Tag Archives: Personal transformation

My Next Book—On Abraham and Job

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I just received my finalized contract from Baker Academic for my next book. I signed the contract and sent it in a couple of weeks ago, and the counter-signed contract arrived yesterday.

The book is tentatively entitled The Silence of Abraham, The Passion of Job: Explorations in the Theology of Lament.

A Comparison of Abraham and Job

The focus of the book would be a comparison of Abraham’s ominous and silent attempt to sacrifice his son in Genesis 22 (known in Jewish tradition as the Aqedah or “binding” of Isaac) with Job’s outspoken challenge to God in response to his sufferings (which God finally affirms as “right” speech, at the end of the book).

I’m planning to work on the book over my next sabbatical, which begins in the summer of 2016. During the sabbatical, I will be presenting my research as the Thiessen lectures at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and also as Visiting Theologian-in-Residence at St. Barnabas’ College and St. Mark’s National Theological Centre, both in Australia (where I’ll be for four weeks).

The book would be framed by the important question of how Christians, who believe and trust in the God of heaven and earth, may respond to suffering. Given that the lament or protest psalms provide model modes of prayer in situations of suffering, the book would challenge traditional Christian interpretations of Genesis 22 and the book of Job. Whereas Abraham’s blind obedience in Genesis 22 to God’s command to sacrifice his son is typically seen as virtuous, God’s response to Job is usually thought to be a divine put-down for his audacity in challenging God’s running of the cosmos.

Some Exegetical Questions

Among the exegetical questions to be addressed in the book are:

  • Why does Abraham shift from bold protest prayer on behalf of Sodom in Genesis 18 to ominous silence about the death of his own son in Genesis 22?
  • What is the significance of the phrase “dust and ashes,” which occurs in the Bible only on the lips of Abraham (in Genesis 18) and Job (in Job 30 and 42)?
  • In what sense is the term “God-fearer” applied both to Abraham (in Genesis 22) and to Job (in the first two chapters of the book)?
  • Could the book of Job be thought of as a commentary on the Abraham story?
  • If so, what are we to understand by this inner-biblical interpretation?
  • And what are the implications of the differing responses to suffering of these two “patriarchs” (one Jewish, one gentile) for our understanding of faithful prayer in the face of suffering in the church today?

A Spirituality of Suffering

The book will draw on relevant teaching I have done on Genesis and Job and on academic papers I have presented on Genesis 22 and YHWH’s speeches in the book of Job.

But my engagement with Abraham and Job would not be geared to a purely academic outcome. This engagement is in the service of developing an honest, yet trustful, spirituality of suffering that could empower God’s people with hope in their daily lives, as they face a world full of chaos and pain.

Videos of my three Thiessen lectures on the lament psalms, Abraham, and Job are now available.

A Psalm Against David: Why David Didn’t Write Psalm 51

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I’m scheduled to present a paper at the Institute for Biblical Research (IBR), a sort of evangelical version of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), at their annual meeting in Atlanta, on November 20, 2015. It happens just before the start of the SBL.

The paper is called “A Psalm against David? A Canonical Reading of Psalm 51 as a Critique of David’s Inadequate Repentance in 2 Samuel 12.”

The paper is an attempt to read Psalm 51 carefully in light of the superscription, which links it to David’s confrontation by the prophet Nathan in 2 Samuel 12 over his adultery with Bathsheba.

The trouble is that a close reading of the psalm just doesn’t fit with the narrative, at multiple levels. So, what is an evangelical, orthodox Christian to do with that?

Since psalms superscriptions are not original to the psalms, but inserted by later editors (I give evidence for this in the paper), I propose that we take the superscription to Psalm 51 as a (divinely inspired) lectionary suggestion for reading the psalm together with the 2 Samuel narrative.

The result of doing this, I argue, is that the psalm ends up being a critique of David’s superficial “repentance” in 2 Samuel 12. My paper, therefore, challenges the naive, idealistic reading of the figure of David often found in the evangelical church (but then anyone who reads 1-2 Samuel with their eyes open would be disabused of this ideal picture anyway).

The paper is, most fundamentally, my attempt to take the authority of Scripture seriously (regarding both Psalm 51 and 2 Samuel 12 as divinely inspired), with eyes wide open to the complexity of this divinely inspired Scripture.

I tested out a short version of the paper at the recent meeting of the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association in Ottawa, and got good discussion there.

The research group of the IBR in which I’ll be presenting the paper (called Biblical Theology, Hermeneutics, and the Theological Disciplines) posted my draft of a longer, fuller version of the paper so that anyone can read it and send comments to me. I’ll then have a chance to revise the paper in light of the comments, and it will be re-posted in late October, prior to the conference.

The paper will be published (probably in 2017) in a volume of essays coming from the IBR research group, tentatively entitled Explorations in Interdisciplinary Reading: Theological, Exegetical, and Reception-Historical Perspectives, ed. Robbie Castleman, Darian Lockett, and Stephen Presley (Eugene, OR: Pickwick).

I invite you to post your comments or questions here.

Power, Inequality, and Reconciliation in the Church

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In about a week (June 16, 2015) Northeastern Seminary will be having their annual one-day summer Conference on Ministry. This year the topic is Power, Inequality, and Reconciliation in the Church, and the speaker is Dr. Christena Cleveland.

The conference is intended to explore how God’s people can respond to the forces of division, especially in a world that is saturated with inequality along social, economic, and political lines.

Christena Cleveland is a social psychologist, author, and speaker with a hopeful passion for overcoming cultural divisions in groups. She has just been appointed Associate Professor of the Practice of Reconciliation and Director of the Center for Reconciliation at Duke University’s Divinity School.

She is the author of Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart (IVP, 2013), which won a 2013 Leadership Journal Book Award.

The one-day conference is part of a Doctor of Ministry course that Dr. Cleveland will be teaching throughout the week at Northeastern Seminary. The conference is meant to allow a wider audience to gain the benefit of her expertise while she is on campus.

More details about the conference, including a schedule and registration details, can be found on the Northeastern Seminary website.

Click here to watch a video clip of Dr. Cleveland talking about the topic of her book.