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This is a powerful book analyzing church growth patterns of the early church, using contemporary social-scientific theories suggested why people form new religious movements. It is a challenging account of the rise of Christianity.

‘Attachments lie at the heart of conversion, which means that conversion tends to proceed along social networks formed by interpersonal attachments’ (p 18).  ‘Successful founders of new faiths typically turn first to those with whom they already have strong attachments’ (p 18), and people who are deeply committed to any particular faith do not go out and join some other faith’ (p 19).

The early church linked highly social ethical code with religion.  According to Stark, Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear and brutality of life in the urban-Grecian world.  Christianity revitalized life.

To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope.  To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity produced a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity.  And to cities faced with epidemics, fires and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services (p 161).

The empire created misery by its ethnic diversity; it created economic and political unity at the cost of cultural chaos, the immense diversity of tongues, cults, traditions and levels of education.  People of many cultures, speaking in many languages, worshipping all manner of gods, had been dumped helter-skelter.

A major way in which Christianity served as a revitalization movement was in offering a coherent culture that was entirely stripped of ethnicity. Christianity also brought a new conception of humanity to a world saturated with capricious cruelty (p 213, 214).

Stark’s book is a good analysis of church growth methods of the first centuries, and applicable to ours today.

Called and trained as an academic (New Testament), Senior was invited to the administrative position of president of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, a graduate school of theology; he came ‘to see both biblical scholarship and the work of administration as expression of (his) vocation as a Christian.  Both (are) deeply rooted in the nature of the gospel and the mission entrusted to the church by the risen Christ’ (x-xi).

This book does not describe how ’to do’ administration but to see the intersection of the people of G-d with their exercise of administration.  Administration, like preaching, teaching or healing, is also an expression of the gospel’ (xxi).  The Gift of Administration is not a ‘how to’ book but a ‘why’ book, the Christian rationale for the work of administration (xxvii).

Senior’s giftedness in New Testament thinking provides powerful biblical insight into the area of administration (whether this would be the large scale, ie president or dean roles, or the pastoral calling.  (One chapter deals with the myth of the church’s change from that of an original, purely spiritual charismatic and non-institutional church degrading into an institutional  church essentially alien in form and spirit from the church Jesus intended’ (p 222).

Senior has  good theological insight in dealing with administrative components; he emphasizes the function of mission statements in focusing self awareness, the church as community, the role of leadership (‘institutional leadership is the ability to influence others toward the mission of a specific institution’, p 25), the generation of finances.

Ch. 6 deals with ‘Habits of the Heart’, where he lists l2 virtues necessary for good administration and l5 ‘maladies’ (cited by Pope Francis), identifying ‘the illness to be healed and the virtue to be cultivated from the very heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus and to carry out one’s discipleship’ (p 153).

A wonderful book of Christian graces for our Christian virtues.

She was a social activist, totally non-religious. Worked in Mexico and El Salvador, then taught in a Baltimore ‘free school’, worked in New York restaurants and got a job with a left wing magazine’ in San Francisco.  One morning she walked into St Gregory’s, an Episcopalian congregation.

‘I had no earthly reason to be there,’ she writes (p 57).  ‘We sat down and stood up and sat down, waited and listened.  ‘Jesus invites everyone to his table,’ a woman announced.  And then we gathered around that table … and someone was putting a piece of fresh, crumbly bread in my hands, and handing me the goblet of sweet wine, saying ‘The blood of Christ’, and then something outrageous and terrifying happened.  Jesus happened to me’ (p 58); the heart of Christianity:  communion (p 74).

‘These people opened the door to grace—not because they had good taste, not because they were rich or intelligent or even always likable.  They had let G-d in and now they were committed to letting in clueless and unprepared strangers like me because they believed in the absolute religious value of welcoming people who didn’t belong’ (p 81).

‘I got communion, whether I wanted it or not, with people I didn’t necessarily like.  People I didn’t choose.  The people G-d chose for me (p 97).  And so in response to the open table of St Gregory, she started a food pantry that brought food around the altar, ‘acknowledging our own hunger and at the same time acknowledging the amazing abundance we’re fed with by G-d … handing plastic bags of macaroni and peanut butter to strangers, in remembrance of him’ (p 116).

It’s a powerful story ‘about food and being with people who aren’t like me’ (p 277).  ‘The point of church is to feed people so they can go out and be Jesus’ (p 265).   The book closes with wonderfully incisive discussion questions to prod and probe our own responses to G-d’s invitation to the open table.

Theissen defines religion as a cultural sign language which corresponds to an ultimate reality and promise of a gain in life (p 324), a definition he expands on (pp 2-7). It is a semiotic, an objective sign system, making the world a habitable home that is then interpreted.

This interpretation of the world around us utilizes myth (explain what fundamentally determines history; in the Bible it’s the myth, the narrative, of the fundamental acts of G-d, rites (patterns of behaviour in order to depict what is happening in the myths; the first Christians developed a religious sign system without temple, without sacrifice, without priests), ethics (examine how the emphasis on Torah (law) continues in the Christian story).

