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• November 8, 2011 by Jason Hood

  Tattoos!

  I’ve signed up to discuss a part of Matthew Lee Anderson’s book on the body in Christian thought and practice, Earthen Vessels. (You should buy a copy, or have him chat at a church or campus or even with a reading group.) What follows is my internal dialogue (so say some) an external diabolism.

  I realize it’s not the normal format. Please, indulge me like Tetzel.

  Why bother with the chapter on tattoos? For starters, there are some nice observations and turns of phrase. Tattoos, MLA notes, are a social and not merely personal phenomenon; “The skin stretches beyond its limits into the world around us.” There are many such, but let’s keep it light, shall we?

  Why did I volunteer to write about something I can’t even consistently spell, let alone something I don’t have an opinion on? Why couldn’t MLA have asked John MacArthur to blog about this? JMac could have told you clearly what to do—in three points—and spawned a snafu over tattoo taboos.

  Why don’t I care about my tattoos?

  What has me writing is that my students—whether fundy, liberated, or secularist—do care. Last week I taught through Lev 19 with undergrads in an introductory OT survey course. We had some stimulating discussion on the quest for identity and labels. It was abruptly terminated. (Just picture a fairly immature crowd, and Yvette Nicole Brown with an extra 75 or 100 pounds. Now imagine her saying, “What about a sexy little butterfly tattoo? Would that be a quest for identity?” Now imagine recovering the conversation after that.) But the thoughts on identity-quest registered while it lasted, just as they did in MLA’s tattoo chapter.

  So I can get a convo going, but I don’t know what I’m talking about: I’ve had three earrings, but I’ve never been inked. So allow me to draw from the shameful specter of tattoos in my family. Shortly after her 80^th birthday, my grandmother got her first tattoos. Okay, so they were just eyebrows. But her pastor, who “graciously” gave her a pass, was still concerned enough to preach on tattoos three weeks later. (Without naming denominations, let’s just say they place tattoos, alcohol, and worship with musical instruments in a catch-all drawer that—in their view—holds anything falling between “demonic” and “dumb” on the moral spectrum.)

  I think many of us agree that there’s nothing inherently sinful or wrong with getting a tattoo. We commonly call these “wisdom” issues (as opposed to matters of “law”; that’s a gross simplification that borders on the theological felonious, but let’s roll with it for the moment) and agree not to bug one another about them.

  The challenging part is that “wisdom” issues actually require wisdom. We always have to work through interesting and important questions. (How exactly do you spell IXTHYS/ICHTHUS, and will it fit legibly in the fish symbol you’ve selected? Why exactly do you want a sexy little butterfly? What if your fiancée dies and you marry someone else…with a different name? Obviously you are trying very hard when you ink to say something…what is it, and is it worth saying? If later in your life you are less hostile to Darwin, could you modify the tat so that your Jesus fish kisses your Darwin lizard?)

  And while we try to answer those questions, we’ll always have conservative and liberal voices pressing us, squeezing out the middle ground that lies between (1) “Do whatever you want” and (2) “The devil wants you to get inked.”

  The tricky part lies here: “wisdom” issues involve motivation. (And I can’t fully know my own heart, let alone much about others.) But I’ll hazard this thought: I suspect that one primary reason we tat and pierce, as with so much of what we do with our body, is a matter of staking out identity. (I’m cosigning Matt here.) That might be true even if we are just identifying ourselves as “bored.”

  I remember struggling back in the 90s, after my third earring:  I wasn’t really the sort of musical rebel who needed three earrings. I didn’t even have black Doc Marten’s. I was no longer depressed enough to wear black all the time. The earrings seemed so…out of place.

  Pessimistic non-sequitur: What is the difference between stamping doulos on my bicep to praying on street corners? Neither is wrong per se; I’d give you a ride downtown for both activities. But with the latter, maybe you’re telling the world, “I’m holy!” And with the former, I could be shouting, “I’m not a loser fundy, and by golly, I’m a Jesus-slave!” If so, the line between holy roller and holy rock-and-roller starts is thinning…

  Up to this point I’m merely playing on Matt’s points. But I do want to suggest a way to advance the conversation. I have two directions. First, if we tat, we should probably do it with excellence. In fact, I’d love to see Christian tattoo academies. (Not least so that people could learn to do Hebrew and Greek correctly. Very serious question: what’s the ratio between evangelical liberal arts schools and trade schools? What does that say about our view of working with and on our bodies?) Can’t we raise funds to start such joints in, say, Grand Rapids, Colorado Springs, Wheaton, or Branson? Couldn’t Thomas Kinkade, Rev. Finster’s estate, and Mako join forces for the greater good?

