Interpretation articles from January 1998

Interpretation archives from January 1998

Atonement in the Book of Leviticus.
January 1, 1998... THE ENGLISH WORDS "atone" and "atonement" have a peculiar origin and history. Their origin goes back to such expressions as "make at one" or "at onement." The latter, "[at]onement," occurred in writings as early as those of John Wycliffe (c....

"Standing in the breach": turning away the wrath of God.
January 1, 1998... Turning Away the Wrath of God HOW CAN ONE PEARSON'S ACT save a whole community? The psalmist praises Moses for having saved the life of his people after they had made the golden calf. God's wrath would have turned against all of them, says the...

The death of Jesus and the ways of God: Jesus and the gospels on Messianic status and shameful suffering.
January 1, 1998... Jesus and the Gospels on Messianic Status and Shameful Suffering THE PROBLEM POSED for the Evangelists by Jesus' execution on a Roman cross is portrayed starkly in Luke's narrative by one of Jesus' followers on the road to Emmaus: Jesus...

Paul and the death of Jesus.
January 1, 1998... IN 1970 INTERPRETATION devoted an issue to "The Significance of the Death of Jesus." The volume included the English translation of the report of the Theological Committee of the Evangelische Kirche der Union in Germany on "How the Death of Jesus...

Bold in the presence of God: atonement in Hebrews.
January 1, 1998... Atonement in Hebrews THE FIRST FAILURE of my ministry came quickly. The seminary textbooks, biblical commentaries, and dark-spined volumes of Barth's Dogmatics were barely out of the moving boxes when there was a knock on my study door and a...

Luke 22:7-23. (New Testament)
January 1, 1998... Luke 22:7-23 IT IS SIGNIFICANT that the New Testament contains four accounts of the origins of the Lord's Supper in a meal shared by Jesus and his followers on the eve of his death (Mark 14:17-26; Matt 26:20-30; Luke 22:14-23; 1 Cor 11:23-26)....

Luke 23:1-49. (New Testament)
January 1, 1998... Luke 23:1-49 SUFFERING is a terribly intimate experience. Pain acts to strip us of modesty; it pushes us to our limits and makes us bare and vulnerable. Pain is so personal that we hide it, or show it only selectively and with caution. Truly...

1 Peter.
January 1, 1998... 1 Peter, by Paul J. Achtemeier Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Fortress, Minneapolis, 1996. 421 pp. $50.00. ISBN 0-8006-6030-7. IT IS A PLEASURE to see another volume that represents genuinely new work by an...

Jesus Christ in the Preaching of Calvin and Schleiermacher.
January 1, 1998... Jesus Christ in the Preaching of Calvin and Schleiermacher, by Dawn DeVries. Columbia Series in Reformed Theology. Westminster John Knox, Louisville, 1996. 115 pp. $16.00. IBSN 0-664-22067-3. MUCH ADO IS MADE THESE DAYS about being traditional...

Ezekiel.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... Ezekiel, by Ronald E. Clements. Westminster Bible Companion. Westminster John Knox, Louisville, 1996. 209 pp. $17.00 (paper). ISBN 0-664-25272-9. THIS BRIEF COMMENTARY realizes the series goal "to help the laity of the church read the Bible...

The Friendship of the Lord: An Old Testament Spirituality.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... The Friendship of the Lord: An Old Testament Spirituality, by Deryck Sheriffs. Paternoster, Carlisle, 1996. 363 pp. $32.50 (paper). ISBN 0-85364-646-5. OLD TESTAMENT SPIRITUALITY is the subject of this book. The title is taken from Ps 25:14:...

She Can Read: Feminist Reading Strategies for Biblical Narrative.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... She Can Read: Feminist Reading Strategies for Biblical Narrative, by Emily Cheney. Trinity Press International, Valley Forge, 1996. 192 pp. $18.00 (paper). ISBN 1-56338-167-2. THIS BOOK CREATIVELY LINKS recent feminist biblical and literary...

Mark.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... Comparatively few are those biblical commentaries with enough affinity for both Athens and Jerusalem, and requisite deftness, that they neither overshoot nor fall short of the church's rank and file. For them Hare's Mark is a boon. After an...

Luke.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... Ringe gives the Gospel of Luke a mixed review in this commentary. On the one hand, she finds the Gospel to be an "artistically powerful and theologically persuasive narrative" (p.7), and she celebrates its dominant theme, namely, a "reversal of...

