Recent Book Reviews of A New Heaven and a New Earth

Posted on May 8, 2015 by J Richard Middleton

In the past couple of weeks I’ve become aware of some recent reviews of A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014).

Matthew Forrest Lowe On-line Review

The first review is by Matthew Forrest Lowe, which is posted both on NetGalley and on his own website, Lonely Vocations.

The review begins by saying:

I’m always impressed by Richard Middleton’s work, and this book is no exception. It’s a difficult trick to write about eschatology without losing sight of the larger narrative of biblical theology, but Middleton pulls it off! He begins by showing how the book’s concern fits within his story, noting his concern “to make the Bible’s vision for the redemption of creation available to a wide audience” (16) — many of whom might struggle with some of the same questions that he’s wrestled with throughout his theological life.

While Matt largely agrees with the emphasis of the book (and he includes an excellent summary if its argument), he raises two important questions. The first concerns my understanding of sin throughout the book (which he would like more clarity on); the second concerns my interpretation of the intermediate state in 2 Corinthians 5:1-9 (he cites Walter Grundmann’s alternative interpretation in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament).

These are legitimate questions and I look forward to addressing them (and much more) when Matt presents his extended version of this review in Ottawa in a few weeks.

Book Review Panel at the CETA Meeting on May 31, 2015

Matt is on the executive committee of the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association (CETA) and he will be presenting his review as part of a book review panel on A New Heaven and a New Earth, at the annual meeting of the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association on May 31, 2015.

While the formal CETA meeting will be held during the day (8:30 AM — 4:30 PM) at the University of Ottawa as part of the 2015 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, the panel discussion will take place at Sunnyside Wesleyan Church at 7:00 PM.

In fact, Matt is organizing the review panel. Besides Matt, there will be reviews by Brian Walsh (with whom I’ve written two books) and Janet Warren (whose review will appear in the Canadian Theological Review, the journal sponsored by CETA). I will respond to the three reviews and we will have a time of open discussion with the audience.

If you are around, I hope you can join us.

Midwest Book Review

The second review of A New Heaven and a New Earth is a short note in the Midwest Book Review. My publisher, Baker Academic, posted the following excerpt from the review on their website:

Enhanced with the inclusion of an informative introduction, figures and tables, an appendix (Whatever Happened to the New Earth?); a thirty page Subject Index; and a fifteen page Scripture Index, A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology is a model of Biblical scholarship making it very instructive reading and highly recommended for personal, seminary, community and academic library Christian Studies collections.

You can read the entire review here in the Midwest Book Review, listed under “Christian Studies.”

James Howell in the Christian Century

The third recent review is a longer piece by James C. Howell in the Christian Century. This is the excerpt Baker Academic posted on their website:

A thoughtful, thorough, and well-written book on biblical eschatology. . . . Middleton’s message concerns, secondarily, Christians’ fixation on the rapture and, primarily, virtually all of Christian preaching and teaching that eviscerates the richness of the Bible’s eschatology, offering nothing more than the chance to go to heaven after we die and this world has ended. . . . Middleton eloquently lifts up what is entirely plain if you pay attention: ‘the Bible consistently anticipates the redemption of the entire created order.’ Guiding us on a dazzling tour through the broad range of relevant texts, he makes clear the Bible’s emphasis on the material order–on culture, bodies, and buildings–and shows that the Creator’s purpose isn’t for creation to be swept away, but for it to be entirely redeemed.

This one is a somewhat strange review. It is mostly positive, but the reviewer raises all sorts of questions about things in the book, some of which are actually answered in the book (did he read it carefully?) and some of which are on minor points that I didn’t stress, but that he somehow thought were important. And once or twice he just plain misinterpreted what I was saying (like on the nature of final judgment or on taking eschatological imagery literally).

But, that’s par for the course as far as book reviews go (there have been much greater misreadings of things I wrote in reviews of my earlier books). And, as they say, any publicity is good publicity! (And the Christian Century is a widely read periodical.)