  Ain’t no tat like a Christian tat, cuz a Chrsitian tat comes in matte. (And complete with “master highlights” for a few hundred bucks more.)

  Secondly, and seriously: I’ve never heard anyone apply the NT’s approach to externalities to tats. Granted, I haven’t been listening—again, just not something I care about.

  1 Peter 3 and 1 Tim 2 both cite what I call “peacocking” as a particularly dangerous thing for Jesus people. Braids (which were often elaborate, status-symbol endeavors in Gr-Rom culture), gold, pearls, and expensive clothing create problems both for the community of faith (stratifying and segregating) and for the peacocks engaged in such displays.

  If tats and piercings are really a subset of the bigger discussion about how we clothe and present ourselves, maybe the concerns we find in places like 1 Pet 3 and 1 Tim 2 need to be part of the conversation. The NT wants us to downplay flash and splash, and does not look kindly on acts of segregation.

  That certainly doesn’t mean “NO TATS!” But it does mean THINK (theologically) WHEN YOU INK…

  Matt, back to you in the studio for some elaboration on t(h)at…

  Categories: Book Review | General | Jason Hood | off-topic | ways to scare your children

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• October 14, 2011 by Jason Hood

  Reviewing Wisdom (part 2): O’Dowd on O’Donnell on Wisdom

  [[See the series intro and part one of this review.]]

  Method in Douglas Sean O’Donnell, The Beginning and End of Wisdom

  My last review of this light and engaging book examined the book’s sermons.  I also want to highlight the importance of being alert to our own methods and the power they have to shape what we preach.

  O’Donnell’s method is perhaps most clearly revealed in the way he makes us of scholarly works.  He cites many of the most renowned wisdom scholars like Gerhard von Rad, James Crenshaw, Bruce Waltke, Michael Fox, and Leo Perdue.  Without exception, these scholars characterize biblical wisdom as knowledge of the harmony, order, and structure built into the creation.  Yet O’Donnell does not mention the link between wisdom and creation nor with the creation order.  Nor does he mention two of the most profound wisdom texts: Proverbs 3:18-20 where wisdom provides a path back to tree of life and the lost garden, and the longest poem in Proverbs 8:1-36 where Woman Wisdom testifies to the origin of her expertise: she saw the world made.  Creation, that center of ancient wisdom theology, does not really appear in his book.

  But why? And what does appear instead?  O’Donnell’s Reformed focus is shaped by a theology of salvation and the glory of God which seems to send him looking for three themes: salvation, moral guidance, and metaphysical concepts about God, like omnipotence and sovereignty (pp. 137 and 209 n.3).  While these are all central, biblical themes, I’m not convinced they are at the heart of the wisdom literature.  None of these biblical books mentions the covenants or Israel’s history of salvation.  Their primary context is creation – its breadth, its order, and its inner operations.   

  How might a method of a fuller theology look different than what we find in O’Donnell’s book?  First, take O’Donnell’s focus on morality.  What if, as many argue, ethics has its roots in a theology of creation?  Wisdom, in this case, would be more than just doing good, but actions that are good because they seek out the justice, order, and hierarchies of the moral world God has created.  This greater depth is important.  A law professor I know often reminds me that few legal issues are solved by applying individual laws. Most situations fall somewhere between two or more laws and the job of the lawyer or judge is to discern the best application.  That’s wisdom: the comprehensive moral viewpoint that sees the system as a whole and finds justice in each new situation.  God fit this thing together and that should give every one of us confidence that wisdom can guide us in the countless decisions we make in our homes, neighborhoods, churches, and jobs – moral or not.

  Second, the wisdom-creation focus also goes further than O’Donnell in affirming the goodness of the created world and the whole of human life.  In other words, as I observed in my earlier review, wisdom affirms the enormous range of human callings to make something out of this world, just as we find in the valiant woman in Proverbs 31 who excels at farming, textiles, trading, wine making, parenting, and social justice. If there is an order to creation then there is an order or harmony within each of these callings.  Wisdom, focused on God’s final design for the world, is the way to access that order.

