Category Archives: Book Reviews

Review: The Samaritan Woman’s Story

Caryn A. Reeder is professor of New Testament at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. Her books include The Enemy in the Household: Family Violence in Deuteronomy and Beyond and Gendering War and Peace in the Gospel of Luke.

John 4 and … Sexual Abuse Scandals?

The Samaritan Woman’s Story: Reconsidering John 4 after #ChurchToo (2022) is a twofold response: firstly, to sexualised interpretations of the famous “woman at the well” story; secondly, to relatively recent confessions of widespread sexual abuse in Christian churches (popularised under the hashtag #ChurchToo). Reeder sees the two problems as linked by the marginalisation of women and their voices in our churches. That is to say, she believes biblical interpretations that demonise women (including the woman at the well) have the power to reinforce thought patterns that lead to sexual abuse. This link frames the book in the introduction and conclusion, with two major sections in the middle.

The first major section of the book explores the history of interpretation of John 4 through a series of case studies, from ancient to modern. The second section discusses historical social issues surrounding marriage and sexuality, culminating in a clearer understanding of the range of possible interpretations of the Samaritan woman’s story.

My biggest issue with this book was that it kept me hanging concerning what I see to be the core issue of the book: is the Samaritan woman immoral? Reeder’s presumptive answer is, No. If you are like me, this involves some serious suspension of disbelief. I felt that some bread crumbs of the argument could have been given in the introduction. Instead, Reeder introduced #ChurchToo and then launched into the history of interpretation of John 4, leading the reader under the presumption that there is some minority argument that the Samaritan woman is not necessarily immoral. Honestly, I was so unaware of how she could even make this argument, I had to skip to skimming Part Two before reading Part One so that I could engage with the book.

Perhaps this reversal was to keep the reader on their toes; perhaps I am not modern enough for the train of thought. Personally, I wanted more of a “thesis statement” at the beginning that would help me bridge the book’s many moving parts. In the interest of presenting the argument clearly, I’ve chosen to deal with the biblical “elephant in the room” first.

Is the Samaritan Woman a “Whore”?

In John 4:17–18, Jesus reveals the woman’s marital history:

¹⁶He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

¹⁷“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
John 4:16–18, NIV

First, it is odd that Jesus asks for her husband, ironically knowing she was unmarried. It seems like a “gotcha” moment to American readers. Having lived in the Middle East, I know that inquiring after male family members is polite in cross-gender interactions. It creates a boundary. Acknowledging a woman’s husband is meant to make her feel safe from abuse, which is an unmentioned link between John 4 and sexual abuse scandals. In my view, Jesus probably brings her husband to the conversation as a matter of politeness and safety.

At face value, in John 4, the woman is having extramarital sex (v.18) and is therefore an immoral fornicator. John Piper and Mark Driscoll have used the words “whore” and “prostitute” to describe the woman at the well, based on these verses. Let’s go over some of the key indicators that preachers have used to make her a sinner, and Reeder’s counterarguments:

1.Wasn’t she gathering water at noon because she was an outcast?

There’s no evidence that gathering water at noon meant she was a social outcast. This idea was promoted by D. L. Moody and has become a common preaching point, but it doesn’t have any basis in historical documents. Reeder routinely challenges people to produce any historical basis for this idea.

If the Samaritan woman was a social outcast, it’s also unlikely that her preaching would have been received so well, and this tension requires some maneuvering by interpreters. They overcome this by saying that the strange woman simply “roused their curiosity”; Calvin says she was like a “bell”. This downgrades the statement of John, “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony” (John 4:39).

2. Wasn’t it shameful for her to be outside the house, without a male chaperone?

Reeder offers specific examples from the first century of women operating in the public sphere, owning property, and speaking with men. She notes several times in the book that women’s seclusion in ancient times was “an ideal, not a reality”, something that is probably exaggerated in our efforts to differentiate our society from theirs. Having lived in the most gender-segregated societies on the planet, I agree with this assessment: women’s seclusion has many exceptions, especially when it comes to basic household chores like fetching water.

Later rabbinic traditions praised a women scholar named Beruriah for her intelligence, her ability as an interpreter, and her active participation in the community. According to one story, she used the words of Mishnah Avot 1.5 to tease a male rabbi for saying four more words to her than he needed to (Babylonian Talmud Eruvin 53b). Beruriah exemplifies women’s ability to engage despite the limitations imposed by men.
The Samaritan Woman’s Story, p. 167

3. Wasn’t it shameful to divorce many times?

Reeder points out that divorce was considered “common and casual” in the Roman Empire and could be unilateral from the man, or agreed upon by both. In Jewish sources, it could only be initiated by men, but Jews in the Roman Empire could also follow Roman custom. A Jewish midrash famously notes that the wife burning a meal is acceptable grounds for a divorce. So being divorced multiple times was not necessarily a poor reflection on a woman, and didn’t imply adultery. In fact, Reeder argues the opposite: men wouldn’t have kept marrying her if she was a known adulterer.

Adultery was one reason for divorce among Romans or Jews, but there is no reason to assume the Samaritan woman was divorced by her husbands for adultery. Rather, the fact of her remarriages suggests she was not suspected or convicted of adultery. Likewise, the evidence for divorce on account of infertility is slim (and again, the woman’s remarriages would argue against a reputation for infertility).
The Samaritan Woman’s Story, p.150

We also don’t know whether the Samaritan was ever divorced, or simply outlived all her husbands. In general life expectancy was much lower then than now; women married from around 12; and men were usually ten years older or more, and had a lower life expectancy; so it was common for women to outlive their spouses. So it is easily conceivable that a woman would have outlived more than one husband and/or been divorced by more than one husband. The Roman general Pompey outlived three spouses and divorced two others (p.149).

4. Wasn’t it shameful that she remarried so many times?

In a sermon on John 4, John Piper characterised serial marriage as a consequence of the Samaritan woman’s “cavernous thirst”—a phrase that has not aged well, by the way—and her tragically misplaced need for intimacy. If Reeder is correct, this way of understanding the story probably projects too much agency to an ancient woman, in addition to romanticising marriage.

