Author: ppadmin

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        Grimsrud does a double theological treatment: of penal theory and of atonement theory.

        Penal theory: The difference between retributive and restorative approaches to retaliatory justice.

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        Wuthnow, professor of sociology at Princeton, claims that congregational drop in donations, voluntary and personal involvement are the result of a spiritual  crisis, caused in large part by clergy failure to address the vital relationship between faith and money, work, stewardship and economic justice.

        Quoting from clergy and laity interviews in sixty Protestant and Catholic congregations, parishioners often feel the church does not care about what they do from Monday to Friday.

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        Vermes, professor of Jewish studies in Oxford University, sketches Jesus’ thought and action based on the synoptic gospels. The book is based on the recognition of Jesus within the earliest Gospel tradition, prior to Christian theological speculation, as a charismatic prophetic teacher and miracle worker, the Galilean whose ethical teaching stood him head and shoulders above the known representatives of the reality of spiritual personality (p 5).

        Methodologically, Vermes treats the New Testament as one particular vector on the general map of Jewish cultural history.  Vermes has a threefold investigation:  Jesus’ relationship to the living Judaism of his age, the idea of G-d as King and Father, and the difference between the Jewish religious and historic ecclesiastical Christianity.

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        What does it mean to be Christian today?  For Borg, there is a way of seeing Christianity that makes persuasive and compelling sense of life—a way of seeing reality, a way of seeing G-d.  An earlier understanding of Christianity makes belief difficult.  This earlier way of being Christian views the Bible as the unique revelation of G-d, emphasizes its literal meaning and sees the Christian life as centred in believing now for the sake of salvation later.

        The second way of seeing Christianity has been developing over the past century, but the two ways share central convictions: the reality of G-d, the centrality of the bible, the importance of a relationship with G-d as known in Jesus, and our need (the world’s need) for transformation.  Both ways emphasize the importance of a personal relationship with G-d.

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        Emeritus Professor of New Testament Languages and Literature at the U of Nottingham, Casey stresses the need to see Jesus against the background of first century Judaism, to see the historical Jesus as Jewish.  Further for Casey, the reconstruction of the Aramaic sources of the synoptic gospels is an essential step in understanding Jesus against the background of his own culture.

        (While Casey carefully points out implications for exegesis of an Aramaic background, he does not do so in a way that negates the value of the exercise for a lay reader who does not have fluency in Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic.)

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        It’s an older book but of current relevance.  It is a contextual picture of Jesus, understood in the context of Judaism and the local, social and political history of his time.  The Historical Jesus details the sources for our knowledge about Jesus, and explores the historical and social context of Jesus and his activity.  It’s a book that not only summarizes the ways in which Jesus is studied, but the results of that study and the process by which a fuller picture of Jesus emerges. 

        At 642 pages it’s a large volume that contains not only study of the Christian canon but of the apocryphal gospels and other relevant material.  The book is wondrously inclusive and dialogical, giving key components of the biblical material.  Eg geographical and social framework (Galilee), the activities and preaching of Jesus (including a section on the women around Jesus), concept of the Kingdom of G-d, Jesus’ miracles and parables, Jesus’ ethics, the Passover, the risen Jesus and the beginnings of Christology.

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        The victims of war are not only the soldiers, but women, children and the elderly, and the biblical record invites us to contemplate how violence affects the weakest members of society, and even the enemy.  It would have been significant if the Hebrew bible would have included descriptions of how Yahweh’s holy wars might have felt for a Philistine child.

        But violence was part of daily life in the first century.  The idea that Jews in Jesus’ day were primarily concerned with matters of dogmatic theology does not reflect cultural reality.  The pressing needs of most Jews of the period had to do with liberation from oppression, from debt, from Rome.

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        We sometimes imagine the New Testament milieu consisting of contented farmers and jolly fishing families who gave up a few hours of words to hear the message of a religious teacher speaking about the deeper meanings of life.  It is more accurate to say that ‘desperation, deprivation and resentment characterized the lives of most people in Galilee and Judea’ (p 24).

        Hunger was prevalent in first century Palestine. King points out that the parables are grounded in socio-economic, spiritual and political realities that challenged the status quo and confronted the powers, principalities and system.  ‘It was dangerous for Jesus to talk about the kingdom of G-d in a land ruled by an emperor who commanded legions of troops.  It would have been a safer option to speak about the family of G-d or the age of the Spirit’ (p 6).

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        Meeks, of the Department of Religious Studies, Yale University, explores a fascinating range of studies embracing social theory, history and literature, from the figure of the androgyn to New Testament pictures of Christianity’s separation from Jewish communities.

       (Androgyn:  myth of a bisexual progenitor of the human race, using metaphors of clothing symbolism, spiritual marriage, even baptism; ‘there is no longer male nor female’ cf. Galatians 3:28.  Androgyny.)

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        Most of us assume that when we read the New Testament we are reading an exact copy of Jesus’ words or St. Paul’s writings.  Yet, for almost fifteen hundred years these manuscripts were hand copied by scribes who were deeply influenced by the cultural, theological and political disputes of their days.  Mistakes and intentional changes abound in the surviving manuscripts, making the original words difficult to reconstruct.

        Ehrman reveals when and why these changes were made.  He had a ‘born again’ experience in high school, and attended Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College, concentrating on Greek; the more he studied Greek the more he became interested in the manuscripts that preserve the New Testament for us.