  Finally, tying wisdom to the created order also opens new windows into the meaning of Jesus’ work and ministry.  O’Donnell chooses not to address the long poem in Proverbs 8 where Woman Wisdom sees the process of creation, and for this reason he has no reason to mention that the New Testament writers put Jesus in the place of this woman “in the beginning” (John 1 and Hebrews 1).  Only for these NT authors, the Creator has become the Creature in order to restore all of the order, beauty and wholeness that have been lost in the fall.  In so tying Jesus to wisdom, Hebrews and John announce good news for us and for everything else too: parks, cities, schools, families, gardens, the arts, medicine and so on.

  O’Donnell’s path through these books gives us a wise and Sovereign God, a generous Savior, and a call to faith that results in righteous living.  The wisdom literature is no easy genre and, in a day when a vacuous “spirituality” is increasingly in fashion, his emphasis is very much appreciated.  My own approach, guided less by the doctrines of the Reformed tradition, pursues the close theological link in these books between creation (stuff) and wisdom.  On this path we meet God as our Creator and the Savior of creation.  God’s salvation work in Jesus – the Creator who took on flesh – banishes the sin of death and restores all things to their fullness in the power of his fleshly resurrection.  Creatures are not just forgiven, but, as wisdom scholar Al Wolters has said, “Creation (is) Regained.”  I would hope that the church will come away enriched by both methods of study and both ways of preaching this excellent literature.

  Categories: Book Review | Book Reviews | Creation | General | Jason Hood | The SAET | biblical studies | wisdom

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• October 13, 2011 by Jason Hood

  Reviewing Wisdom (part 1): O’Dowd on O’Donnell on wisdom

  Douglas Sean O’Donnell, The Beginning and End of Wisdom: Preaching Christ from the First and Last Chapters of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job (Crossway, 2011). Reviewed by Ryan Patrick O’Dowd.

  [[See the series introduction here.]]

  In his introduction to this book, Sidney Greidanus admonishes the church for its failure to read and preach Old Testament wisdom literature.  Greidanus shows that when the biblical sources churches use to equip God’s saints are inadequate, the health of the church suffers.  Douglas O’Donnell’s book is a creative and engaging introduction to these lost texts and a much needed book for a church long deprived of biblical wisdom.

  After a short introduction, O’Donnell provides six sermons on the first and last chapters of each wisdom book. These sermons are followed by a chapter on hermeneutics and homiletics and two appendices that help preachers to preach wisdom and poetry.  O’Donnell’s aim is twofold: one, to inspire love for the wisdom literature, and two, to motivate and guide preachers towards preaching good sermons from these books.  I have written two reviews in order to comment on both goals.  In the next review I will point to elements in O’Donnell’s methodology which demonstrate that the church’s struggle to preach wisdom literature today goes beyond the genre or our theological method.  This first review examines the content of O’Donnell’s sermons.

  O’Donnell’s sermons on Proverbs emphasize moral application.  He shows that wisdom is interested in giving us a particular guide for day-to-day life in the world, inspiring us to be grateful for the gift of wisdom.  O’Donnell explains that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, meaning that true wisdom can only be had if we start in the right place and aim in the right direction – an obedient faith in the covenant God who is the source of all wisdom.

  The argument is clear and persuasive in this chapter, though I would have taken the discussion a bit further.  Because O’Donnell views wisdom almost entirely within the categories of salvation and morality, he does not address the way wisdom speaks to vocational and cultural issues like aesthetics, architecture, education and politics.  Note, for example, the wisdom Bezalel had in building the tabernacle (Exod 31) – wisdom of skill that knows the material properties of God’s world.  Joseph and Daniel are given wisdom to govern and to interpret dreams and Solomon’s wisdom applies to a range of tasks from administering justice to building the Temple.

  When O’Donnell comes to his next sermon on the valiant woman in Proverbs 31, he again focuses on her moral and spiritual character.  But Proverbs 31 also provides lengthy illustrations of her accomplishments in agriculture, commerce, parenting, textiles, and social justice.  O’Donnell generically calls these her “industrious work,” referring briefly to Ruth and Boaz as people of character like the Valiant Woman and Woman Wisdom in Proverbs 8.  But he doesn’t explore these connections.  Had he done so, he might have opened up the way back to Woman Wisdom in Proverbs 8, who saw all the events of creation. Wisdom affirms the goodness of all the human vocations in this world, not just being a good wife.

