Category Archives: Writing

How My Rewrite of The Transforming Vision Will Vary from the Original

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I am currently doing a total rewrite of the book on a Christian worldview that Brian Walsh and I coauthored, called The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984).

Original book cover
New book cover

The book has found a wide audience in both English and other languages (especially Korean, where it has just about outsold the English original). To date, it has been translated and published in Korean (1987), French (1988), Indonesian (2001), Spanish (2003), and Portuguese (2010); with new Korean (2013), French (2016), and Indonesian (2013, 2019) editions.

Over the years, many people who were using the book in teaching asked us for a second or revised edition, where we would update aspects of our analysis. Although the publisher did give the book a new cover, we were each too busy working on other projects to devote the time needed to a second edition.

Worldview Book and Worldview Courses

Brian and I wrote The Transforming Vision based on non-credit courses we were teaching through IVCF campus ministries at a number of Canadian universities. For a few years after the book was published, I continued teaching non-credit courses on a Christian worldview at universities in the USA and Canada as I moved around for graduate studies and university chaplaincy.

Since I began doctoral studies in 1990, and especially since I started a faculty position in the mid-nineties, I have been offering the course for credit to undergraduates and to graduate/ seminary students, while also giving papers and publishing as a biblical scholar—especially in the area of Old Testament.

Changes to the Course (and the Book)

The course has gradually changed over the years, in accordance with my expertise and context. The new version of the book will follow the content (and outline) of the course as I have been teaching it most recently (it’s a solo rewrite, since Brian hasn’t been teaching a comparable course).

Some changes have to do with Scripture, while others are aspects of what you might call contextualization, changes that reflect the cultural (and academic) contexts I have been living and teaching in.

An Expanded Exposition of the Biblical Story

First, I’ve expanded (and deepened) my understanding of biblical theology over the years, so the book will reflect that. Instead of three chapters on Scripture (in The Transforming Vision), I have eight chapters tracing the biblical story from creation to eschaton (the biblical worldview as a coherent story wasn’t explicitly addressed in the original book). Each chapter will be a theological dive into a biblical text (or set of texts) that advances the story (creation, imago Dei, fall, Israel, monarchy, prophets, Jesus, eschaton). I will draw out practical implications for Christian living from each of these “soundings” into Scripture.

An Analysis of “Postmodern” Tribalism

The second change is in my analysis of the history of western culture. I still find it helpful to begin with the otherworldly dualism that impacted the church (from the early middle ages onward) and trace the rise of the modern impulse to autonomy and conquest (over the last five hundred years). But my analysis of the crisis of modernity now includes our current “postmodern” tribalism—how modernity has devolved into the toxic “post-truth” culture we now experience.

The Contested Meaning of the “Christian/Biblical Worldview”

A third change is that I won’t start the book with much analysis of the nature of worldviews (which is how The Transforming Vision began). The new book will focus more on showing than telling. However, I plan to include an Appendix or Afterword on the problematic nature of worldview discourse among Christians. I’ll explain why I am reclaiming the terms “Christian worldview” and “biblical worldview” from those who use these terms to designate a pre-packaged absolutist system of so-called “truth,” which is often nothing more than an oppressive framework for control. In contrast, I think these terms are helpful markers for the Bible’s liberating vision, disclosed especially through its overarching narrative of God’s desire for creational flourishing and shalom.

Living between the Times

Also, I won’t have a section on the implications of Christian faith for academic disciplines. That section of The Transforming Vision came from the campus ministry context the course was developed in; that’s not been my present context. Instead, I’ll close with two chapters on “living between the times,” one addressing a Christian approach to suffering (drawing on the lament psalms) and one on the biblical pattern of discipleship (from the Gospels and Pauline epistles).

Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws

My plan is for a fourteen-chapter book (plus Appendix/ Afterword), tentatively titled Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws: The Bible’s Liberating Worldview. Those who know the music of Bruce Cockburn will recognize Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws as the title of one of his albums; it is also a line in a song on the album, describing Jesus’s victory over evil: “just beyond the range of normal sight / this glittering joker was dancing in the dragon’s Jaws.”