Rodney Clapp in the Christian Century

Interestingly, Rodney Clapp, the editor who originally contracted me for the eschatology book (but now works for a different publisher), wrote an earlier piece for the Christian Century on trends in holisitic eschatology (entitled “Life after Life after Death”), in which he mentioned the book I was working on a couple of years before it was published.

At one point in the article, he addresses recent books on the subject:

Premier among them is N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. Rob Bell’s bestseller Love Wins follows Wright in putting the post-mortem emphasis on resurrected bodies in the context of a new heaven and a new earth. More recently Howard Snyder and Joel Scandrett, in Salvation Means Creation Healed, make an extended argument that salvation focuses not just on souls and not just on people, but presents the hope of a transformed and new earth. Meanwhile, biblical scholar Richard Middleton is at work on a book that will closely examine the major biblical texts and argue for the eschatological hope of a new heaven and a new earth.

You can read the entire article here.

Rodney Clapp on the Running Heads Website

A few months ago Rodney followed this up with a more extended online review of A New Heaven and a New Earth; he posted it on the editorial website for Cascade Books and Pickwick Publications, called “Running Heads” (Rodney is chief editor for Cascade Books).

These are the opening and closing sections of the review:

Some years ago, when I was an editor with Brazos/Baker Academic, I acquired a project that has just now come to fruition. That book is J. Richard Middleton’s A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Baker Academic). Richard’s work is a sweeping—and exegetically detailed—survey of the argument that the earth is not to be left behind at the end of history as we know it. Instead, God will transform the “old” heavens (which are a creation of God themselves) and earth, because all creation is a part of God’s salvific work through Israel and Jesus Christ.

. . . . . . .

Of course, it remains to be seen if the holistic eschatological perspective will spread through the entire church and become dominant. I hope it will. If it does, Middleton’s A New Heaven and a New Earth will surely be seen as a key text in that shift.

At the end of the reivew, Howard Snyder (one of the authors Rodney mentioned in his earlier article) posted a comment in response, saying that he was using my book in one of his courses at Asbury Seminary.

You can read the entire review (and the response comment) here.

Current Issue of the Canadian Theological Review is the Best Yet

Posted on March 18, 2015 by J Richard Middleton

The current issue of the Canadian Theological Review, the journal of the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association (CETA), is now at press and should be ready shortly.

The issue consists of five papers that were presented at the Fall 2013 CETA theology conference held at Northeastern Seminary in Rochester, NY, plus another paper that wasn’t presented at the conference. In my opinion, this is the best issue of the journal yet. The papers, though diverse, are uniformly thought-provoking and insightful.

This is the lineup of articles:

J. Gerald Janzen, “Ecce Homo: The Servant of YHWH as Imago Dei in Second Isaiah”

Steven Bouma-Prediger, “Eschatology Shapes Ethics: New Creation and Christian Ecological Virtue Ethics”

C. Cord Sullivan, “Introducing the Incarnate Christ: How John’s Logos Theology Sets the Stage for the Narrative Development of Jesus’s Identity”

James Pedlar, “‘His Mercy is Over All His Works’: John Wesley’s Mature Vision of New Creation”

Andrew Van’t Land, “(Im)Peccability amid the Powers: Christ’s Sinlessness in a Culture of Sinful Systems”

Anthony G. Siegrist, “Moral Formation and Christian Doctrine: ‘The Conjunction against Which We Must Now Struggle’”

Old Testament scholar Gerry Janzen engages in a superb intertextual study of the Servant of YHWH in Deutero-Isaiah to illustrate the profound theology articulated in this figure; the Servant is both the human image of YHWH (even in his suffering) and the alternative to Babylonian idols (false images).

Theologian and ethicist Steve Bouma-Prediger asks what sort of virtues we need in order to manifest the Bible’s eschatological vision of a new creation; his unpacking of this biblical vision and his interaction with the field of ecological virtue ethics provides an excellent grounding for contemporary earthkeeping or creation care.

Cord Sullivan, graduate student at Northeastern Seminary, shares part of his thesis research, illuminating the background to the Logos theology of John’s Prologue by recourse to the distinctive use of memra (Aramaic for “word”) in Jewish Targums; this background then becomes the clue to the unity between the Prologue and the rest of the Fourth Gospel (an issue that has been contested in Johannine scholarship).

