Some reading I did in 2023
Works on biblical theology, if they were any good, and what audience might benefit from reading them.
Happy New Year everyone! 2024 is here. I like to list off most of the Christian theology books I read the previous year around the new year, so here we go. I try to give a brief synopsis and some detail about the intended audience for the book. This is important because if I am reading a work from a New Testament scholar, and the work is best understood by other scholars and seminary students, and is far too technical for 95% of the people in the pews, then it wouldn’t be helpful for me to suggest everyone should read it.
If there is one kind of writing I wish to improve in 2024, it is to blog about the books I read and at the very least, pull some conclusions out of the book that pertain to all audiences. For example, I enjoyed The Lost World of the Torah by the Waltons (included in the list below), but it probably would be in the weeds too deeply for a general audience. But I can still write about it and apply some of the implications of the work to a general audience. That is, after all, one important task behind developing sermons and teachings for the church.
In any case, not every book in this list would fly over the heads of a general audience, even some written by scholars/theologians with somewhat stiff writing styles. And it is also worth mentioning that most, but not all, of these books were released in 2023. These are the books that occupied most of the my reading time in 2023. So, without further adieu…
Angie Ward (editor), The Least of These: Practicing a Faith Without Margins (2023). This is the third book in Ward’s “Kingdom Conversations” series, and they are all relevant and valuable to any mature reader in the pews. For this book and the previous two, Ward brings together a number of theologians, pastors, and thinkers to address a number of facets of a complex broader topic. In this book, the topic is the church’s engagement with the suffering and marginalized in our midst. Among the most riveting pieces in the book addressed disability, poverty, and my personal favorite was Pastor Jonathan Brooks’ essay on the power of proximity. I think there is a lot of food for thought here, and preachers and teachers would glean from some excellent stories, illustrations, and anecdotes.
Scot McKnight & Cody Matchett, Revelation for the Rest of Us (2023). There is no shortage of Bible readers in church who are intimidated by the Book of Revelation. I have been one of them, even after I spent quality time in churches and Christian entertainment that pushed the theological narrative undergirding the Left Behind series. In recent years, some theologians have provided a much-needed corrective to (in my opinion) that badly mistaken interpretive approach. I have been a proponent of Michael Gorman’s work, Reading Revelation Responsibly, and McKnight wrote this to be even more accessible to the average Bible reader in the pews, without shying away from the context in which the Book of Revelation was written. McKnight’s primary goals are to expound the ways in which this mysterious book of the Bible unmasks the wickedness of the empire (“Babylon”) then and now, and how the Christian’s response is unfettered allegiance to Christ as disciples. Revelation for the Rest of Us is not a line-by-line, Greek word by Greek word commentary on Revelation; it is more of a study on how to read and understand Revelation, unpacking the book’s purpose and some of the rich symbolism readers encounter. I would recommend it to any adult Bible readers who, like I was several years ago, saying to themselves, “I am bound and determined finally to get a grasp of this book!”
Celina Durgin & Dru Johnson (editors), The Biblical World of Gender (2023). This is another book that collects a number of essays to address various issues within a broad topic. The topic has been one of primary interest to me for well over a decade now, which is the Bible and gender. Specifically, I have wanted to best understand every relevant passage in the Bible about the vocation, differences, and calling of men and women in the Bible, and to understand what was happening in the background as the biblical authors were writing. This book (which I think probably is best for seminary students, pastors-preachers, and well-seasoned Bible readers in the pews) does an excellent job of debunking some historical myths about gender roles in the ancient world. The common thought is that men exclusively had all the agency and did all of the public work, and women stayed home and tended to the cooking and children. There is far too much evidence to the contrary, including women having critical roles in synagogues, and some women in Rome having power and wealth independently of any man. We might still call ancient Rome a patriarchal society, but it is not nearly the simple picture that we often think.
Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm (2015). Heiser, who sadly departed from us to be with the Lord in early 2023, amassed a strong following in recent years as a scholar and teacher, and this book might very well have put Heiser on the map. His unique interest is in the supernatural worldview of the Bible, primarily in the Old Testament. The main idea of the book is that the worldview of the biblical writers included a council of divine beings working in partnership with (and sometimes in opposition to) Yahweh. For the longest time, my picture of the spirit realm was the Trinity, and then there might have been some angels and demons fluttering out there somewhere, making rare appearances on earth with humans. The biblical picture is more robust and complicated, and explains a lot of mysterious other passages in the Bible, like material about the Nephilim or the talk of “gods” in Deuteronomy 32:8-9. Heiser’s book is nearly 400 pages and is a deep study of many relevant passages in the Bible, so this isn’t for the faint of heart or novice readers. It can get technical. But Heiser also has a wealth of material available on YouTube in the form of lecture clips, and also online essays, that offer an easier entryway into this vast topic. It should be required reading for any scholar interested in the supernatural in the Bible.
