What Are You Reading and Why?

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        ‘Emergent church/ has become a major theme in contemporary religious analysis.  One of the earliest people to develop the concept was the Catholic theologian, Johann Metz.  He uses the categories of messianism vs. bourgeois religion, and then sees the implication for culture and for the Lord’s supper (the eucharist).

        It’s a far ranging book that challenges the church to move beyond its middle class comfort zone, that challenges the church to move beyond its preoccupation of pacifying and consoling.  Metz points out that a bourgeois theology has removed all apocalyptic tensions:  o danger, no contradiction.  Love in bourgeois religion also avoids messianic perspectives.  Love, in messianic religion, takes sides. The universality of this love does not consist in a refusal to take sides but rather in the way it takes sides, that is, without hatred or hostility toward people’ (p 40).

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        For Sanguin, the emerging church refers to congregations that are looking out at the horizon for the futures that desire to be born through them (rather than at the past as basis for the present (p 63): congregations making a shift from a redemption-centred evolutionary Christian theology.  This ‘creative emergence’ is defined by three core dynamics:  novelty, self organization, transcendence and inclusion.  We recognize that in Jesus G-d was doing a new thing, especially a radically inclusive development, a ‘radical hospitality’ (p 57).

        He stresses the call of discipleship over the preoccupation with membership (p 58).  In the church’s attempt to see where it is moving to, there is a need to recognize the non-negotiables:  the gospel, the whole bible, the open table, the striving for mission and justice—to get the church into the world (p 60).

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        For Anderson, the question of being the church is which church will should be the recipient of our energies; the choices for him are the church in Antioch and the church in Jerusalem.  ‘Jesus launched a movement that was supposed to begin in Jerusalem but was intended to spread outward from there to Judea and Samaria.  It was to begin in Jerusalem but it couldn’t be contained by Jerusalem.  When Jerusalem-centred Christians tried to limit the movement’s daring expansion into and constructive engagement with other cultures, to prune back its continuing emergence.

        Antioch has been the new centre from which the movement could expand (p 4).  The Christian community that  emerged out of Antioch constitutes the original form and theology of the emerging church as contrasted with the believing community at Jerusalem.  The difference between Antioch and Jerusalem is essentially a theological difference (p 56).  ‘Emerging churches are apostolic when they seek to define and make clear the apostolic work of Christians in the present century rather than in the first century (p 38).

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        This is an old book, but it remains a treatment of a New Testament concept that is not dated.  ‘Conscience’ (suneidysis) is a primary Pauline theme. (It appears 31 times in the New Testament writings, 21 times in Paul himself, 11 times in 1 Corinthians alone.)  It is not found in the LXX, which means that the NT writers who use the term adopted the word and its usage not from the Hebrew world of ideas but from the Hellenistic.

        Conscience is the reaction of the whole person to his own wrong acts (p 113).  Paul introduced the concept into the Christian vocabulary.  He does not claim it as a part of revelation, but accepts it as a universal experience among people with a limited validation (p 113).  Plutarch called ‘conscience’ an ‘ulcer’, a painful thing, an extremely resistant area that never ceases to wound and goad (p 47).  Its function is to protect the individual from harm, physical and moral; pain will rouse the individual to maintain good and safe behaviour (p 53).

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.