Finances, housing, and children also constricted women’s ability to refuse a marriage, to divorce, or to remain unmarried following the end of a marriage.
The Samaritan Woman’s Story, p. 148

Ancient marriages were often arranged by family members, and even after one marriage ended, women sometimes reverted to living under their fathers’ authority. Marriage was both a social arrangement and an economic arrangement, and romantic and emotional bonds were thought to grow after cohabitation, not before. It is desperately anachronistic to characterise the woman as longing for intimacy, fleeing from one husband to another and divorcing them as she sees fit.

5. Finally, what about living with a man outside marriage?

This is really the lynchpin of Reeder’s argument, in my opinion. In a nutshell, throughout the Roman Empire, a type of “common law” marriage was in place, and probably had more standing than an American common law marriage, which is a frowned-upon legal technically. A mishnah says, “A wife is acquired by money, or by contract, or by sexual intercourse.”

Roman lawyers identified cohabitation as a form of marriage . . . This type of uncontracted marriage was just as legitimate as contracted marriage.
The Samaritan Woman’s Story, p.136–137

Cohabitation was an acceptable way of initiating a “marriage”, and there were many legal categories that couldn’t marry, like slaves and soldiers. The working classes couldn’t afford a great feast, and once the families had arranged a match for them, they would simply move in together and begin their life together. In some cases, this was a precursor to contractual marriage, and historical legal documents bear this out.

Romans, Jews, and likely therefore also Samaritans recognized a variety of noncontractual, permanent (or semi-permanent) relationships as acceptable alternatives to a formal, contracted marriage. The range of household situations reminds us that “marriage” is flexible. It is defined and practiced differently in different times, cultures, and spaces. In the first century, the lack of a contract did not make the marital relationship any less legitimate.
The Samaritan Woman’s Story, p.139

There’s one problem I see with this argument, which is the way it blurs too many categories that are integral to the interpretation of the story. She writes that cohabiting couples referred to each other as husband and wife (p.137), but this is expressly denied in the case of the Samaritan woman (John 4:17–18). In the same way, it’s a little confounding the way the book can alternately refer to the Samaritan woman as married and not married. Critics may consider Reeder to have merely muddied the water enough to make room for her pro-woman interpretation. In my view, her arguments are pretty strong, but this very last one, about cohabitation, is pretty difficult for me to swallow in view of my upbringing.

All in all, the second major section displays an impressive breadth of historical facts about ancient social life and family, substantiated by first-century sources, and this leads us to question the central role that sin usually plays in discussions of John 4. Sin is not mentioned in the story, and with power dynamics in place, it’s not at all clear whether Jesus’ words about her marital history were meant primarily to convict her of sin, or reveal the Messiah to her through supernatural knowledge.

History of Interpretation

The first half of the book goes over the history of interpretation. The range of interpretations is immediately impressive. Mark Driscoll calls the Samaritan woman “the leathery-faced town whore”; in contrast, Marie Dentière wrote the following:

What woman was a greater preacher than the Samaritan woman, who was not ashamed to preach Jesus and his word, confessing him openly before everyone, as soon as she heard Jesus say that we must adore God in spirit and truth?
Marie Dentière, Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre (1539)

I won’t recount this section in great detail here, but the interpreters covered include:

Tertullian
Origen
John Chrysostom
Marie Dentière
John Calvin
Clara Balfour
D. L. Moody
Liz Curtis Higgs
Barbara J. Essex
John Piper
Mary DeMuth

Some of these are included for their obvious historical weight; others are more or less illustrative of a minority viewpoint. Reeder is heavily engaged in social issues in her review of the modern authors. It was certainly interesting how she shows an interpretive gap between black women and white women, but I felt that race informed the discussion overmuch. Introducing a preacher in a book as a black or white person is a rather oddly loaded way to introduce someone, to my mind.

There are basically three modes: she is a harlot; she is a victim; and she is a disciple. Those that do not center the Samaritan woman’s story around her sexual sin are usually preoccupied with her as a victim of an unjust society. A few, though, see her primarily through her testimony. Many of the minority readings come from women, which shows how much the gender of the reader affects the interpretation. Men generally view her negatively; but some women throughout Reformed history at least have seen her as a tremendous witness in favor of women teaching.

The juxtaposition of Nicodemus (John 3) and the unnamed Samaritan woman (John 4) is an oft-referenced feature of the landscape of John’s Gospel. Nicodemus is honorable; comes at night; comes and goes without understanding. The Samaritan woman is nameless; speaks in broad daylight; takes in the revelation of Jesus and testifies to many.

Below is a short summary of some minority viewpoints from women:

We have reviewed similar interpretations from Marie Dentière and Virginia Broughton. This perspective is common among women writers: Christine de Pizan (writing in 1405), Argula von Grumbach (1523), Harriet Livermore (1824), Phoebe Palmer (1859), Elizabeth Baxter (1897). . . .

Marie Dentière wrote less than twenty years after Argula von Grumbach, but it is unlikely that she knew of Argula’s interpretation of the Samaritan woman, and neither woman would have known Christine de Pizan’s work. Margaret Fell would not have had access to these earlier interpreters. The women writing in the nineteenth century likely knew of each other, but not previous female interpreters. That these women independently found the same message in John 4:4-42 strengthens their challenge to the majority interpretation. (p.98)
The Samaritan Woman’s Story, p.98

Conclusion

The Samaritan woman’s story is a long, multifaceted two-way conversation with Jesus, and it is totally unique in many aspects. It is the only gospel ministry recorded among Samaritans, against Jesus’ general calling to the “lost sheep of Israel” (Matt. 15:25). It is the longest conversation that Jesus had anywhere in the Bible, let alone with a woman. The marital history is a single aspect of it that has probably been overinterpreted to become the lens for the whole narrative.

