Resident Theologian
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My latest: on Jordan Peterson, in CT
A link to my review of Jordan Peterson’s allegorical commentary on the Torah in Christianity Today.
Yesterday Christianity Today published my review of Jordan Peterson’s new book, We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine. The title of the review is “Jordan Peterson Loves God’s Word. But What About God?” Early on I write the following:
The volume is, to put it mildly, an enormous undertaking—quite unlike Peterson’s self-help books. Running more than 200,000 words, it is a thematic and allegorical commentary on the law of Moses, especially Genesis and Exodus. It is gargantuan in every sense of the word: energizing and exhausting, brimming with ideas and asides, full of insightful connections and baffling conclusions, consistent in its viewpoint, maddening in its dodges, impressive in its ambition, and tedious, at times, in its sheer funereal solemnity.
Read the full thing here. For comparison, here is Rowan Williams in The Guardian with a rhetorically more negative but substantively similar assessment.
Abraham our contemporary
The Bible is not a human record from the distant past, full of a mixture of inspiring and not-so-inspiring stories or thoughts; nor is it a sort of magical oracle, dictated by God. It is rather the utterances and records of human beings who have been employed by God to witness to his action in the world, now given to us by God so that we may learn who he is and what he does; and the “giving” by God is by means of the resurrection of Jesus.
The Bible is not a human record from the distant past, full of a mixture of inspiring and not-so-inspiring stories or thoughts; nor is it a sort of magical oracle, dictated by God. It is rather the utterances and records of human beings who have been employed by God to witness to his action in the world, now given to us by God so that we may learn who he is and what he does; and the “giving” by God is by means of the resurrection of Jesus. The risen Jesus takes hold of the history of God’s people from its remotest beginnings, lifts it out of death by bringing it to completeness, and presents it to us as his word, his communication to us here and now. Because we live in the power of the risen Christ, we can hear and understand this history, since it is made contemporary with us; in the risen Christ, David and Solomon, Abraham and Moses, stand in the middle of our assembly, our present community, speaking to us about the God who spoke with them in their lifetimes in such a way that we can see how their encounter with God leads towards and is completed in Jesus. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus speaks of Abraham being glad to see his coming (John 8.56); this is the thought that the icon represents. Just as Jesus reintroduces Adam and Eve as he takes each of them by the hand, so he takes Abraham and ourselves by the hand and introduces us to each other. And from Abraham we learn something decisive about faith, about looking to an unseen future and about trusting that the unseen future has the face of Christ. Thus a proper Christian reading of the Bible is always a reading that looks and listens for that wholeness given by Christ’s resurrection; if we try to read any passage without being aware of the light of the resurrection, we shall read inadequately.
—Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ (Eerdmans, 2003), 33-34. This paragraph is part of a larger reflection on an Eastern icon of the anastasis. The comment about the fullness of Scripture, even Scripture itself, being given in, by, and through the resurrection of Jesus is a theme developed further, in recent years, by John Webster and especially John Behr, to great effect.
Karen Kilby book forum in Political Theology
At long last, the newest issue of the academic journal Political Theology is out, and it features a book forum I organized and edited for the journal. The forum, or roundtable discussion, is devoted to Karen Kilby’s latest book, a collection of mostly previously published essays titled God, Evil, and the Limits of Theology. Here is how the forum is laid out:
At long last, the newest issue of the academic journal Political Theology is out, and it features a book forum I organized and edited for the journal. The forum, or roundtable discussion, is devoted to Karen Kilby’s latest book, a collection of mostly previously published essays titled God, Evil, and the Limits of Theology. Here is how the forum is laid out:
My opening essay, “Theology in the Dark,” introduces the book’s major themes.
Andrew Prevot, associate professor of theology at Boston College, writes about “Karen Kilby on the Politics of Not Knowing.”
Kathryn Tanner, professor of theology at Yale Divinity School, writes on “The Limits of Political Theology.”
Katherine Sonderegger, professor of theology at Virginia Theological Seminary, writes on “Modernity in the Theology of Karen Kilby.”
Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury and Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, writes about what constitutes “A True Otherness.”
Sarah Coakley, professor of theology emerita at the University of Cambridge, writes about theology and the Trinity “Beyond Understanding.”
Miroslav Volf, professor of theology at Yale Divinity School, writes in defense of “Apophatic Social Trinitarianism: Why I Continue to Espouse ‘a Kind of’ Social Trinitarianism.”
Karen Kilby, professor of Catholic theology at Durham University, writes a “Reply to Critics.”
Though it took a full 16 months to see the idea from conception to print, it was a pleasure to do so. What a feast. Thanks to editor Vincent Lloyd for the invitation. Now go buy Prof. Kilby’s book and read this issue of PT cover to cover
The blurbs are in for The Triune Story
"Robert Jenson was undoubtedly one of the most influential and original English-speaking theologians of the last half century, eloquent, controversial, profoundly in love with the God of Jewish and Christian Scripture. This invaluable collection shows us the depth and quality of his engagement with the text of Scripture: we follow him in his close reading of various passages and his tracing of various themes, and emerge with a renewed appreciation of the scope of his doctrinal vision. He offers a model of committed, prayerful exegesis which is both a joy and a challenge to read." —Rowan Williams
"Robert Jenson never needed to be reminded that the most interesting thing about the Bible is God. For those frustrated by biblical scholars apparently willing to harangue us about anything but God, The Triune Story will come as a healing draught. With vigor, clarity, and learning, Jenson reminds us that the apostolic faith, ancient yet always future, is the only true key to the understanding and interpretation of Scripture." —Christopher Bryan, author of The Resurrection of the Messiah and Listening to the Bible
"The never ending task of helping students learn how to read scripture theologically just got a lot easier with this collection. Jenson had a lot to say about the theological interpretation of scripture—much of it important and worthy of offering to future generations as an able guide into the strange world of the bible. Jenson's work on scripture will also be studied by generations of historians and theologians who will want to see a theologian in full intellectual flight thinking about scripture and society and doing so with a seriousness almost unmatched in the latter half of the twenty century. This is a book both important and necessary." —Willie James Jennings, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies, Yale Divinity School
"In a cultural and theological milieu in the twentieth century that viewed the Bible as a book from the past, Robert Jenson put the biblical story as a living Word of God at the center of his thought. The essays in this rich collection are as fresh and stimulating today as they were when first published." —Robert Louis Wilken, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor Emeritus of the History of Christianity, University of Virginia