John Walton & J. Harvey Walton, The Lost World of Torah (2019). John Walton is one of my favorite Old Testament scholars to read. His “Lost World” series of books is excellent. This one is a challenging read in that it seeks to prove how Torah (“The Law”) was not law in the sense that we understand law. I think a high percentage of novice Bible readers will miss the significance of the points in this book, so this is for more technical readers. The big idea here is that Torah was meant not to be legislation, with rules to be followed down to the letter in all circumstances, but was meant to be wisdom to add to the base of knowledge for consideration in any decision making. What is the difference? In our society, we write legislation as comprehensively as possible to govern the land, and we do not want judges or juries to make subjective decisions based on their experience and intuition. Stick to the law. On the other hand, in the ancient world, law was not even trying to be comprehensive; the function of ancient stipulations was to provide wisdom for decision making, but it was expected that judges or kings would use their intuition. According to the Waltons, ancient law instructed judges on what right and wrong looked like. And the ancients were not bothered if there were apparent contradictions in their legal documents because it allowed for nuance, interpretation, and case-by-case application. It seems to me that in our society, we are not comfortable with this kind of openness to intuition and need for nuance; we just write more legislation to clarify any uncertainty. This book takes some serious work and isn’t for everyone, but it is eye-opening.
Nijay Gupta, Tell Her Story (2023). Longtime readers of this blog know that I would consider myself a mutualist (or “egalitarian” in most spiritual circles) when it comes to how I understand the relationship between men and women in marriage, society, and the church. Gupta is a New Testament scholar who writes quite well for general audiences, and he frames this book as a theological and personal journey of sorts. It is the same journey through the Bible that many of us have taken, with the starting point of either complementarianism (in one of its several forms) or “I’m not sure”-ism. Gupta walks through key figures in the Bible who throw a serious monkey wrench into a patriarchal reading of scripture, then ends with his takes on the famed out-of-context “clobber passages”. Really, this is the journey I have gone on, and brought me to conclusions that I believe are highly faithful to the Word, interpretively sound, and can be applied to our current context. This one is good, I believe, for any adult audience and is an exceptional starting point for the aforementioned journey on a divisive theological topic. Highly recommended.
Robert Chao Romero & Jeff M. Liou, Christianity and Critical Race Theory (2023). For a couple of years, “CRT” was a big boogieman in public discourse. And like all things when they become hot topics between the sociopolitical Right and Left, they get polarized, dumbed down, and subjected to narratives that do not reflect the depth or complexity of the reality. I picked up this recent release because I wanted to read about CRT from a Christian perspective (and no, I reject the inflammatory notion that no one can hold to views of CRT and still be a Christian). I also did not want to read volumes of work from legal scholars about the development of CRT, because as expected, the talking heads who made CRT a recent controversy have moved onto other things already. So, Romero and Liou. They do a commendable job or giving some background to how CRT came about, what its core tenants are, how CRT tends to be applied today, and what some valid critiques might be. It is also worth noting for the uninitiated that there is no one single CRT, but quite a bit of variation of views under the umbrella. Romero and Liou contribute a helpful Christian perspective to CRT in that CRT tends to have negative outlook on the future, whereas biblical Christianity has a hopeful view of redemption and New Creation. The authors are convinced that CRT is a valuable tool with which to engage the world from a Christian perspective, while being aware of its shortcomings. Was I convinced? Well, no; like with most works that I have read regarding the “antiracism” movement (which might have some crossover with CRT but is not the same thing), I am not finding as many persuasive and concrete solutions being proposed for race-correlated problems as I would like to see. But I think this was not so much the objective for the authors; they seem to be demonstrating a compatibility between biblical Christianity and some of the core tenants of CRT, and in this regard, the book is informative for most audiences.
Sandra Glahn, Nobody’s Mother: Artemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament (2023). Remember that strange passage in 1 Timothy about a woman being saved in childbirth? Just about every previous suggestion at understanding that passage has been unsatisfactory, even if some expositions ultimately have led to an interpretation of the passage that I found agreeable. I think Glahn’s work here has successfully decoded this entire section of scripture. I wrote a post about it, which you can find here. I think the best part of this book is that it can be accessible to any adult audience who is familiar with the issues in 1 Timothy, but several chapters are devoted to the details of the available ancient inscriptions about Artemis of Ephesus for those who want to go straight to the sources for Glahn’s conclusions. For others, those parts can be skimmed pretty easily, and all of Glahn’s other material is readable, irenic, and dare I say, pastoral.