Reeder’s argument is extensively documented but accessibly written. Her book displays an impressive breadth of knowledge in several subfields, and she moves effortlessly between history, hermeneutics, and sociology. I especially enjoyed the weaving of biography and history of interpretation together. I love both biography and biblical studies, so I have been keeping an eye out for books that do this.

The Samaritan woman’s marriage history may conceivably be viewed as simply a “word of knowledge” (1 Cor. 12:8) that reveals the Messiah to her. The Pentecostal aspect of this story is generally overlooked by interpreters, the present author included.

If we see it as a Pentecostal revelation, this opens up another question about the text: was there something secret or unknowable about the woman’s marital history, or her present “relationship”? Is it possible that one of her past marriages involved an engagement and death that was not publicly recorded? Or that her ongoing relationship was kept under wraps because it was with someone whom it was impossible to marry for legal reasons, such as a soldier?

These proposals of mine are perhaps just as speculative as the going idea that she was “the town whore”. But Reeder’s review of the history and the history of interpretation of John 4 opens up these positive conceptions of the Samaritan woman and other possibilities, and certainly problematises the idea that she was an immoral outcast.

Review: Song of Songs (Parker)

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Joseph Parker was utterly consecrated to one question: What does the Bible narrative mean for us today? He treats all questions of criticism and systematics as secondary to dealing with the text before him. He cross-references abundantly and appropriately, not to bolster theological argument, but to multiply the effect on his listeners of the narrative before us.

It is difficult to find an appropriate treatment of Song of Songs. Some old-time preachers and Church Fathers made it purely allegory; post-modern preachers can be preoccupied with metaphors; but Joseph Parker starts with the story itself, how it fits into Scripture as a whole, and moves into its relevance for the Church today.

This was an enjoyable portion of The People’s Bible, and I look forward to more of Parker’s sermons on Old Testament Wisdom.

Review: First and Second Timothy and Titus (Interpretation)

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Thomas C. Oden (1931–2016) is a renowned Methodist theologian. He wrote numerous theology books and was editor of the monumental Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture.

The Interpretation Series

The Interpretation series of Bible commentaries was created with the purpose of assisting “preachers and teachers”, focusing on the homiletical applications of the biblical text. It is a very useful series both for personal use and for teaching. I recommend this series it highly. The series includes many prominent theologians among whom I’ll mention: Thomas C. Oden (this volume), Terence Fretheim (Exodus), Walter Brueggemann (Genesis & 1 & 2 Samuel), and Richard B. Hays (1 Corinthians).

Oden’s Method

Oden’s method in this commentary is primarily to synthesize his own applications from Church Fathers and classical Protestantism. Among Church Fathers, he quotes most widely from Chrysostom and Augustine. Among Protestant authors, he quotes most from Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley.

My intention is to provide a modern commentary on the Pastorals grounded in the classical, consensual tradition of interpretation of these texts. (p. 2)

The author does cite modern commentaries in many cases, but he quotes the classics much more extensively. This lends an enduring interest to Oden’s commentary. Perspectives from the Fathers are often stunningly fresh, coming as voices from outside our culture and our zeitgeist. His focus on speaking from “consensual tradition” means he tends to dwell outside modern polemical arguments.

Arrangement of the Book

Oden’s volume on First and Second Timothy and Titus (1989) is unique in its arrangement. Passages are grouped thematically, rather than in canonical order, so that the book is less repetitive when read cover-to-cover. The Pastorals can be studied in canonical order using the index. For example, all three Bible books are introduced together, but the section that follows covers 2 Timothy 3:14–17 and 2 Timothy 1:3–7, grouped under “The Authority and Traditioning of Scripture”.

As the Pastoral Epistles are read and studied, Oden’s arrangement becomes more intuitive; but it takes some getting used to.

I think in such a commentary, although it is not long, it would be unproductive to try to cover the entire outline, so I will just point out some of the major contributions that I thought were insightful.

Who Wrote the Pastoral Epistles?

Historical evidence for Pauline authorship is a little weaker for the Pastoral Epistles than for the General Epistles. None of the Pastoral Epistles is mentioned in Marcion’s canon, the earliest New Testament canon. Oden argues, though, that the Church Fathers were unanimous in attributing these letters to Paul and ascribing apostolic authority to them. The historical sequence is also messy, comparing Acts to the Pastorals. But for Oden (p. 8), it is simplest to believe that the events related to these epistles occurred after Luke’s authoring of Acts, than to argue that the Pastorals are inauthentic, merely because we don’t have enough data to fit them together into a neat timeline. The Pastorals also differ thematically from other epistles because they differ in audience. Paul is addressing “long-term associates who did not need to be instructed on elementary teachings” (p. 13).

I do not put much stock in studies that seek to identify the author of a text based on vocabulary. Shakespeare, for instance, wrote much more than Paul, in language much closer to ours, and debates still rage about whether he could have written all the plays attributed to him. But, ultimately, they circle back to the man himself, because it takes very hard proof for speculation to oust tradition.

Do Not Rebuke a Mocker

At many points in the book, Oden helpfully points out how Paul dismisses false teachings rather than attacking them. This comes up repeatedly in the Pastorals. Timothy is to “give no heed” to conspiracy theories (1 Tim. 1:4); “spurn” old wives’ tales (1 Tim. 4:7); “flee” fake preachers who profit from the gospel (1 Tim. 6:11); “avoid godless chatter” (2 Tim. 2:16); Titus is to “give no heed” to Jewish fables (Titus 1:14); “avoid foolish questions” (Titus 3:9). Oden argues that even in our dealings with heretics, we should “refuse further dealings”:

This is not the same as excommunication. It is far more passive than that. If you enter into dialogue, you will inadvertently lend legitimacy to the false teacher by granting that his premise is tenable.
Oden, p. 86

Women in Ministry

Many readers will be interested in Oden’s comments on women in leadership in relation to 1 Timothy 2:11–15. On 1 Timothy 2:12, Oden quotes Chrysostom, arguing that women are called to “quietness” (ἡσυχίᾳ) rather than “silence” (σιγὴ), and that this “quietness” is a virtue enjoined upon both men and women. Other New Testament uses justify this: Acts 22:2, 1 Thess. 4:11, 2 Thess 3:12, 1 Peter 3:4. The cognate term in 1 Timothy 2:2 is usually translated “peaceable”. Oden’s conclusion: “It is not that women in general cannot teach but that a woman cannot teach in such a way as to usurp authority over teachers already duly designated.” (p. 97) The juxtaposition is not between “holding authority” (αὐθεντεῖν) and “being in silence” (εἶναι ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ), which are not very good antonyms; rather, the juxtaposition is between “usurping authority” (perhaps, “domineering”) and “quietness” (or something like “being at peace”).