  O’Donnell preaches with an explicit indebtedness to the tradition of Reformed theology and so I was surprised that he did not make use of the excellent Proverbs scholarship by Raymond Van Leeuwen and Al Wolters.  Not only do they share his Reformed heritage, but both show how Reformers like Luther, Calvin, Brenz and Melanchthon all saw the wisdom literature celebrating God’s whole creation, and with it, every dimension of human activity in the world.

  O’Donnell’s two chapters on Ecclesiastes describe what he calls “the futility of our work in this world,” warning us that our work adds nothing new to this world unless it is “in the Lord.”  In other words, work is futile but can be redeemed in Jesus the Messiah.

  This raises important questions: how do Christians in a fallen world balance the message of the futility of work with the goodness of work imagined in Proverbs 31?  And what does it mean for Jesus to redeem work?  The sermons don’t tackle these questions and I suspect that all pastors struggle to connect the physical resurrection of Jesus’ body with its specific application to our life in this world today.  In Colossians Paul tells us that Jesus’ resurrection begins the process of reconciling everything in the heavens and the earth.  He then prays for God to give his church wisdom so that we can bring the power of his resurrection to the world (compare Phil 3).  Simply put, wisdom is our guide to embody his renewing grace, peace, forgiveness and healing in all the broken places of the world: offices, schools, banks, hospitals, studios, and homes.  But we must first link wisdom to creation for this wisdom message in Colossians to make sense.

  In his sermons on Job, O’Donnell avoids the common error of moralizing Job’s story and concluding that Job suffers because he has sinned.  Such a move is shortsighted, as O’Donnell notes, because the narrator and God both strain to reaffirm Job as an upright and righteous man.  No, this book is about the mystery of a just God who introduces punishments into the life of a holy man.

  I was a little surprised that O’Donnell did not place this mystery in the context of the created order, as Job does in his first complaint about his suffering (3:1-10).  Here Job specifically reverses all the terms of light, life and goodness in the six day account of Genesis 1.  Job’s friends immediately defend God and accuse Job of sin; but they are misguided.  God’s response confirms that Job was on target from the beginning, answering Job’s complaint with a long series of questions that demonstrate the mysteries in the created world (chapters 38-42).   The point is that justice and suffering in Job are not just abstract ideas detached from life on earth.  They are visceral realities of the order of the universe that extend from human affairs to the sun, moon, clouds, rain, and soil.

  Though O’Donnell’s approach does not place suffering in a theology of creation, his excellent sermon on Job 42 nevertheless fits with this interpretation.  He argues that if Job is righteous, then there must be much about our human path in this world that remains a mystery to us: life exceeds our understanding and wisdom must know its limits! God does not give Job a rational explanation after all; instead he points to his power in the physical world as a reminder that his thoughts are not our thoughts.  The story ends with Job repentant, but the mystery left open.  O’Donnell shows that this mystery is only resolved in Jesus’ suffering and resurrection.  Indeed, the death of the righteous One and his rising again save us from our judgment and restore the whole world with a power that is beyond our imagining.  But that does not always lessen the anguish of suffering in our long wait for his kingdom to come at last.  Job is a long story that encourages a long wait.

  O’Donnell’s book is easy and useful reading, despite what I think is sometimes too narrow a focus that does not address the connections between creation and wisdom.  I am increasingly convinced that if wisdom sermons are going to have significant staying power, they will do best to delve into the roots of wisdom in the tangible, created world.

  Categories: Book Review | Book Reviews | General | Jason Hood | SAET Fellow Publications | Second Fellowship | wisdom

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• September 22, 2011 by Jason Hood

  Review of J. R. R. Tolkien by Mark Horne

  After reading The Hobbit this year I could not find my copies of the Lord of the Rings trilogy; they are still missing and I suspect they have fallen into shadow. But I still had a Tolkien itch; I didn’t feel like going back to a bigger biography so I picked up Mark Horne’s little volume in the Christian Encounter Series.

  It’s a very good book. It’s the first that I’ve read in that series, but it won’t be the last. I suspect as my kids get old enough for those sorts of books, I’ll start to pick up volumes.

  As one would expect, it’s not deep–at least, it’s not in-depth. But it’s highly recommended for a quick yet thoughtful read. It would serve especially well as an enlightening read for young fans. That is not because it is simplistic, but because it unveils the darkness and beauty in Tolkien’s life and its impact on his work. When I was a child it never dawned on me that larger than life literary figures because they had a life journey. They were not “born,” but “made,” by what they had suffered and because of what their religion and their friendships had contributed. (Incidentally, this is why SAET exists. The friendship/religion part more than the suffering.)

  Horne does a good job of showing the interaction between life, author, and fiction, and just how far from idealistic that interaction was: pain, suffering, being orphaned, losing friends and health in war, and politics are all integrated in Tolkien’s life to the point of influencing his writing.

  But he was also shaped by friendships, religion, and his professional life as a philologist. (Of course the influence often occurs in indirect ways, and is subtle at best, and one does not want to read too much of his life into his fiction in particular.)

  The “influence” theme appears in a small way on the biography’s opening page. Tolkien scraped by as a young academic and graded papers to make extra money. One such paper contained an empty page. For some reason, Tolkien took his mind off his work for a moment and doodled a sentence on that page that I can’t read or hear without getting chills:

  In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.

  Categories: Book Review | Book Reviews | General | Jason Hood

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• August 17, 2011 by Gerald Hiestand

  Themelios Review of “The Missional Church and Leadership Formation”

  My review of  The Missional Church and Leadership Formation (Eerdmans, 2009) is now up over at Themelios.

  Categories: Book Review | General | Gerald Hiestand

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• April 15, 2011 by Gerald Hiestand

  Piper and Carson on the Pastor-Scholar/Scholar-Pastor

  The Piper/Carson lectures from last year have been published by Crossway as, The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor: Reflections on Life and Ministry. My buddy Owen Strachan (SAET First Fellowship) served as an editor for the project and kindly asked me for an endorsement, which I was happy to give. As I’ve noted on this blog before, Piper and Carson are speaking more generally about the pastor as local theologian, rather than the pastor as ecclesial theologian (my terms, not theirs). But what they say in these two lectures is important to the whole discussion driving the SAET project. I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book.

  “Few books are so needed as this. Recapturing the vision of the pastor as scholar and the scholar as pastor is crucial for the health of the church. Who would not want to read John Piper and D. A. Carson as they reflect on this calling? This is one of the most encouraging and helpful books I have seen in a long time. If you are a pastor, read it. If you have a pastor, put it in his hands.”
  —R. Albert Mohler Jr., President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

  “I’m deeply encouraged by the growing number of pastoral scholars and scholarly pastors. Probably no living Christians have done more to bring about this trend than D. A. Carson and John Piper. In this book, they will inspire you with stories from their journeys and challenge you with seasoned advice. Most of all, they will lead you to thank God that he gives you the privilege of leading and teaching his church.”
  —Collin Hansen, Editorial Director, The Gospel Coalition; author, Young, Restless, Reformed

  “These are important chapters by two of evangelicalism’s most important thinkers. In an age that has largely forgotten the native connection between theology and the church, John Piper and D. A. Carson remind us that these two worlds belong together. There can be, of course, no turning back the clock; the modern research university is here to stay. But Piper and Carson offer us two good examples of how to navigate the contemporary terrain with a view to producing ecclesial theology—theology in service to the church. This short book is a great beginning to a conversation that has been long overdue.”
  —Gerald Hiestand, Senior Associate Pastor, Calvary Memorial Church, Oak Park, Illinois; Executive Director, Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology

  Categories: Book Review | D. A. Carson | General | Gerald Hiestand | John Piper

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• December 14, 2010 by Gerald Hiestand

  The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies

  This looks to be a very helpful book for those of us committed to the SAET’s vision of the ecclesial theologian. No doubt I’ll be posting more about it once I’ve had the chance to read it, but for now, here’s a few paragraphs from Scot McKnight about the book:

  What happens when the Bible is studied at a university? The bigger question is this: What happens to the Bible when it is studied at a university? Those are questions behind Michael Legaspi’s excellent study The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology).

  This book is chock-full of insights and observations, and is a book that ought to be on the shelf of every college and seminary library, for it examines what happens in the 18th and 19th centuries when Scripture moved from being the Church’s Bible or the Confessional Bible to the “death of [the Bible as] Scripture” as it arose anew as The Academic Bible, or the Bible as it was examined in the university. That period developed a “post confessional” hermeneutic. In effect, they cut the claims the Bible had on the individual when the individual read it.

