of grace. They also explore the close interconnections of pastoral vocation, church mission, and personal identity, which (when undervalued) can make pastoral succession such a sensitive issue. And as the spouse of a pastor just entering her second year of ministry at our church, I appreciate that at least some of their stories involve female pastors (notwithstanding the males shown in transition on the front cover!). I did wish that more of their examples drew from smaller churches, but I recognize the difficulty of getting accurate data there. I wondered, too, if there wasn't too much emphasis on "seamless" transitions: a succession should hopefully be smooth, yes, but isn't there a potential idol to be dealt with in wanting it to show no seams, no visible places of continuity (or healthy discontinuity!) at all? That said, there's a great deal of wisdom in this book, including the "Next Steps" at the end of each chapter -- many of which will offer helpful challenges to anyone with a role to play in their church's next pastoral succession.
Saturday, September 13, 2014
The Temporary Grease Monkey
Occasionally, during the long haul of our renovations, amid the self-castigating hollers that emanated from this or that corner of the house, Karen would hear a satisfied little chuckle, often followed by my observation that she, in her wisdom, had married "a clever little monkey": some little detail of a renovation task had finally gone just like I wanted it to, and though this was not what I had trained for, I could be momentarily proud of an accomplishment.
Well, after months of job-searching and continuing to work on little bits and pieces of the house, it's time to see how well this clever little monkey can pick up some new manual skills: for about three months, I'll be helping out in a friend's auto shop. Again, not my first choice, but I'm happy to do it, and I may even survive it (though the first six weeks, where the job overlaps with the second half of my thrice-weekly stationary cycling workouts, should be, um, interesting). It'll bring in some of that very helpful stuff called money, and it should end, neatly, just about the same time as the New Testament survey course I'll be teaching at Tyndale begins. But it does mean that I'll have to reassess (again) just how to fit writing into my schedule. It's likely I won't have a lot of time to reflect on that here -- but I've already created some space in the fall schedule to work on book reviews and a few other small projects, and hopefully whatever God has in store for me after that will allow a little more writing time than full-time automotive work does. Maybe I'll even manage, through this interval, to learn a little more discipline with my time, so that I can make better use of what time I have after that. Here's hoping.
Well, after months of job-searching and continuing to work on little bits and pieces of the house, it's time to see how well this clever little monkey can pick up some new manual skills: for about three months, I'll be helping out in a friend's auto shop. Again, not my first choice, but I'm happy to do it, and I may even survive it (though the first six weeks, where the job overlaps with the second half of my thrice-weekly stationary cycling workouts, should be, um, interesting). It'll bring in some of that very helpful stuff called money, and it should end, neatly, just about the same time as the New Testament survey course I'll be teaching at Tyndale begins. But it does mean that I'll have to reassess (again) just how to fit writing into my schedule. It's likely I won't have a lot of time to reflect on that here -- but I've already created some space in the fall schedule to work on book reviews and a few other small projects, and hopefully whatever God has in store for me after that will allow a little more writing time than full-time automotive work does. Maybe I'll even manage, through this interval, to learn a little more discipline with my time, so that I can make better use of what time I have after that. Here's hoping.
Psbelated Psalmody Psunday: 92
The slow-yet-busy end of summer has done its level best to keep my family's Would-be Blogging Triumvirate (Jenny, Chandra and my own self) from blogging very prolifically -- and tomorrow I will note some changes that will probably keep me from writing anything more ambitious than book reviews and short stories for the next three months. But right now, let's make up for just a little lost time (or time otherwise spent, anyhow), with a long-overdue reflection on Psalm 92. Some six weeks ago, when I'd planned to write on this psalm after returning from family cottage time, I'd done some considerable meditating on it -- not with the goal of interpreting it with particular depth (which Chandra did, quite eloquently), but rather treating it as a source of short breath-prayers. Like Chandra, I was struck by the call to "flourish," but I'll spend my moments in this instance on the end of the psalm as a whole, using the Common English Bible's rendering:
Those who have been replanted in the Lord’s house
will spring up in the courtyards of our God.
They will bear fruit even when old and gray;
they will remain lush and fresh in order to proclaim:
“The Lord is righteous.
He’s my rock.
There’s nothing unrighteous in him.
"Replanted in the Lord's house." Having replanted african violets last week and an orchid just this morning, there's an immediacy to that image for me -- but not just because of gardening. At my church lately as well as in our house, life has been, to put it simply, hard. Rocky. Unyielding. Not an easy place to grow. The prospect of being uprooted from here and replanted to "spring up in the courtyards of our God" seemed vastly preferable. There have been many reminders, too many reminders, that even while I'm in my late thirties, my body is already beginning to operate like it's old, gray, and unfruitful. Not that I'm giving up on it -- the cycling study that I've started participating in at Mac is ensuring that my muscles still know how to work occasionally (even as it also affirms that my recovery time isn't what it once was!). But it will suffice to say at this point that the "in order" in the next line is a much-needed reminder: the promise of holy reinvigoration comes with a missional corollary attached. "They will remain lush and fresh in order to proclaim" that the Lord is righteous.
May my life in the coming week, as much or as little as I appear to flourish, proclaim that the Lord is my rock, and that he knows what quality of soil I need in which to grow best.
Those who have been replanted in the Lord’s house
will spring up in the courtyards of our God.
They will bear fruit even when old and gray;
they will remain lush and fresh in order to proclaim:
“The Lord is righteous.