In his comments on 1 Timothy 2:12, Martin Luther wrote that he believed this verse to pertain to “wives”, not “women”—the two senses are expressed by the same word in Greek, as also in Arabic and many other languages. For Luther, a “wife” (not “a woman”) should not usurp authority over her “husband” (not “a man”). The same lexical problem comes up in treatments of 1 Corinthians 11:3 (see here) and 1 Corinthians 14:34 (see here and here).

Bring the Parchments

Oden writes that Paul’s request, “bring the parchments”, is the most interesting passage in the Pastoral Epistles, and I tend to agree. It certainly sparks the imagination.

Bishops, Presbyters, Elders, Pastors, Deacons … ?

I had planned to write a little about Oden’s ecclesiology and church leadership, which is a major theme in the Pastoral Epistles. He delves at some length into questions such as the distinction between “elders” and “pastors” (hint: for him, there is none). I disagreed with some of Oden’s ideas here and the arguments got a little tricky for me to follow. Many have pointed out that Titus 1:5 and 1:7 seem to collocate “elders” and “bishop” as synonyms, and 1 Timothy 3 only outlines “bishops” and “deacons”, probably because elders were not a third category, but a synonym for “bishops”. This is a frequent argument used in documents that defend congregationalist ecclesiology, which has a flatter hierarchy than most Methodist denominations, in that it has no bishoprics presiding over multiple churches.

Conclusion

I’ve finished three volumes from this series and all have been very good. My main problem with getting through Oden’s book was how it was organized. It is a difficult task writing a commentary that covers portions of scripture that are somewhat repetitive, and yet maintaining readable prose. But his use of classical commentators, in my opinion, made up for this defect. And in spite of his self-proclaimed “fogey”-ness, his style is mostly quite accessible. This book is a refreshing mix of old and new.

Review: Genesis 1–11 (ACCS)

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The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture is a cross-denominational effort to compile the best passages from the first millennium of Christianity, organized canonically (verse by verse). The series was painstakingly created using digital databases of the Greek and Latin Fathers, as well as some sources in Syriac and other languages. The result is a very readable, accessible compendium of quotations from a variety of Church Fathers.

The first volume is necessarily weighted towards the creation and Paradise (Adam and Eve) narratives. In fact, half of the volume covers Genesis 1–3; the second half covers Genesis 4–11.

The Value of ACCS

I found this book extremely useful. Here is why:

Last year, I decided to read every commentary I could find on Genesis. It was easy to get around 100 in English, from after 1700. Luther was difficult to find in English; Melanchthon is out of print and only in Latin. But I could find almost nothing in English from Church Fathers before 1500. It is beyond doubt many times more difficult.

I knew (and know) very little about Church Fathers. I could not afford a seminary education. It has been very difficult to get started from scratch, as a Pentecostal—sometimes Pentecostals act like the church started at Azusa Street. The only Church Father I hear about with any frequency is Augustine.

Eventually, I found four relevant works by Augustine, three of them in Latin. I was so excited that I made it through quite a bit of his commentary. And I saw references online to Ambrose’ On Paradise, Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis, Basil the Great’s Hexaemeron, Gregory of Nyssa’ works on creation, Ephrem the Syrian’s commentary on Genesis, and others.

Any one of these was not available online in a citable form or a reputable translation. Altogether, I was looking at hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to collect these important works (only 10 or 12 of them!), whereas I had spent almost nothing collecting 100+ English commentaries. Ironically, the original works would be in the public domain; but translated volumes from Church Fathers are both expensive and copyrighted.

After much difficulty, I noticed the Glossia Ordinaria, from the 12th century, but it does not name its primary sources, and I did not find Nicholas of Lyra very enlightening (and the Latin was a little cumbersome!). I wanted to read what Lyra had read!

The ACCS volume on Genesis 1–11 has opened up a wealth to me. After reading the whole volume, I have a very clear direction about which Church Fathers are the most important, readable, and interesting to me.

Patristic Interpretations of Genesis 1–11

Some of the interpretations are pretty boilerplate. In quite a few places, they preserve wisdom from Jewish interpretations of Genesis. Others are fresh, Christological readings of the Old Testament that I have never heard before despite reading quite a bit on Genesis.

For instance, the story of Noah’s ark was consistently regarded as a type of Christ’s salvation, down to the smallest details of the narrative.

Other interpretations were mere speculation or tradition, but even these were still interesting as they preserve for us the Fathers’ ways of thinking. Perhaps they should be regarded as cultural imbalances more than hermeneutical failures; our own cultures have their own ideological imbalance.

I am very much looking forward to reading other volumes from the ACCS and slowly piecing together a library of favorite patristic readings of the Bible, from the best works I discover through ACCS.

Review: Evil and the Justice of God

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N. T. Wright is a New Testament scholar and theologian, as well as bishop of Durham. His writings on the resurrection of Christ and Pauline theology are considered among the most influential theological writings in recent decades.