Religion, a sign language, also has a systematic character, giving expression, eg to the denominational emphases (whether there is an altar, what is ‘on’ the altar).  When the religion gives way to another how do these changing signs reflect faithfulness to the original story (eg eating meat sacrificed to idols)?  And religious signs are a cultural phenomenon, produced by human beings, eg the theory of Christianity will be influenced by change.  Intriguingly, such changes are brought about by charismatics, independently of pre-existing authority roles and traditions.

The two basic values of the primitive Christian ethics are love of neighbour and renunciation of status.  Theissen details how these two values change from one religion (Judaism) to another (Christian), and then in Christianity from the synoptics to the Paulines, eg the Incarnation ‘is an expression of the greatest renunciation of status conceivable’ (p 78).  Myth and ethic flow together: in the Philippians poem, G-d came in the flesh and provides the impetus for ethics.

Theissen develops powerfully the relationship of the changing values in the story of the church.

It’s an old book, first published in 1992, but a treasure I found once more illuminating and insightful. Theissen attempts ‘a history of the synoptic tradition from its oral prehistory to the time when it was written down in the gospels’ (p 2) to identify where and when the sources originated, both small units and text segments ,with attention to cultural context.

Three foci are identified.  (1) An oral Jesus tradition (eg Luke 1:1-4), John 21, talking about the many stories circulating about Jesus; Papias’ collection of oral traditions about Jesus, Paul’s references (1 Cor 7:10,11; 9:14).  (2)  Small individual units (p 4), eg where the author of Matthew’s gospel placed the ‘Our Father’ within a series of associated rules for religious devotional practice. (3)  The oral prehistory of texts, eg the political dimensions of the texts, where ‘events in the political world intrude into the text world of the New Testament (p 7), eg the Jewish War of 70 CE.

The general history of Jesus’ period and the synoptic texts have few clear points of contact, eg the opposition to the emperor Caligula when he proposed erecting his own statue in the Jerusalem temple, or the major political upheavals of 8-70 CE with the climax in the Jewish war (localizable data).

Theissen gives several examples of ways in which the political content affects the shape of the synoptic stories (the Syro-Phoenician woman and political boundaries, events in Palestine, the Caligula story and the great War).  A fascinating and illuminating study.

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

One of the groups identified in the synoptic gospels is the scribes, ‘who work in tandem with the chief priests in command of the Temple, and in turn collaborate with the Roman governors’ (p 9).  Ben Sira, writer of Ecclesiasticus (a deuterocanonical writing), ‘represents scribes as serving the priestly aristocracy yet also as caught in the middle between those  heads of the temple state and the Judean people’ (p 9).

The scribes ‘devoted themselves to intense learning of the spectrum of Judean cultural tradition, including Torah, prophets and wisdom of various kinds (p 11). The temple and the high priesthood were imperial instruments to maintain order and collect revenue in Judea.

‘The subordination of the Judean temple state to imperial rulers (Hellenistic and Roman) set up several major conflicts that involved Judean scribes:  the idea of G-d as the ruler of the Judean people and the reality of imperial role; subjection of the temple-state to imperial rules set up potential conflicts between rival factions (p 14).

Horsley details scribal activity during Greek and Roman occupation and influence, pointing out scribal contributions (Daniel, Psalms of Solomon, Enoch) and their role in the nation.  They did not participate in the civil uprisings; ‘rather than preparing to engage in violent revolt, they were prepared to suffer violent repression, even the torture and death of themselves, relatives and friends… preaching and planning an organized action of nonviolent non-cooperation (p 187).

The lesson of the scribes for us is two-fold:  recognize the pressure we are under to cooperate with the dominant order and to figure out how it might be possible to resist; recognize eschatologically that history is not hopeless, and that far from being destroyed, the earth will be renewed (p 205).  We look for the end of empire, not the end of the world.

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

Raised in Egypt and teaching for forty years in institutes in Egypt, Lebanon, Jerusalem and Cyprus, Bailey has tried to understand the gospels more adequately in the light of Middle Eastern culture.

The written sources he considers are ancient, medieval and modern.  The ancient sources linguistically are Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic.  The early Christian tradition was not only Greek and Latin; Syriac was the third international language of the early church (p 11).  The Arabic Christian tradition became important in the eighth century, and Bailey draws on key Arabic theologians of the middle ages; he focuses on Arabic new testaments; ‘translations are always interpretation and they preserve an understanding of the text that was current in the church that produced them’ (p 13).

Bailey’s essays ‘not only focus on culture but also on rhetoric’ (p 13).  He attempts ‘to identify new perspectives from the Eastern traditions’ (p 21), drawing from the Arabic speaking world.