  The academic Bible is the one studied post-confessionally: outside the domains and parameters of the confessions of the Church. The scriptural Bible is the one studied through the lens of the Church, and through the lens of the creeds and confessions.

  The academic Bible is studied as an object; the scriptural Bible calls the reader to account. The academic Bible is studied at a distance; the scriptural Bible draws the reader before God. For the academic Bible, the Bible is a text; for the scriptural Bible, the Bible is Scripture. The Bible was co-opted by social virtues that are part of the liberal, progressive and culture of irenic toleration.

  Great stuff! Can’t wait to read it.

  Categories: Book Review | General | Gerald Hiestand

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• December 8, 2010 by Gerald Hiestand

  What Complementarians Can Learn from An Egalitarian Book

  I was asked by the folks at The Gospel Coalition to review, How I Changed My Mind About Women in Leadership: Compelling Stories from Prominent Evangelicals (Zondervan, 2010).  The review is now up and can be read here.

  Categories: Book Review | General | Gerald Hiestand

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• September 19, 2010 by Gerald Hiestand

  William Young’s, The Shack: A Review

  William Young’s The Shack, has only just now begun to fall of the New York Time’s best seller’s list. The book has been a remarkable sensation, and while the sensation has begun to wear off, it remains an influential and popular book. I don’t read a lot of fiction (less than I’d like, to be sure), but so many people in my church were reading the book, that I made it a priority to check it out. What follows are my thoughts about the book, and how pastors should respond to it.

  The story opens with the abduction and brutal murder of “Mac’s” seven year old daughter. Four years later, Mac is invited by God to join him at the shack where his daughter’s murder was discovered. Mac accepts the invitation, and the remainder of the book is Mac’s experience with God at the shack. The book is essentially Young’s theodicy wrapped in a narrative. Young (consciously or not) follows Dostoevsky in tackling perhaps one of the greatest questions in theodicy—the suffering of children.

  Young’s book has not been without controversy. Perhaps most immediately jarring is his portrayal of God the Father as a large African American woman, and the Holy Spirit as an ethereal and diminutive Asian woman. (Jesus, mercifully, remains a Jewish handyman.) I’ve already made comments elsewhere about gender and the nature of God, so I’ll not belabor that point here.

  Young’s decision to portray God in mostly feminine categories has relevance to a wider “anti-power” motif woven throughout the book. Young, in casting God in female terms, distances God from a sense of tyranny and dominance—a sense more often associated with males than females. Young’s agenda is not unique. Those toward the theological left tend to be suspicious of power, viewing it as oppressive and brutalizing. The emergence of egalitarianism within the church and home, and the movement toward decentralized church leadership structures are symptomatic of this shift. Hierarchy, we are often told, leads to oppression. At one point, Mac asks God which of the three members of the Trinity is in charge of the others. The three are aghast at the thought. “What you are seeing here,” the Holy Spirit informs him, “is a relationship without any overlay of power….Authority, as you usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong uses to make others conform to what they want.” Power, Young argues at various points, is inherently corrupting and oppressive.

  The net result is a God who rejects—indeed is repulsed by—the use of power. (In one scene God picks up a gun between two fingers, holding it at arms lengths as though it were a dead mouse). Young’s God never coerces, never forces; He believes the best in everyone, is enduringly patient, and invincibly good-natured. For Young, love cannot be love if it is not freely offered and freely received. Power equals dominance, and if God dominates us he cannot love us, nor can we freely love him.

  There are two fundamental difficulties I have with Young’s “anti-power” motif. First, Young’s portrayal of God is out of step with much of the way God is portrayed in Scripture. It’s difficult to square Young’s pacifistic Trinitarian portrayal with the God of Genesis 6, the Christ of Revelation 19, and the Holy Spirit of Acts 5. And it’s at this point that Young’s theodicy falls short. The Scripture doesn’t allow us to distance God from violence and coercion. The deeper question of theodicy is not simply how a good God can allow death and destruction, but how a good God can cause death and destruction. Young’s book assumes the happiness of humanity is the highest good. The Bible does not affirm this. Simply put, God is not “for” everyone to the same degree, or in the same way. (Aquinas called this the “principle of predilection—the idea that “no created being would be better than another unless it were loved more by God.”) Those committed to the biblical narrative must wrestle with the (unsettling) reality of a God who does not love everyone equally, and who has personally brought about the death of women and children. On this question, Young’s book is silent.