He’s my rock.
There’s nothing unrighteous in him.
"Replanted in the Lord's house." Having replanted african violets last week and an orchid just this morning, there's an immediacy to that image for me -- but not just because of gardening. At my church lately as well as in our house, life has been, to put it simply, hard. Rocky. Unyielding. Not an easy place to grow. The prospect of being uprooted from here and replanted to "spring up in the courtyards of our God" seemed vastly preferable. There have been many reminders, too many reminders, that even while I'm in my late thirties, my body is already beginning to operate like it's old, gray, and unfruitful. Not that I'm giving up on it -- the cycling study that I've started participating in at Mac is ensuring that my muscles still know how to work occasionally (even as it also affirms that my recovery time isn't what it once was!). But it will suffice to say at this point that the "in order" in the next line is a much-needed reminder: the promise of holy reinvigoration comes with a missional corollary attached. "They will remain lush and fresh in order to proclaim" that the Lord is righteous.
May my life in the coming week, as much or as little as I appear to flourish, proclaim that the Lord is my rock, and that he knows what quality of soil I need in which to grow best.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Being Like Ridley
If you've been following this new daily-blogging of mine and you're becoming concerned that this habit's going to eat up another small chunk of your day (and mine) ad infinitum, fear not: for at least the next week, I'll be transplanting the daily habit from blogging to fiction writing. I'm not in the least giving up on finding "real" (read: paying) work, but I'm eager to see whether I can write as regularly as I have been doing lately here, even if it's just a few paragraphs -- but in a different medium.
As I've mentioned before, I have a reasonably good-looking CV of nonfiction writing, but I've also published one (very) short story and am eager to publish more. I've finished a few others and started several more, but I need to quit stalling and follow through on getting these finished, polished, and published. Why the urgency? Three reasons I can think of offhand. One: as new ideas for fiction and nonfiction writing bubble up, I worry that some of the older ones may fall off the back shelf of my brain, so I'd like to get them on paper and "out there" to see if they're worth anything in anyone's estimation besides mine, Karen's, and occasionally Chandra's. Two: for those who've picked up on a resurfacing theme of mortality and fragility in my recent posts, that's largely due to the fifth anniversary of my father's death; I chose not to blog about it, but Chandra did so with tender depth here. Our earthly father often dreamed up ideas for stories and novels, but as far as I know he only committed one of them to paper in his adult life, a novella that he attempted to publish but (again, as far as I know) took no further when it was turned down. I'd like to get further than that -- preferably quite a bit further -- in whatever time I have left, whether that's forty days or forty years.
Three: I like creating things. That desire shows up in cooking and baking, and over the past year it's been evident in the satisfaction of taking on and completing tasks in our renovations, but it's most apparent when I write, especially when I write stories. Science fiction has known many skilled world-builders, both literary and cinematic; one of the best-known of the latter category is Ridley Scott, whose place in SF canon would probably be secure even if he'd retired after making Blade Runner. But here's something he said about building another richly detailed world, that of Gladiator: "I love to create worlds, and every facet of that world has to work within the rules of the story. You must smell the battleground and experience the beauty and light of the golden city.” Sir Ridley makes world-building sound lovely and poetic, and it is; but it's also hard work, fun work, and as he acknowledges, consistent work. I'm not assuming here that I can create worlds as spellbinding as his (but taking the moral of The Lego Movie to heart, I'm also not assuming that I can't!), but with a little -- okay, a lot of -- practice, we'll see just what I can do.
As I've mentioned before, I have a reasonably good-looking CV of nonfiction writing, but I've also published one (very) short story and am eager to publish more. I've finished a few others and started several more, but I need to quit stalling and follow through on getting these finished, polished, and published. Why the urgency? Three reasons I can think of offhand. One: as new ideas for fiction and nonfiction writing bubble up, I worry that some of the older ones may fall off the back shelf of my brain, so I'd like to get them on paper and "out there" to see if they're worth anything in anyone's estimation besides mine, Karen's, and occasionally Chandra's. Two: for those who've picked up on a resurfacing theme of mortality and fragility in my recent posts, that's largely due to the fifth anniversary of my father's death; I chose not to blog about it, but Chandra did so with tender depth here. Our earthly father often dreamed up ideas for stories and novels, but as far as I know he only committed one of them to paper in his adult life, a novella that he attempted to publish but (again, as far as I know) took no further when it was turned down. I'd like to get further than that -- preferably quite a bit further -- in whatever time I have left, whether that's forty days or forty years.
Three: I like creating things. That desire shows up in cooking and baking, and over the past year it's been evident in the satisfaction of taking on and completing tasks in our renovations, but it's most apparent when I write, especially when I write stories. Science fiction has known many skilled world-builders, both literary and cinematic; one of the best-known of the latter category is Ridley Scott, whose place in SF canon would probably be secure even if he'd retired after making Blade Runner. But here's something he said about building another richly detailed world, that of Gladiator: "I love to create worlds, and every facet of that world has to work within the rules of the story. You must smell the battleground and experience the beauty and light of the golden city.” Sir Ridley makes world-building sound lovely and poetic, and it is; but it's also hard work, fun work, and as he acknowledges, consistent work. I'm not assuming here that I can create worlds as spellbinding as his (but taking the moral of The Lego Movie to heart, I'm also not assuming that I can't!), but with a little -- okay, a lot of -- practice, we'll see just what I can do.
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