Bailey does not present an Arabic commentary on the New Testament, but takes key areas of Jesus life and teaching, and illustrates these from Arabic writers from the past, and from Arabic village life today.  So he has sections on ‘the birth of Jesus’, on ‘the Beatitudes’, on ‘the Lord’s Prayer’, on dramatic actions of Jesus (eg the call of Peter, Jesus call to ministry in Luke 4’), on ‘Jesus and women’, on parables (the longest section of the book).

Bailey’s work represents the theological reflection that has influenced the ten million Arabic speaking Christians, and is an attempt to learn more from their heritage about the Galilean carpenter (eg how village life today helps us to understand village life in Jesus’ time).

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

Bauckham presents a telling argument for a paradigm that examines the gospels, a paradigm that does not depend on form criticism analyses but that looks at the gospels as eyewitness accounts conveyed by oral tradition.  ‘Mark’s gospel was written well within the lifetimes of many of the eyewitnesses…’ (p 7).

The period between the ‘historical Jesus’ and the gospels spanned not by anonymous community transmission but by the continuing presence testimony of the eyewitnesses….  In imagining how the traditions reached the Gospel writes, not oral tradition but eyewitness testimony should be our principal model (p 8).

Eyewitness reliability (testimony) provides a more reliable basis for the gospel’s meaning than the skepticism about oral traditions (a la Bart Ehrmann) provides.  ‘The ideal eyewitness (for Greek and Roman historians) was not the dispassionate observer but one who, as a participant, had been closest to the events and whose direct experience enabled him to understand and interpret the significance of what he had seen’ (p 9).  (ie the criterion used in part for canonical decisions made regarding the common scriptures.)

Bauckham details Kenneth Bailey’s category of ‘a formal controlled tradition’ (p 253), where the community exercises control to ensure that the traditions are preserved faithfully (p 255), and looks at the eyewitness accounts by victims of the Holocaust (pp491-499).

The burden of this book is that the category of testimony, eyewitness account, does most justice to the Gospels both as history and as theology, even testimony’s claim to the radical exceptionality of the event.

A fascinating study of the implications of eye witness accounts and oral tradition for understanding the gospels.

How did the early Christian church manage to win its dominant place in the Roman world?  Consensus is that Christianity revitalized life, in response to the misery, chaos, fear and brutality of life, providing new kinds of social relationships (eg Rodney Stark).

MacMullen takes a less kindly tone in attempting to identify reasons for conversion, eg mass ‘conversions’ of Bedouin at a monastic site (p 2-3).  Conversion is the change of belief by which a person accepted the reality and supreme power of G-d and determined to obey him (p 5).  Immersed as we are in the Judaeo-Christian heritage, we hold that religion means doctrine, and that conversion to Christianity involves rational and intellectual criteria.

Roman religion did not share this; it was characterized by undisturbed religious toleration, and worship was basically a self-interested activity to gain favour from powerful beings (p 13).  Christianity demanded a choice.  Jesus was not just a new deity to add to the already crowded pantheon, but the Great G-d, at war against all rivals.  And the teaching was that of monotheism, evidenced by widespread exorcism, showing the superiority of Jesus (cf John 20:30), an exchange of views ‘about wonderful cures wrought by this or that divine power’ (p 40).

MacMullen cites examples of non-religious factors in conversion, eg wealthy church members had strong influence on would be converts (p 54).  ‘Conversion gave to strong pressures that affected the course of the new religion’ (p 85). Emperors and ecclesiastical officials controlled the distribution of material benefits (p 114).  Silencing, burning and destruction were all forms of the church’s demonstration of supremacy; monks and bishops and emperor had driven the enemy from the field’(p 119).

A hard hitting book that avoids some of the sentimentality we attach to the early church.

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

Myers, pastor of a Congregational church in Oklahoma City, has walked with his congregation on a path that looks more to relationships than to creeds as normative for Jesus’ friends.  It is the path that leads away from adoration of the ‘nation state and standing armies, away from closed religious scriptures’ (p 10).

Back to the days of the early church when the call of G-d was experiential, not creedal (‘right belief instead of right worship’, p 10).  He focuses on ‘What does the Bible really say?  What does it mean to say it is inspired by G-d? Why do we believe that G-d’s voice is exclusively in the past tense? (p 19).  He describes religion at its best: ‘biblically responsible, intellectually honest, emotionally satisfying and socially significant’ (p 22).  He looks at the way in which the bible has been shaped:  a process of review and selection that condensed an enormous amount of material down to four gospels, a pseudo-history we call the Acts of the Apostles, and the letters that complete the New Testament’ (p 24).

Myers does several chapters on emphasizing the relational dimensions of the drop-out carpenter:  ‘Original blessing, not Original Sin’, ‘Christianity as Compassion, not Condemnation’, ‘Discipleship as obedience, not Observance’, ‘Justice as Covenant, not Control’, ‘Prosperity as Dangerous, not Divine’; ‘Religion as Relationship, not Righteousness’.

Myers expresses powerfully his conviction that following Jesus in social compassion is what we do, not in what we creedally subscribe to. ‘The most important question is not about what we believe; it is about how we relate’ (p 223).

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