Evil and the Justice of God (2007) is a series of five lectures on the “problem of evil” that were expanded into book form. Wright is very skeptical, though, about the entire task of theodicy—that is, Christian attempts to explain the existence of evil in its relation to God’s perfection. Pitfalls abound: we either accuse ourselves, or we absolve ourselves. Teachings that over-explain suffering can lead us to the embarrassing implication that there is no such thing as evil, or that God is unconcerned. It would be better to acknowledge the reality of evil, as well as the reality of God’s thorough involvement in this world’s redemption. In Wright’s words, we must continue to acknowledge that ‘evil’ is a four-letter word.

What the Gospels offer is not a philosophical explanation of evil, what it is or why it’s there, nor a set of suggestions for how we might adjust our lifestyles so that evil will mysteriously disappear from the world, but the story of an event in which the living God deals with it.
N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, p. 93

In the first lecture, Wright re-frames numerous aspects of the discussion. At various points, he delineates what we should require from a theodicy (p. 34–39):

A theodicy should include a practical, Christian response—that is, it should not be an abstract or theoretical discussion.
A theodicy should not be blind to the political realities of injustice.
A theodicy should acknowledge the reality of sin and the demonic.
A theodicy should not trivialize sin by labeling some people “good” and other people “bad”.

In the second and third lectures, he seeks to show how God responds to evil in concrete ways, in the Old and New Testaments, respectively.

The overarching picture is of the sovereign Creator God who will continue to work within his world until blessing replaces curse, homecoming replaces exile, olive branches appear after the flood and a new family is created in which the scattered languages can be reunited. That is the narrative which forms the outer frame for the canonical Old Testament.
N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, p. 53

The third lecture includes many ideas that are core to Wright’s theology, as it relates the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus to the theological problem of evil. In Wright’s view, part of the problem with theological discussions of evil is that they treat atonement and theodicy in separate boxes; for him, they belong in the same discussion. This is much more obvious when you take a Christus Victor approach to the atonement, which Wright has a wonderful way of articulating.

The Gospels tell the story of Jesus’ death as the story of how the downward spiral of evil finally hit bottom with the violent and bloody execution of this man, this prophet who had announced God’s kingdom.
N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, p. 83

The profound fusion of these two ideas, atonement and theodicy, in the dramatic view of the atonement, brings some needed correction to impractical, abstract, and theoretical explanations of the atonement of Christ.

[Jesus’ death] wasn’t a theory, we note, but an action (a warning to all atonement theorists ever since, and perhaps an indication of why the church has never incorporated a specific defining clause about the atonement in its great creeds). Perhaps, after all, atonement is at its deepest level something that happens, so that to reduce it to a proposition to which one can give mental assent is a mistake at a deep level (for all that such propositions may be accurate signposts to the reality), something of the same kind of mistake that happens when people imagine they can solve the problem of evil. Perhaps, in fact, it is the same mistake in a different guise.
N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, p. 91–92

The fourth lecture, “Imagine There’s No Evil,” deals with how Christians can deal with evil here and now. Wright begins by linking our definitions of “evil” and our mental image of “the new heavens and new earth” to our ongoing efforts to confront evil (or our lack thereof). When we imagine God’s new creation, we must not depict ourselves as disembodied (as in a Gnostic framework, wherein evil is material). We must work toward an understanding of the “principalities and powers” that allows us to picture a new creation in which Christ is all in all.

With that in mind, he gives a few ways that we can confront evil through prayer, holiness, and action. I suspect his political musings here sound quite approriate to British believers and quite inappropriate to Americans.

The final lecture in Evil and the Justice of God deals with forgiveness as the final victoral over evil.

This book, while brief, was very helpful in reorienting the conversation around the problem of evil.

Review: The Fatherhood of God

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Robert S. Candlish was a key leader in the founding the Free Church of Scotland after separating from the Church of Scotland in May 1843. In 1862, he became the principal of the New College, Edinburgh. He is famed for his excellent work on Genesis, and his theological study on the atonement.

The Fatherhood of God (1865; 3rd ed., 1867) is a series of six lectures (the Cunningham Lectures) given in Edinburgh in 1864. Candlish argues that:

Believers become God’s children by identification with Christ in his sonship and “participation in the sonship of the uncreated” p.255.
The fatherhood of God is a free benefit for believers, and is distinctive from being created in the image of God (which applies to all humanity).
Our “adoption” in New Testament theology does not fully take place at regeneration or justification; rather, it is “a distinct and separate benefit” (p. 247).

Believers Are God’s Children

Though Jesus readily uses the word “Father” and even teaches his disciples to pray to “our Father,” Candlish argues that Jesus does not use the word to describe all humans’ relationship to God (p. 162–166). “I find no trace whatever, in all our Lord’s teaching, of anything like a universal fatherhood.” (p. 196)

Sonship is in Christ, who calls his disciples his brothers; he becomes “the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29) not by the fact of creation, but by the act of the Father’s adoption of believers. “Brothers” is an in-group appellation across the early church, and not without reason.

In my own opinion, the only verse that plausibly suggests that all men are children of God is found in Paul’s speech at Mars Hill:

Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone . . .
Acts 17:27b–29

Candlish points out that Paul is quoting a Greek poet, Aratus, not an inspired source. He is using a local writer as a rhetorical device. (I would add here that the use of γένος ‘offspring’, in the aggregate singular, is less personal than the usual word, υίοι ‘children’.) If Paul meant that all people were God’s children, he would be contradicting the words of John (1 John 3:10) and Jesus (Matt. 13:38; John 8:44), as well as his own words to Elymas the sorcerer, whom Paul himself called “son of the devil” (Acts 13:10)!

Adam is called a “son of God” in Luke 3:38, but this is used to speak of his immediate creation by God. It should not be equated with the New Testament doctrine of adoption/sonship. Candlish even points out (p. 56) that “the old and sound British divines” sometimes speak of a general fatherhood of God; but Candlish believes that these usages (along with Acts 17:27) should be taken as figurative usages referring to our status as God’s creatures and subjects.

Candlish extends this argument in the 129-page preliminary essay which was added to the third edition.

What Is Adoption in the New Testament?