The title is meant to capture the sense of freedom and joy that being grounded in Scripture can bring, while realistically acknowledging that our joy comes in the face of personal brokenness and systemic evil, both of which are ultimately overcome only by God’s saving action in Christ.

I decided to keep the term Worldview in the subtitle, as a gesture towards reclaiming that term as valuable and helpful; indeed, I believe that the Bible discloses a Liberating Worldview!

The word Liberating is also a nod to my book on humanity as the image of God, called The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2005). The human calling to image God is a key component in my exposition of the unfolding biblical story.

An Accessible Read

I plan to keep the reading level of the new book close to that of The Transforming Vision, so it is accessible to early undergraduates and Christian lay people (The Transforming Vision was even used in Christian high schools in Canada and the US).

If you have used The Transforming Vision in teaching or if the book has been important to you personally, please contact me. I am looking for a few key people to read portions of the draft of the new book and give me helpful feedback.

What Is the Kingdom of God? (Part 1)

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Sometime around AD 30 a Jewish peasant named Jesus (Yeshua in his native Aramaic) began preaching a revolutionary message about the “kingdom of God.” This preaching kicked off his public ministry of healing, exorcisms, and teaching, including clashes with the authorities—ultimately leading to his death and resurrection.

 This kingdom that Jesus proclaimed was rooted in ancient Jewish expectations of God’s direct rule as an alternative to the dominant Roman empire, which controlled the land of Israel by force and oppressed its people; but this kingdom was also meant to be an alternative to the reign of the corrupt puppet “king of the Jews” (at the time, Herod Agrippa), who governed at the pleasure—and under the authority—of the Roman empire.

Jesus’s Opening Proclamation of the Kingdom of God

The Gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus came from his home town of Nazareth in the northern province of Galilee to the Jordan River, where he was baptized by his cousin John and confirmed as God’s “son” (a messianic title) by a voice from heaven (Mark 1:4–11). Jesus was then led by God’s Spirit into the Judean wilderness for a time of fasting and testing in preparation for his mission (Mark 1:12–13). Then, after John was arrested by the Judean authorities, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the good news (or “gospel”) of God (Mark 1:14). His announcement was terse and to the point: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and trust in the good news” (Mark 1:15).

God, in other words, has begun to reign in a way not previously seen. In response to this good news, radical change is required (this is what “repent” means) and trust (the positive side of repentance) is called for. The implication is that Jesus’s listeners needed to switch allegiance from all other regimes to the kingdom of God.

Matthew’s Gospel has an even more compact version of Jesus’s opening message: “From that time, Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’” (Matthew 4:17). Matthew uses the phrase “kingdom of heaven” (which alludes to God’s universal reign—from heaven—over all the earth) in place of “kingdom of God” (something he does in other places too), while using “repent” as a shorthand for the pair “repent” and “trust.” He also introduces Jesus’s announcement by noting that this fulfilled an ancient prophetic expectation from Isaiah 9 that a light would dawn on the people of Galilee, who had been waiting in the darkness of oppression (Matthew 4:12–16, citing Isaiah 9:1–2).

The Problem of Monarchy/Kingdom

The “kingdom of God” is central to the teaching of Jesus; this term (or variants, including “kingdom of heaven,” “my kingdom,” “his kingdom,” “the kingdom,” “my Father’s kingdom”) occurs over one hundred times in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Yet this talk of a “kingdom” of God is often troubling to modern people. Isn’t the very idea of “kingdom” an oppressive idea? Apart from the gender-specific nature of the term, perhaps enshrining male dominance, we are aware of the abuses of various monarchies throughout human history. Indeed, “kingdom” merges too easily into “empire,” a top-down system of oppression and injustice, which needs to be resisted rather than celebrated.

In order to grasp the significance of the kingdom of God in the preaching of Jesus (and, more generally, in the Bible), we need to take seriously the ancient historical context in which Jesus and the biblical writers lived. Not only were monarchies the dominant form of political governance, but they were typically oppressive regimes, ruled by kings, emperors, or their deputies (called governors or a host of other terms) who typically guarded their own privilege, at the expense of the masses over whom they ruled. The point is that political systems of the ancient world were generally oppressive kingdoms. So what was required to challenge the abusive use of power was an alternative kingdom—one that operated on significantly different principles

Once, when some of Jesus’s disciples expressed their desire for places of privilege in the coming kingdom (Mark 10:35–37), Jesus called them all together and explained that a reversal of typical power roles was required: “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” (Mark 10:42–44) And he went on describe his own mission as follows: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

So there will be a reversal of power dynamics in the kingdom of God. But beyond that, what did Jesus mean by this term?

This is the first installment of a longer piece I am writing on the Kingdom of God for a volume of essays introducing Christianity to a broad, international audience (to be published by Routledge). The second installment can be found here. Stay tuned for more installments.

Our Postmodern Moment: “Truth Is Stranger than It Used to Be” 28 Years Later

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Over the past decade, a number of people have commented that the book Brian Walsh and I wrote addressing the postmodern situation, Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age (IVP, 1995), seemed to be written for our twenty-first century context since it spoke directly to issues current in Western (and especially, North American) culture. (As a person from the Majority World, I would say that these issues are actually global.)

One of the comments about the book’s relevance came from Chris Stratton, the editor of an online journal for United Methodist pastors and theological students called Catalyst. Chris had recently reread the book and wondered if I would write an online article reflecting on the analysis from nearly thirty years ago, exploring its significance for our contemporary situation of tribalism and toxic polarization. He suggested the title “Our Postmodern Moment.”

Chris originally asked me in 2021, but I was too busy with other writing projects and deferred the article until Spring 2023. I say “article,” but it turned out that I needed to write three articles! Or, more accurately, a three-part article.

I retained Chris’s suggestion of “Our Postmodern Moment” as the overall title and gave the three parts descriptive subtitles. PDFs of each part may be downloaded below (the original links to Catalyst are no longer active).

1. Our Postmodern Moment, Part 1: Diagnosing the Problem

Part 1 revisits the analysis of the postmodern condition that Brian Walsh and I proposed, while fleshing it out in line with how I have been teaching these matters over the years (as part of graduate and undergraduate courses on a Christian worldview).

2. Our Postmodern Moment, Part 2: The Biblical Metanarrative

Part 2 explores some of the resources of Scripture for our current context in terms of how God relates to human subjectivity, agency, and disorientation (drawing on cues I have noticed in the biblical narrative through from my research and teaching over the years).

3. Our Postmodern Moment, Part 3: Christian Discipleship in a Polarized World

Part 3 was the most difficult to write, since I wanted to give practical guidance on how to live out the Christian faith in a toxic culture, which has often infiltrated the church. It is especially addressed to pastors and other church leaders.

Three Umpires

In Part 1 of the article I retell the story (quoted in Truth Is Stranger than It Used to Be) about three umpires explaining how they judge baseball games.

Three umpires were having a beer after a baseball game. One said: “There’s balls and there’s strikes and I call ’em the way they are.” The next umpire replied: “There’s balls and there’s strikes and I call ’em the way I see ’em.” The third umpire said: “There’s balls and there’s strikes and they ain’t nothin’ until I call ’em.”

This story, originally meant to be a joke, quite seriously illustrates different approaches to “truth” in our world today; it is particularly relevant to our so-called “post-truth” culture.

Parts 2 and 3 of the article return to this story to clarify the paradox of how Christians can legitimately claim a normative position (the truth is out there), while recognizing our ineradicably subjectivity (we only approach the truth through our perspectives). This paradox has implications both for how we read the Bible and for we relate to our neighbors with whom we may disagree radically.

I would be very interested in hearing responses from readers.