The Challenge of Diversity: The Witness of Paul and the Gospels.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... This book's fundamental premise is that God created diversity and, through Christ, redeems diversity. The challenge before the church, then, is to "embrace diversity" wherever there is evidence of "God's creative presence" (p. 4). Rhoads does not...

Final Account: Paul's Letter to the Romans.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... Familiarity may breed contempt, but this slender volume is evidence that decades of wrestling with the text of Romans may produce a deep and contagious respect for the letter and its author. This is vintage Stendahl. The first chapter summarizes...

The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... Any commentary by James Dunn is worth reading, and this one is no exception. After an introduction dealing with the usual questions of authorship, place of writing and the like, the comments follow a fairly standard format: a translation of the...

Colossians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... In what appears as a kind of throw-away line, the author of this attractive and thought-provoking commentary on five disputed Pauline letters comments: "We can read Paul's life as a book of Christian truth . . . Paul is portrayed . . . as the...

The Victorious Christ: A Study of the Book of Revelation.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... This book provides a solid overview of the major literary, historical, and theological issues in the Book of Revelation. In contrast to a verse-by-verse commentary, the author acts as a tour guide through the world of John's imagination, pointing...

Till Jesus Comes: Origins of Christian Apocalyptic Expectation.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... Holman traces biblical eschatology through the Hebrew Bible, other early Jewish literature, and parts of the New Testament. He defines eschatology as hope for the fulfillment of covenant promises made by God to the Hebrew patriarchs. Beginning...

Who Are the People of God? Early Christian Models of Community.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... Kee identifies five models that played an especially important role in shaping the earliest Christian communities: the community of the wise (grounded in various wisdom traditions), the law-abiding community (grounded in the Torah), the community...

Montanism: Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... In the midst of a resurgence of international scholarly interest in Montanism, Trevett was the first in nearly a century to provide a substantial study of the subject in English. Meticulously researched and lucidly written, Montanism examines the...

The God of Israel and Christian Theology.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... This an important new work; Soulen's analysis of what he calls Christianity's standard canonical narrative extends the critique of Christian supersessionism to include the deeper structures Christians employ to frame their renderings of their...

The Nature of the Atonement.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... To read today the views of J. McLeod Campbell, a Scottish minister deposed from the ministry in 1831 on heresy charges, is like pulling up a stubborn weed and realizing that the long, trailing roots go back that far. Much of what presently...

Always Being Reformed: Faith for a Fragmented World.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... Take your pick: Christian identity or involvement in the world. Most churches emphasize one or the other, and in so doing lose the very identity or relevance that is most important to them. Guthrie believes that both are essential, and he offers...

Toward a New Modernism.
January 1, 1998... This book is a manifesto documenting the author's "third theological conversion." Cauthen has traversed the theological globe, from his Southern Baptist upbringing, through an initial conversion to the "liberal neo-orthodoxy" of the Niebuhrs, on...

Changing the Subject: Women's Discourses and Feminist Theology.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... Fulkerson presents a thoroughgoing critique of feminist theology and biblical interpretation from the perspective of poststructuralist analysis. She urges that feminist thought, in its appeal to "women's experience," take more seriously the...

God Beyond Gender: Feminist Christian God-Language.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... The debate is current and sometimes volatile. Should the church expand the names for God to include feminine metaphors, nouns, or pronouns? May the ancient text of hymn and scripture be changed to include another perspective of gender? Ramshaw...

Scripture and Ethics: Twentieth Century Portraits.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... In this carefully written work, Siker assesses the manner in which Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, Bernard Haring, Paul Ramsey, Stanley Hauerwas, Gustavo Gutierrez, James Cone, and Rosemary Radford Ruether employ scripture in their...

Pastoral Genetics: Theology and Care at the Beginning of Life.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... Many people experience the wonder of seeing the fetus during ultrasound procedures as part of a routine prenatal screening. As genetic research moves along, therapeutic abortions will be presented more frequently as routine options to consider....

The Threat of Life: Sermons on Pain, Power, and Weakness.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... In addition to his considerable contributions to biblical scholarship, Brueggemann has had a significant influence in homiletics. With this volume, under the editorial guidance of Campbell, his colleague at Columbia Theological Seminary, he...

Graying Gracefully: Preaching to Older Adults.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1998... This book attempts to fill a void that is present in nearly all American churches - the lack of attention to the presence and needs of large numbers of older adults in our congregations. Carl includes eight essays that look at aging from a...