“Adoption” (υἱοθεσία) is only mentioned by name in five New Testament verses, all of them in Paul’s epistles: Romans 8:15, 8:23, 9:4, Galatians 4:5, and Ephesians 1:5. For this reason, it seldom receives specific attention in Christian theology, from the Fathers forward.

That makes sonship not merely a relation of adoption, but in a real and important sense a natural relation also. . . . The regeneration is a real communication to us on his part of ‘his seed,’ of what makes our moral and spiritual nature the same in character as his; perfectly so at last, and imperfectly yet as far as it prevails, truly so, even now.
Robert S. Candlish, The Fatherhood of God, 3rd ed., p. 233

John 1:12–13 and 1 John 2:29–3:1 link adoption to regeneration (p. 229–233; 2 Peter 1:4). Adoption is intimately connected with regeneration (being “born again”) whereby “God’s seed abides” in us (1 John 3:9). At the same time, adoption should not be confounded with justification (p. 237). “Neither our regeneration nor our justification constitutes our sonship.” (p. 228)

For Candlish, sonship has two distinctive characteristics: liberty (p. 261) and permanence of position (p. 262–265; see John 8:35–36). Thus, Paul frequently opposes sonship to slavery.

A New Testament Revelation

In the third lecture, Candlish points out that God’s fatherhood and the sonship of believers are part of the New Covenant. The fatherhood of God in the Old Testament is exhibited as his relation toward Israel (Ex. 4:22; Deut. 14:1; Hos. 11:1; cf. Rom. 9:4), Israel’s king (2 Sam. 7:14; 1 Chron. 17:13, 28:6; Ps. 2:7, 89:26–27), and toward the Messiah (Dan. 3:25), but not toward all mankind or even all believers. At best, a fatherhood of God toward all believers only appears in the Old Testament as an analogy.

For the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.
Prov. 3:12, ESV

Are Angels ‘God’s Children’?

One interpretation that I disagreed with was Candlish’s literal understanding of “sons of God” in reference to angels in the Hebrew Bible. This is found in Job 1:6, 2:1, and 38:7; Candlish takes the other three instances as referring to the righteous. For Candlish, angels are sons of God, and this has some bearing on our own sonship, and that of Christ; in my opinion, this is just a Hebrew idiom, mostly irrelevant to the discussion of the proper sonship of believers.

Is It ‘Adoption,’ a Process—or ‘Sonship,’ a Status?

While I greatly enjoyed the book, I felt that Candlish’s definition of sonship could have been clearer. First, it entails liberty and permanence of position. But there is more that may be stated from the text.

First, as Candlish implies in a few places, ‘adoption’ is both a status and the process of receiving that status in Paul’s epistles. It is a status in:

Romans 8:15: “… you have received the Spirit of adoption …”
Romans 9:4: “… to them belong the adoption …”

It is a process in:

Romans 8:23: “… we … groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”
Galatians 4:5: “… to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption …”
Ephesians 1:5: “… he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ …”

In English, the word ‘adoption’ only denotes a process, and is therefore an inadequate translation. George MacDonald—who was influenced by F. D. Maurice, one of Candlish’s theological opponents—has argued in his Unspoken Sermons, that the Greek word Paul uses for “adoption” would be better translated “sonship”, which is equivalent to how Luther translated it. But this may fall into the opposite error, by meaning a state but not a process.

Second, Candlish does not adequately connect New Testament adoption to inheritance. Paul speaks frequently in the same breath of “sonship” and inheritance. He speaks of us coming into our full status and inheritance as God’s children (Eph. 1:11) and of us becoming heirs because we are sons (Gal. 4:7). Sonship, then, does not mean mere childhood. It is also an adult status of eligibility for inheritance; this much is obvious from New Testament usage, but is rarely elucidated.

Lastly, I felt that Candlish overemphasized the legal aspects of atonement and sonship. One cannot read passages like 1 John 3 without noticing that there is clear affectionate language! This brings me to another point, which bears on how we represent adoption in our preaching and teaching.

Western Child Adoption Falls Short

As an aside, I merely point out here the difficulties of comparing biblical adoption to modern, American adoption of children. If God’s seed (roughly, his DNA!) abides in us, this is a point of difference—one of several—between biblical adoption and Western child adoption. Western child adoption also does not convey any freedom as a counterpoint with slavery, but Paul frequently places the two side by side. Western child adoption may imply permanence, but it does not in any way imply inheritance. (On this see my own definition of adoption further down in this review.) In all these ways, New Testament adoption is pretty distant from an American adopting a child; it retains primarily the affectionate and caring aspects, but lacks other specific aspects.

Responses Contemporary with Candlish

As you might imagine, the statement that only believers are God’s children creates some contention. The first edition of this book occasioned a lengthy response from Thomas J. Crawford, who wrote his own book The Fatherhood of God: Considered in Its General and Special Aspects … with a Review of Recent Speculations (1866). Crawford defends the idea that all people are God’s children in one (general) sense, but believers are God’s children in another (special) sense. For Crawford, the sonship of believers is also distinct from Christ’s sonship. Sin is also essentially filial and personal for Crawford.

In the third edition of his book, Candlish included a 129-page rebuttal of Crawford’s arguments. Many readers will skip this; if you are interested in whether God’s fatherhood is universal or not, it will likely interest you.

Candlish writes that the watering down of the fatherhood of God has made it, for some preachers, into practically his only attribute—at the expense of any legal mode of speaking of God. This is never more true than today. God’s fatherhood and our placement as his children are precious theological truth, worthy of disentangling from American assumptions about adoption.

It is pleaded that God must be held to act in this or that particular way towards men, because he is their Father; or otherwise, that he cannot be imagined to adopt such or such a course, inasmuch as it would be inconsistent with his Fatherhood.
Robert S. Candlish, The Fatherhood of God, p. 9

In a chapter of The Mind of the Master (1896), which does not name Candlish, John Watson (pen name Ian Maclaren) wrote the following:

People with dogmatic ends to serve have striven to believe that Jesus reserved Father for His disciples; but an ingenuous person could hardly make the discovery in the Gospels. One searches in vain to find that Jesus bad an esoteric word for His intimates, and an exoteric for the people, saying Father to Jobn and Judge to the publicans. It had been amazing if Jesus were able to employ alternatively two views of God according to His audience, speaking now as an Old Testament Prophet, now as the Son of God. It is recorded in the Gospels, “Then spake Jesus to the multitude and His disciples, saying, . one is your Father, which is in heaven” (St. Matt. xxiii. 1, 9). This attempt to restrict the intention of Jesus is not of yesterday; it was the invention of the Pharisees. They detected the universal note in Jesus’ teaching; they resented His unguarded charity.
John Watson

Watson’s language is forceful and persuasive, and his criticisms are well founded. On Jesus’ address in Matthew 23, I would be curious how he relates its “woes” to its Fatherhood. Candlish is far too concerned with the legal mode of speaking of God, as if Scripture sets up legal metaphors as the superior mode of speaking of God. On the other hand, Watson makes familial metaphors the supreme way of speaking of God. Ironically, Watson’s chapter ends with a sort of postmillennial vision of all the earth coexisting under God’s benevolent fatherhood, which clearly shows the eschatological problem of any universal fatherhood. Much of Western culture—or, at least what I call “Hollywood theology”—has spoken of a universal fatherhood of God for many decades, and it has not tended toward Watson’s vision.

Review: Deliverance to the Captives

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Karl Barth (1886–1968) was a Swiss Protestant theologian, known for his involvement in the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany, as well as his commentary on Romans and his multi-volume work of systematic theology, Church Dogmatics.

Deliverance to the Captives (1959; Eng. tr., 1978) is a collection of sermons preached at Basel Prison in Barth’s later life. It is one of several small collections of spoken addresses and prayers by a man much better-known for his theological writings. Though Barth mostly wrote, preaching was no small part of his life-work. Those of his spoken addresses that I can find in English are the following:

A Unique Time of God: Karl Barth’s WWI Sermons (2016; sermons preached in 1914)
The Early Preaching of Karl Barth (2009; preached 1917–1920)
Come Holy Spirit (1933; preached 1920–1924)
The Word of God and the Word of Man (1928; lectures given c. 1922)
The Word in This World (2019; preached in 1934)
Prayer and Preaching (1952; seminars given 1947–1949)
Deliverance to the Captives (1978; sermons preached 1954–1959)
Call for God: New Sermons from Basel Prison (1967; preached 1959–1964)

Of these, two slender volumes contain Barth’s preaching to the prisoners at Basel Prison from 1954 to 1964: Deliverance to the Captives (German, Den Gefangenen Befreiung) and Call for God (German, Rufe Mich An = Call on Me).

Barth preached at Basel Prison 27 times, usually on holidays such as Christmas or Easter. Those who knew him wrote that he relished these opportunities, and that the prisoners listened with gratitude. He was in his seventies when most of these were preached.

The sermons savor less of academia than many that I have heard on a Sunday. They are fresh and encouraging in their outlook, and they display what Barth himself called his “solidarity” with these prisoners. The sermons are evangelical in tenor and frequently include invitations to trust in Christ.

Themes prominent in his theology come out in the sermons from time to time, but he does not have many theological axes to grind.

The sermon “God’s Good Creation” gives us a brief look at Barth’s theology of creation, based on James 1:17.

“Teach Us To Number Our Days” was the most interesting with respect to theology. It outlines his explanation of the work of the atonement as God’s No to sin and death and God’s Yes to life.

What happened in the death of Jesus did not happen against us, but for us. What took place was not an act of God’s wrath against man. Quite the opposite holds true. Because in the one Jesus God so loved us from all eternity—truly all of us—because he has elected himself to be our dear Father and has elected us to become his dear children whom he wants to save and to draw unto him, therefore he has in the one Jesus written off, rejected, nailed to a cross and killed our old man who, as impressively as he may dwell and spook about in us, is not our true self. God so acted for our own sake. In the death of Jesus he has cleared away, swept out and let go up in flames, smoke and ashes the old man in us, that we may live a life of freedom. That he may himself say to us his divine ‘yes’, valid once for all and unconditionally, to this old companion who has no traffic with our true self, to our old ways and byways, and he did say ‘no’, unmistakably, in the death of Jesus as the substitute for us.
Karl Barth, Deliverance to the Captives, p. 122–123

Review: Always Enough

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Author: Rolland and Heidi Baker are missionaries and itinerant speakers. They have planted churches in the United Kingdom and Mozambique. Heidi is also the CEO of Iris Global, a humanitarian organization they founded for work in developing countries.

Full Title: Always Enough: God’s Miraculous Provision among the Poorest Children on Earth

Overview:

Always Enough (2003) is the story of Rolland and Heidi Baker, focusing on their experiences in Mozambique as missionaries.

In Africa they experienced not only disaster and poverty on a national level, but national repentance and revival as Mozambicans responded to God. Miracles attended their message and are a major part of their story—especially healing and miraculous provision.

Through the Bakers’ delegation of responsibility and leadership, at least five thousand churches were started in Africa in less than a decade. I thoroughly enjoyed this inspirational book and recommend it highly.

Review: Ventures among the Arabs

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Ventures among the Arabs recounts the adventures of Archibald Forder, a missionary who worked among Arabs. Forder worked primarily in the lands we know as Jordan, Israel, and Palestine, but also travelled in many other areas, especially where Bedouins are found. He and his wife first went to Kerak, Moab (present-day Jordan) to fill a gap for William and Jane Lethaby while they travelled elsewhere.

Forder travelled alone into northern Najd, an area that was almost wholly untouched by Europeans. Alois Musil is perhaps the only explorer who overlapped closely with Forder in place and time, and they interacted with the same tribes.