  Secondly, Young’s conflation of power and abuse is not accurate. The former does not automatically equate to the latter. The answer to the abuse of power is not the elimination of power, but rather the proper use of power. God is unquestionably a God of power. Young would agree with this, I’m sure, but Young seems to chafe against any idea that God would actually use his power to bring about his ends. But God does, and often. Further, the love of God is only as meaningful as the power that animates it. A God neutered of power is a God who lacks the capacity to love. Or again, the warmth of God’s imminence is only as meaningful as the height of his transcendence. Young’s portrayal of God, unlike the God of the whirlwind, lacks any sense of transcendence.

  Young comes closest to a biblical theodicy toward the end of the book. In a scene reminiscent of Job, Mac is offered the chance to sit as judge over both God and the world. With appropriate terror, Mac realizes just how little qualified he is to take God’s place as sovereign judge. This is perhaps the strongest part of Young’s book, but unfortunately, it remains largely out of step with much that is written elsewhere. The difference between the theodicy of Job and the theodicy found in Young is telling. Job comes to peace in the midst of his pain when he finally submits to God’s sovereign right to act as God in whatever way he deems, even if that means the destruction of Job’s livelihood and family. Conversely, Mac comes to peace when he realizes that God really is a nice guy after all, and that all that stuff about him being angry and wrathful was a gross mischaracterization. The latter is perhaps the quickest and most palatable pathway to peace; but in the end, it sugarcoats the harder issues and lacks a true biblical foundation.

  So how should we as pastors respond to this book? It’s obvious Young’s book has struck a chord with the culture at large, and the evangelical culture not least. It’s clear the people in our churches crave an immanent God—one who understands our needs, our weaknesses, and who is able to identify with us in our fragile human existence. And indeed the Word Incarnate is the Father’s way of whispering tenderly in our ear. In Christ, the transcendent God draws near to us in flesh and bone. He walks our paths and feels our pain. The desire for a God of compassion and tenderness is legitimate, and we do well to ask why such a deficit might exist in our churches. Have we failed to communicate properly the deep love that God has for his children? Perhaps. But if we have, Young’s book is not the best corrective. Young, in an attempt to wipe the blood off of God’s hands, ends up diminishing the transcendence and power of God. The best way to correct an unbalanced view of God is not by introducing an opposing unbalanced view of God.

  Yet at the same time, we need to be sensitive to the ways in which God is working in the lives of those who have profited by reading Young’s book. I spoke with a man at my church whose view of God was positively corrected by reading The Shack. Prior to reading the book, the man had viewed God as a stern and uncompromising task-master—a God impossible to please, a God who told you he loved you with a scowl on his face. For this man, Young’s over-compensated portrayal of God’s imminence brought a necessary corrective, allowing him to believe in a God who cared about the needs of his children, and whose love was genuine. God, in his sovereign mercy, often chooses to use less than ideal means (such as myself!) to communicate his truth. So there’s wisdom in being sensitive and tactful in our criticism when talking to those who have read the book with profit. God may have used the unbalanced portrayal found in Young’s book to bring about a balanced portrayal in the life of those who read it. The net effect is a balanced view of God that does not truly reflect Young’s unbalanced portrayal. If we are not tactful in our criticism, we can be misunderstood as critiquing this new-found view of God, rather than critiquing Young’s unbalanced portrayal. Without endorsing the book, perhaps it is best in such instances to simply affirm the positive ways in which God has used it, while gently pointing out its deficits.

  At the end of the day, this is not a book I will recommend. For those who need a theodicy wrapped in a narrative, a work such as Lewis’ Till We Have Faces is the better, even if more difficult, way forward.

  Categories: Book Review

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• December 18, 2009 by Gerald Hiestand

  Thielicke on the (Ecclesial) Theologian

  “Insofar as we are determined to be true theologians, we think within the community of God’s people, and for that community, and in the name of that community; – how shall I say? – we think as a part of the community itself.”

  and again,

  “I should like to add to all this that the church has the prior right to question us, even if it does not and cannot understand the details of our work; for we are pursing our theological study in its very midst as sure as we are members of that church. Therefore these questions, even if they lack in detail some of the definite theological concerns that we entertain, may be highly relevant and constitute a fire through which we must always march.”

  A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, pp. 4-5 and 25-26.

  Categories: Book Review | Ecclesial Theology

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