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Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        Messer, president of the Iliff School of Theology, identifies five images with their implications for ministry (these are seen as supplementary concepts for the traditional concepts of priest, prophet and king).  These images are the wounded healer, the servant leader, the political mystic, the practical theologian and the enslaved liberator.

        Key is his insistence that ‘ministry is viewed as not simply the professional presence of the ordained but as an expression of the total church both clergy and lay’ (p 15).  The danger of compartmentalizing functions comes from viewing ministry as individualistic acts of service rather than as an expression of G-d’s gift of grace to the community of faith; Messer calls for liking lay and clergy together in common bonds of faithfulness and effectiveness.  ‘Christian ministry is G-d’s gift to all persons, ordained and lay’ (pp 16,17).

        The congregational thrust of his ecclesiology is expressed in ‘ordination is rooted not in the bishops’ authority to ordain but in the priesthood of all believers’ (p 37).  The minister’s image of prophet is developed well:  ‘the image of the prophet has always been a sociologically marginal metaphor of ministry’ (p 43).  Messer warns against the ‘cult of personality with its individualistic focus on the preacher’ (p44), and quotes P. T. Forsyth:  ‘the church does not live by its preachers but by its Word’; no one has the right to the pulpit by virtue of personality. A magnetic personality may endanger the communication of the gospel’ (p 45).

        Messer has a fascinating section on the church in China, which he sees as a new ‘post denominational church that provides an antidote to the denominational, bureaucratic model characteristic of most of the globe’s churches’ (p 158).  The church of the future will centre more on people and less on brick and mortar and flow charts. 

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        Two books that invite us to walk with the crucified carpenter.  Cross Shattered Christ consists of meditations on the seven last words on the cross; A Cross Shattered Church is a collection of sermons.  ‘The way Jesus went to the cross, despite the pressing demands that the world be saved some other way, is the definitive part of the holy story’ (A Cross Shattered Church, p. 156).

        Hauerwas quotes Michael Ramsay, calling on us ‘to be on the watch constantly for the ideological bondage that threatens to take over a church-based or church-focused theology’ (Cross Shattered Christ, p 18).  ‘Our resource is our faith in the G-d to whom Christ prays on the cross’ (Cross Shattered Christ, p 19).

        In our time when reorganization is a major preoccupation and tampering with committee structure in the institutional church, the scattered shattered body of Christ, a shifting, rumbling body, will not be united by means of conferences and negotiations; it is only as our bodies are held in common through prayer and Eucharist’ (A Cross Shattered Church, p 20). The sermon, for Hauerwas, is an attempt ‘to make the familiar strange’ (p 24).

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        Another old book.  But a book that raises issues as clearly as does the sermon we heard yesterday.  Keck reiterates the historical thinking about the Bible, that every aspect of it and in it is conditioned by history (p 12).

        ‘It is no longer the amount of the bible cited that makes preaching biblical….  The bible does not belong to the guild of professional scholars; the Bible belongs first of al to the church’ (p 13).  Keck uses striking metaphors.  ‘Today’s preacher stands in the pulpit like a modern Lazarus, immobilized, showing no face to the public; (p 33).  ‘Good preaching is characterized by clarity and orderly presentation and frequently by simplicity as well.’

        Keck makes the cogent point that the religious communities (of Jews and of Christians) have recognized (perhaps even ‘made’) the bible as the canon of the church by church.  Just as there was an Israelite community and faith before there was a Hebrew bible, so there was a Christian faith and a Christian church before there was a New Testament.  Christianity is not a response to a holy book (p 70, 71); there was a community before there was a book.

        Keck emphasizes that renewal of biblical preaching is an alternative to worshiping (p 100), and he speaks devastatingly of the way that moralizing distorts the historical reality.  ‘Unity of the bible is not uniformity in theology but constancy of perspective (p 100), a pluralism of the contribution of canonical existence. ‘Why  was the story told?  How did it serve the religious faith and moral life of those who transmitted it? (p 130)  Keck has a helpful section on parables: they seek a response, not the enlightenment of ideas’ (p 136). 

        The last section of the book consists of three sermons preached on a parable (Ma 20), on Pilate’s trial (John 19), feeding of the crowds (Mark 6:30-44

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        Thresholds function as a barrier between outside and inside, separating those who dwell within a residence from persons outside it.  Ancient Canaanites associated thresholds with demons who were thought to lurk underneath and to attack hapless persons disturbing their rest.  Anyone who endeavours to understand a biblical text encounters a threshold under which lurk untold ‘demons’.  The text has been granted a privileged position above every other human production.  We spend countless hours combating the demons released on an unsuspecting society by stepping across the threshold of our canon. 

         ‘The biblical text has been used to sanction slavery, the suppression of women, the jingoism and narrow fundamentalism that demonizes others who read texts differently. (p 3)  Our encounter with the biblical text, as I cross the threshold, constitutes a dialogue. Crossing the threshold brings us into immediate contact with an alien culture.  Every text carries within its spaces multiple meanings, and so with one foot firmly planted in the modern age and the other tentatively feeling for a toehold in the biblical period ( 5), we risk disturbing the demons lurking beneath the threshold.

        We are beneficiaries of ancient religious thinkers who stepped across the thresholds, giving a decision to cling to the living G-d.  And that is where we find ourselves:  trembling because of the silence of eternity and the anticipation of hearing the clamour from the past.  Crenshaw gifts us with twenty sermons and nine meditations that step deliberately on the thresholds of our culture.  The biblical metaphor of ‘threshold’ becomes a powerful  incentive to utter a faithful word, recognizing that we have been entrusted with a weighty message.

        A wonderful invitation to step over our thresholds, with one foot ‘firmly planted in the modern age and the other tentatively feeling for a toehold in the biblical period’ (p 5).

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

        Willimon and Hauerwas, of Duke University, join forces in this book:  Willimon contributes ten sermons and Hauerwas responds to each.  The sermons are the occasion for Willimon to preach to strangers (mainly to students and to tourists).  The sermons are addressed to students who are passing through, to people who share no common tradition, to people who have so little in common that they are not even able to locate disagreements.  ‘Most preaching in the Christian church today is done before strangers’ (p 6).  Christians once understood that they were pilgrims; now we’re just tourists who happen to find ourselves on the same bus.

        Preaching needs to translate the language of the gospel onto experiences that are already well understood; preaching is not about communicating but about challenging our understanding.  Willimon’s sermons reflect startling perspectives, eg “Jesus’ systemic abnormality’.  The pretentious power of the state is countered by healing the ill, telling the truth, feeding the hungry, stampeding swine—systemic abnormality had to put him away.  Here is the power in the sermon, that summons each of us to submit to transformation (p 33). Willimon’s sermons reflect the canonical range of ‘the systemic abnormality’, of ordinary people eg Ruth, Joseph/Mary, Christmas, urging us to universal human love (!), and all we get is a hasty trip from nowhere Nazareth to Left Armpit Bethlehem.’  The nativity story is small, specific and particular.  It’s not about the whole human race; it’s about real people with real names—you can make a road map and follow Mary’s and Joseph’s journey (p 124).  G-d did not appear as an idea or a program:  G-d came to Mary and to Joseph (p 129).

        Preaching to Strangers suggests an old and a very new way to think about theological words to strangers.

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

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).

        The perspective of messianic Christianity also affects our stewardship.  ‘The problem of the church’s large-scale aid organizations is not that they exist but that in the minds of Christians they remove this necessary help from its all-embracing messianic content (which includes factors like solidarity, political education and to the will to practical change, and reduce it to a process of the mere giving of money’ (p 8). ‘The worldwide church challenges us in the relation of the rich churches to the poor churches, or, in general, the churches of central Europe to those of the Latin American subcontinent (p 20).

Other essays talk of Jewish-Christian ecumenical relations, bread and the Lord’s Supper (what kind of bread are we eating?)  Wonderful probing of the emerging church and mission.

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

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).

        Sanguin identifies four aspects of leadership, based not on technique but on personhood:  self definition, emotional intelligence, the shadow side, and Friedmann’s non-anxious presence (pp 119-128).  Insightful is his articulation of spiritual leadership capacities: stillness, theological reflection, confession and creativity.  He points to the difference between ‘good ideas’ and ‘governing ideas’ (p 65)—he utilizes the Carver governance paradigm, and has a useful analysis of the familiarization of Jesus’ mission statements for congregations:  the kingdom of g-d.  Entering G-d’s kingdom means we exit Caesar’s kingdom; Jesus built a new reality, not simply deconstructing an old one (p 67).

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

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).

        Emergent theology looks toward the ‘final century’, as normative and apostolic, not the first century.  An example of this is the expanded and expanding role of women in the church.  The emerging theology is a theology of the Holy Spirit, of revelational theology (not just historical theology).  Emergent theology is the identification of new directions; emergent theology looks to the structures of the future for inspiration rather than repeating the past.

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

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).

        Conscience does not say what should be done, but that the individual sees a moral decision that should be followed based on other criteria.  Nature by Itself cannot say what should be done but that the moral action (the ‘right thing’) should be followed.  Such an approach to the moral life gives the church five duties (p 128): to be a healthy environment (the concept of formation), to influence the secular environment, to present reassured moral options to see Jesus’ life as an example, to follow right habits.

        The book is a good treatment of the process of moral choice, and a powerful example of how the early church interacted with the larger culture.

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

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.

        Atonement: Are we made right with G-d by the amount of pain to inflict to ‘atone’, to make good, the difference between us and G-d?  Are we condemned to suffer G-d’s anger unless G-d’s disposition toward us is changed?  Does G-d require sacrificial violence?

        Does the Bible provide us with a model of the need to respond to violence with violence (retribution)?  Or does the bible provide a model of how violence must be dealt with in a way that ends the violence cycle—a restorative model, a G-d who orders the cosmos in terms of mercy? (p 27)

        Grimsrud sketches the ‘primal story line’ of the OT, the message of key prophets, and the teaching and example of Jesus, as portraying salvation as a simple act of G-d’s mercy.  These biblical sources assume a G-d who does not first need to be persuaded by human acts to make whatever provisions are necessary for salvation (healing, reconciliation) to occur.  All of these OT sources present salvation as being free from ‘retribution’ (p 28).  ‘Salvation is not centred on Jesus’ death as a necessary prerequisite to salvation to be made available; dynamics of justice are restorative and not retributive.’ (p 226).  Jesus lived and taught mercy, not retribution.

        Salvation is found in G-d’s mercy, not in Jesus’ death.  Jesus’ death reveals the emphasis of the Powers (temple, culture, empire) as they resist Jesus’ embodiment of G-d’s mercy.  Justice and salvation need to be looked at in the language of peace, respect and reconciliation, not on retribution and violence.

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.