Forder is known—like Musil—for adopting native language, dress, and lifestyle as much as possible. He lacked institutional backing and was forced by the Church of England to become independent, but he did not forsake his missionary outpost. He is refreshing for his lack of worldly prestige or ambition; he is simply a man with a message.

He pioneered among the Bedouin in present-day Jordan, and made visits to rural areas all over the northern Arabian Peninsula. Little or no missionary work was being done in most of the areas he visited, so that his accounts and his depictions, for the time in which they were written, were almost wholly unique.
In terms of day-to-day life, Forder did medical work, often aiding wounded Bedouin after tribal skirmishes. He also distributed Scriptures as a colporteur.

In his lifetime, readers of Forder’s books complained that he didn’t supply any personal details about his life, and he tried to remedy this in 1919 when he published In Brigands’ Hands and Turkish Prisons. Later books show how he pioneered a new mission among Palestine’s Bedouin (based in Jerusalem).

Ventures among the Arabs is a fascinating little collection of stories about Forder’s beginnings in his Arabian mission. I highly recommend all of his books for those interested in the history of missions among Arabs.

Review: The Mystery of Suffering

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Rating: ★★★★

Author: Hugh Evan Hopkins (1907-1994) was an English preacher, missionary and the author of several books. He was educated at Cambridge and became a member of the Dohnavur Fellowship founded by Amy Carmichael. After six years in India (1931 to 1937), he was sent home for health reasons. He served Inter-Varsity Fellowship, and later went overseas to Kenya (1947 to 1955). He was awarded OBE in 1955 and had a very long and active writing and preaching career before and after his retirement.

Hopkins’ books are listed here because it was difficult to obtain information about them:

Henceforth: The Meaning of Christian Discipleship (1942),
The Inadequacy of Non-Christian Religion (1944)
The Mystery of Suffering (1959)
Morning and Evening Prayer (1963)
Charles Simeon of Cambridge (1977)
Understanding Ourselves: Some Personal Christian Insights into Temperament, Depression, Fear, Inability to Believe and the Mystery of Suffering (1983)
Sublime Vagabond: The Life of Joseph Wolff, Missionary Extraordinary (1984)
A History of the Church of St. Edward, King & Martyr, Cambridge (1989)

Overview

Hopkins begins by discussing how different world religions have different answers to suffering, and why the Christian answer is the best. This was a unique approach. In looking at this, Hopkins is trying to explain the “link between the sins and the sufferings of the world”. Sin is a general explanation for suffering, but may not always be the personalized explanation (as in a system of karma).

When he moves into the Christian answer, Hopkins seeks to do so in a way that continues to acknowledge that evil is not easily explained away. In the words of N. T. Wright, “Evil is still a four-letter word.” In fact, Hopkins strikes a chord that resonates with N. T. Wright’s Evil and the Justice of God. Both write that we should not treat human suffering as only an intellectual knot to be untied.

We must beware lest familiarity with the existence of suffering in our present age make us insensitive and merely curious.

Hopkins seeks a balance between the fatalistic pat answer that “everything happens for a reason” and the sometimes man-centered answer that says we can “pray ourselves up by our bootstraps” (my idiom, not his). On the fatalistic answer, Hopkins writes that it is common enough to speak of our sufferings as a God-ordained “cross to bear”, but “there is actually nothing in the Bible to suggest that God works in this way” (p. 54).

Hopkins writes that “taking up your cross” means discipleship, not suffering:

Firstly, the cross [Jesus] was speaking about was something to be voluntarily undertaken, and secondly it is an essential part of our Christian discipleship. There is nothing arbitrary about bearing a cross. God does not lay it on one and not on another. Every true Christian should be bearing his cross every day, and doing so by choice and gladly as a sign of his devotion to his Lord. (p. 54)

This does not mean, though, that Christians never suffer, as some have it. Though an Anglican in the 1950s, Hopkins has some awareness of Charismatic healing literature and the idea that God wants to heal all diseases. He tries to explain these in context with other prayers that go unanswered. He concludes that “it is not possible to say that God always wants his children to be insulated from suffering” (p. 75). We should learn this much from Gethsemane: Sometimes suffering is God’s will.

A quotation from P. T. Forsyth is a great explanation of Hopkins’ point in juxtaposing sin and suffering:

The cross of Christ can submerge suffering, and make it a means of salvation, but with sin it can make neither use nor terms; it can only make an end of it. God in Christ is capable of suffering and of transmuting sorrow; but of sin he is incapable [of transforming], and his work is to destroy it. (cited as The Justification of God, p. 138; qtd, on p. 63)

He gives Amy Carmichael, who he worked with, as an example of the right attitude in suffering. Carmichael had lifelong bouts of neuralgia that sometimes left her bed-ridden for long stretches. Hopkins writes that she hated to be referred to as “removed from combat”; rather, she was still in combat in her sick-bed. “Much of the suffering we endure is surely permitted in order to be attacked and overcome.” (p. 57) (Carmichael herself wrote a book on suffering, Rose from Brier.)

In the chapter, “How Can Pain Glorify God?”, Hopkins evinces the choice of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to stay in America as an example of a God-glorifying choice to suffer (p. 106). God invites us to enter the kingdom through many tribulations. and to endure suffering as a soldier. For Hopkins, this is part and parcel of discipleship and mission, and that in itself is part of the explanation of suffering.

To suffer as a Christian means always willing the best for your persecutors. The author remembers kneeling with three Kikuyu men in Kenya and praying for their persecutors, following the examples of Jesus and Stephen. This is another way suffering glorifies God.

Hopkin concludes by contemplating the cross of Jesus Christ. “The Bible makes it clear that the problem of man’s sin, and therefore of his sufferings too, was dealt with on the cross.” (p. 109) If Christ’s suffering can glorify God, so can mine. We don’t explain suffering; we use it as an opportunity to glorify God, and in doing so, we transform it.

Hugh Evan Hopkins is an able and balanced writer with a wealth of experience. I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading others from him.