Michael Bird & Scot McKnight, God’s Israel and the Israel of God: Paul and Supersessionism (2023). On October 7th last year, Israel was the victim of a brutal attack from Hamas, which instigated another terrible war between Israel and Palestine. While I have known of the unrest in the area for many years, I am far from knowledgeable about the details and history of the conflict. Plus, there is a lot of conflict within Christianity about how the New Testament understands non-Messianic, political nation state of Israel today. Are Christians to proclaim Christ crucified to Jews today? Give full support in international relations to Israel? Do we think there will be a massive turning of unbelieving Jews to Jesus prior to the second coming of Jesus? Did the church, in effect, replace Israel in God’s plan for salvation in the world? I have great respect for Bird and McKnight, who edited and also contributed essays to this volume, and I picked this book up shortly after it was released (which was before October 7th). The focus is on the Apostle Paul’s material about unbelieving Israel, and I’m not sure who specifically the intended audience is for this series of essays. I’ll explain. The first half of the book involves essays that try to make sense of “all Israel will be saved” in Romans 11:26, and other similar content in Paul’s writings. The conclusion is that in Christ (this is how I would explain it), “God’s covenantal people” has been expanded from Israel to include Gentiles, and the covenant is now centered around faith in Christ. This view is often called supersessionism. McKnight’s chapter, oddly, is McKnight quoting so much from NT Wright, that I often wondered why they did not just beg Wright to do the chapter. Bird, Ben Witherington, and Lynn Cohick each take their turns (all scholars I enjoy reading and listening to), with a few minor differences here and there. And suddenly, the next three essays saw respondents, each in their own way, argue that the previous perspective is inherently antisemitic and Jews are saved based on their own covenantal status with Yahweh. Huh? If we wanted to include essays that undercut basic Christian theology of salvation, then it is odd to have the focus on the book solely be about Paul’s material. There is a lot of useful material here from very careful scholars, but it is kind of messy in how unfocused it was by the end. And it is technical enough that it is best for engagement from other scholars and maybe seminary students who have been around the block with these arguments.
Preston Sprinkle, Does the Bible Support Same-Sex Marriage? (2023). Sprinkle is a scholar and author who makes a living developing material and podcasts on difficult topics, and engaging in a wide variety of viewpoints on each topic. Sprinkle’s podcast is called Theology in the Raw, and he interviews a guest in each episode to discuss important topics. A lot of his work related to the Bible, the church, and human sexuality. Some years ago, he wrote his first book on homosexuality and same sex attraction; last year, he wrote a book called Embodied, in which he examined the complexities of transgenderism and gender dysphoria. In this book, Sprinkle remains sensitive and pastoral, but he revisits his material from his first book on same sex attraction, but interacts with material from some of the most widely-read affirming scholars. Sprinkle maintains the historical, traditional viewpoint on most of the questions. But he has done two things that many Christians with that viewpoint have not done: interacting with some of the best scholarship available from the affirming viewpoint, and spending quality time with gay people across the spectrum of viewpoints, who have much at stake in this conversation. Sprinkle also does a great job of working with very technical, deep in-the-weeds scholarship, and translating it all to the wider church. I have found almost everything he writes to be very readable, and very wise in how he discusses the technical aspects of the debates.
Next up for me is going to be a book by Warren Carter called Jesus and the Empire of God, which is a study on the context of the Roman world in which the Gospels were written. I can’t help it, that stuff is fascinating to me, and I first heard about this book when Carter appeared on Preston Sprinkle’s podcast about a year ago. And for the past couple years, I have tried to do a deep dive into a couple of books in the Bible, and read along with a somewhat technical commentary or study. In recent past, I’ve done this on the Book of Job, Philemon, Gospel of John, Jesus’ parables, and Revelation, and this coming year, my intent is to do a careful reading of Genesis and of the Book of Acts. I just purchased a commentary on Genesis from the Story of God commentary series, and Genesis edition was written by renown Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman. And, I’m probably going to keep digging on the issue of Israel in the New Testament and supersessionism.
Okay, thank you for indulging me in a tour of my 2023 nerdy library, hopefully there is something here that piques your interest. I’m always interested in what other folks are reading regarding important Christian topics, so if you have a tough issue and a book you have worked through, drop a recommendation in the comments. Happy 2024, everyone, and thank you so much for reading.