The paper by James Pedlar, who holds the chair of Wesley Studies at Tyndale in Toronto, is a detailed exposition of John Wesley’s mature understanding of the redemption of creation; by examining a series of relevant primary texts Pedlar clarifies Wesley’s vision of God’s love for all creatures.

The paper by Drew Van’t Land (student at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto) won the CETA theology award for best graduate student paper. Van’t Land addresses the knotty problem of how we can understand Jesus’s sinlessness given what we know of systemic evil; how did Jesus (if he was truly human) avoid being conformed to the pre-existing societal corruption he was born into? His concluding exegesis of Jesus’s two visits to the Jerusalem temple constitutes an enlightening exploration of the paper’s central theological claims.

Theologian Anthony Siegrist addresses how we get from the truth of doctrine to ethics, arguing these are not two separate categories (as often conceptualized), but that doctrine is meant to be morally formative; his analysis of the role of teachers in the process of communicating biblical truth for life-change is both insightful and encouraging to those who embrace this calling.

These articles are followed by a series of in-depth book reviews.

This issue of the Canadian Theological Review is currently at press and will be mailed out shortly. If you are not a CETA member, but would like to purchase a copy, please check out contact information for the journal on the CETA website.

Two other issues of the journal are currently being worked on, one incorporating papers from the Canadian Theological Society meeting given at the 2014 Congress at Brock University, the other showcasing papers from the Fall 2014 CETA conference at Wycliffe College on evangelical feminism.

The Canadian Theological Review is actively seeking submissions of both articles and book reviews for future issues.

No Dualisms! Byron Borger of Hearts and Minds Bookstore

Posted on March 4, 2015 by J Richard Middleton

The book display at the Jubilee 2015 conference that I recently spoke at was organized and staffed (as it is every year) by bookseller extraordinaire, Byron Borger of Hearts and Minds Books.

When I say “book display” I should put that in the plural; there were multiple tables with an amazing array of works in theology, biblical studies, ethics, and topics on how faith relates to every aspect of culture and society.

Byron has an encyclopedic knowledge of good books, both classical and contemporary, and he has done a phenomenal job over the years introducing many Christians to a depth of life-transforming knowledge that they otherwise would not have known about.

The book displays also featured works written by speakers at this year’s Jubilee conference, including my own recent eschatology book, A New Heaven and a New Earth (plus all my other books!).

In fact, Byron has written two reviews of my eschatology book, one extended, the other briefer—to accompany his naming it as biblical studies “book of the year” (given the number of books Byron reads, that’s quite an honor).

Byron recently posted a comment on his Facebook page about one of my blogs (from about a year ago) that addressed the relationship of my own eschatological vision to that of New Testament scholar Tom Wright (via Brian Walsh).

Here is Byron’s post:

I have often noted how N.T. Wright dedicated his first big “Origins” book (“The New Testament and the People of God”) to Brian Walsh. Brian tells a bit about his studying Colossians with Wright in his and Sylvia Keesmaat’s “Colossians Remixed” and how he pressed Tom to more fully proclaim the full-orbed redemption the text insists upon. (And what a joy to have a back cover endorsement blurb right next to Tom on that extraordinary book!)

Here, the co-author of Brian’s “Transforming Vision” (one of my all time favorite books) J Richard Middleton shows the connection between TV, which they were writing even while Brian was engaging Tom Wright with a more comprehensive view of God redeeming all things. Now that Richard has written the definitive book on wholistic eschatology (“A New Heaven and a New Earth”) — and spoken about it at Jubilee last week — I thought I’d share his rumination on this little story.

Three cheers for their phrase “no dualisms” which CCO used to have printed up on staff tee-shirts! Three cheers for Tom, Brian, Sylvia, and Richard. I am thankful to know about such significant authors, and to praise God for these generative friendships.

Well, I couldn’t find a picture of the T-shirt that Byron mentions, but I did find this: