Tag: context

Book Briefs: “NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible”

~ Bob Hayton ~ 5 Comments

Zondervan has released a monumental study Bible. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible promises to bring the ancient world of Scripture to life for contemporary readers. The array of resources presented and the depth of research made accessible could almost be described as incredible.

This Bible is presented in a beautiful format and the study notes and articles are written by top-notch evangelical scholars. The editors, John H. Walton (professor of OT at Wheaton College) and Craig S. Keener (professor of NT at Asbury Theological Seminary) are experts in their fields. They have drawn from the work of other evangelical tools in creating this study Bible: most notably, the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: Old Testament, (edited by John Walton), and the IVP Bible Background Commentary for Old and New Testaments, (the NT volume of which was edited by Craig Keener).

Introductions focusing on the historical setting, cultural/religious setting and literary setting are provided for each book of the Bible. Broader introductions for different genres and collections of books are also provided, and over 300 articles are furnished on a variety of cultural background topics. Nearly 400 full-color photos, illustrations and images brighten the pages of this volume. There are dozens of detailed maps and the study notes are by no means brief. I would say it rivals the ESV Study Bible for length, but the focus on the notes is largely centered on historical and cultural background information.

So many modern readers of the Bible skip past background info and dive forward into application of the text. This is a shortcut that is not usually going to produce the most wholesome and meaningful results.  Understanding the ancient world of the text of Scripture can help us better see the parallels with our own day and age. New insights can open up to us new vistas of thought, and cautions can prevent us from misappropriating passages in ignorance.

The book of Lamentations was my area of focus for this review. The introduction was not overly long but appropriately set the stage. Historical detail is a must for understanding what can be quite dark verses for the uninitiated. The pictures of captives from Lachish being led into exile, or of mourning captives being led away by the Assyrians gave an appropriate frame of reference for the text itself. The parallel laments of other ancient cities help inform the reader as to the genre of the book. The many notes explained odd references  and brought out a fuller depth of meaning. What does it mean for those who pass your way to “clap their hands at you” (2:15 – derision)? Or why is a measuring line stretched out over a wall that then wastes away (2:8 – to determine which parts are too unstable to be reused)? What could the stones being thrown at those in a “pit” possibly signify (3:53 – stone covers placed over abandoned cisterns sometimes used as a gruesome end for enemies)?

The design of the Bible with its tan colored center column for cross-references, and its beautifully designed cover pages make it inviting to peruse. The extensive indexes make sure the resources you are looking for are accessible. Timelines and an excellent concordance are additional features that complement this work well. Of particular note are charts explaining Hebrew terms that have no exact English equivalent, and a helpful glossary of key Greek terms. The tables of parallel Ancient Near Eastern literature that attest to the Bible’s historicity or compare with it, are informative and invite the reader to pursue further study.

One final note of caution. Many evangelicals may not be prepared for the level of comparisons to be found between the Bible and other ancient literature and stories. Rather than explaining away or ignoring such parallel literature, this study Bible prepares the reader to know how best to understand the existence of such parallels and often points out how such parallels inform and enrich our understanding of Scripture and need not threaten our belief in Scripture’s status as the Word of the Living God.

I highly recommend this new study Bible and am happy to add it to my shelf as I seek to grow in my understanding of the world of the Bible.

Learn more about this new resource at www.contextchangeseverything.com.

Purchase a copy of this book at Amazon.com, Christianbook.com, or direct from Zondervan.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by the publisher. I was under no obligation to offer a positive review.

About Book Briefs: Book Briefs are book notes, or short-form book reviews. They are my informed evaluation of a book, but stop short of being a full-length book review.

Tim Keller on Underadapting to Culture

~ Bob Hayton ~ 7 Comments

Tim Keller is one of leading voices in church planting today. He has thought long and hard about how to do gospel ministry in today’s urban contexts, and is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, a thriving ministry in the heart of New York City. Redeemer has helped mentor other church planters in New York and beyond through Redeemer City to City, a ministry which has helped launch over 200 churches in 35 global cities so far.

Keller’s latest book is Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Zondervan, 2012) which is a manual for how to think about doing church. His aim is to explain how “theological vision,” as distinct from doctrine or methodology, should drive how we bring the message of the gospel to the communities we are called to serve. Just from reading through the introductory chapter, I know I am going to want to read through this manual in depth—highlighter in hand. Keller uses diagrams and sidebars, and yes, even some footnotes, to present his information in an understandable format. And what he has to say is definitely worth hearing. He talks about the inevitability of contextualizing and chides preachers who don’t intentionally think through how their church must speak to the culture around them.

This post is not going to be a full review. I’ll save that for after I’ve had time to examine this work at length. Instead I want to focus in on an excerpt from the introduction on how the Church should adapt to culture. As a former independent fundamental Baptist (IFB), I read these words with great interest:

We will show [in this book] that to reach people we must appreciate and adapt to their culture, but we must also challenge and confront it. This is based on the biblical teaching that all cultures have God’s grace and natural revelation in them, yet they are also in rebellious idolatry. If we overadapt to a culture, we have accepted the culture’s idols. If, however, we underadapt to a culture, we may have turned our own culture into an idol, an absolute. If we underadapt to a culture, no one will be changed because no one will listen to us; we will be confusing, offensive, or simply unpersuasive. To the degree a ministry is overadapted or underadapted to a culture, it loses life-changing power. (pg. 24, emphasis added)

I think there is a wealth of wisdom in this brief except. I particularly appreciated the section that I bolded. This seems to be the case with most conservative IFB churches I know. By and large, the wider culture looks at them with bewilderment. Their version of Christianity—complete with Stoic worship, an archaic Bible and outdated fashion—is totally foreign to the average citizen in the community. And the churchly phrases and Christian lingo confuse the message even more.

In a later section in the book, Keller talks of Anglo Christians who are “often culturally clueless”:

They don’t see any part of how they express or live the gospel to be “Anglo”—it is just the way things are. They feel that any change in how they preach, worship, or minister is somehow a compromise of the gospel. In this they may be doing what Jesus warns against—elevating the “traditions of men” to the same level as biblical truth (Mark 7:8). This happens when one’s cultural approach to time or emotional expressiveness or way to communicate becomes enshrined as the Christian way to act and live. (pg. 96)

Keller goes on to discuss how our culture shapes our view of individualism and community. He also decries how church planters or missionaries tend to reproduce the cultural methodology of ministries that have impacted them.

If they have been moved by a ministry that has forty-five-minute verse-by-verse expository sermons, a particular kind of singing, or a specific order and length to the services, they reproduce it down to the smallest detail. Without realizing it, they become method driven and program driven rather than theologically driven. They are contextualizing their ministry expression to themselves, not to the people they want to reach. (pg. 97, emphasis added)

Keller’s point should not be ignored. While we must not overadapt to culture and compromise the gospel, we nevertheless have a responsibility to analyze the culture we find ourselves in and seek to communicate in such a way, that the offense that arises in response to our teaching, is an offense directed at the gospel itself, and not our own idiosyncrasies and cultural traditions.

I recommend that pastors and church leaders everywhere pick up a copy of this important book from Tim Keller. The book is carefully written and the principles are clearly explained. Even if you disagree with some of what he has to say, his book will provide an opportunity to systematically walk through all of the issues related to doing ministry in a given culture. If we recognize that some sort of “theological vision” exists and undergirds what we do, then focusing on what that vision is and how it is developed will have lasting impact in how we do church in the twenty-first century.

You can learn more about Center Church at Zondervan’s Engaging Church Blog this week or from CenterChurch.com. You can see a book excerpt or watch a video trailer at Westminster Bookstore’s product page. Pick up a copy of the book at any of the following retailers: Monergism Books, Westminster Bookstore, Christianbook.com, Amazon, Barnes&Noble, or direct from Zondervan.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Zondervan. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

“Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching” edited by Kent, Kissling & Turner

~ Bob Hayton ~ 7 Comments

Over the last few decades, a revival of interest in the Old Testament seems to have come over the evangelical church. Numerous resources for preaching the Old Testament and for understanding the various genres we find in the first two thirds of our Bibles have been produced. The tide is turning, and more and more we hear of careful preaching through the Old Testament again.

We still have a long way to go, however. Most conservative pulpits major on the New Testament. After all, the relevance of NT books to the Christian living today is much more apparent. Popular expositors have even given us commentary after commentary on the New Testament, to the almost complete exclusion of the Old Testament. Theology-heavy sermons from the doctrinal portions of the New Testament can serve to keep people out of touch with the reality of the story of Scripture. And ironically, in an age where everybody’s story has value, the grand overarching storyline of the Bible is silenced by the Church’s neglect of the first 39 books of her Bible.

Many of the resources being published that are seeking to revive a focus on the Old Testament are locked away in scholarly tomes or couched in some liberal theological garb, effectively kept away from the average pastor’s and Bible teacher’s reach. A new book by InterVarsity Press aims to bring scholarly resources into an accessible and highly useful format. Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching, edited by Grenville J.R. Kent, Paul J. Kissling and Laurence A. Turner, actually manages to live up to its title’s bold claim. In an accessible and user-friendly format, the book brings together contributions from a wide array of OT scholars.

After a brief introduction, the book moves on to cover OT narrative plot, OT narrative characters, the Law, Lament, Praise Poetry, Wisdom literature, the Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Apocalyptic literature, and the Minor Prophets. It also has a chapter on preaching from difficult texts and another on preaching Christ from the Old Testament. The chapters aren’t too long or overly detailed; instead, they are delightfully readable. They are structured in such a way as to clearly convey the primary difficulties and recommended approaches for the particular genre surveyed. Almost all the chapters include helpful footnotes and recommendations for further study. And each concludes with an example sermon which puts the theory into practice.

As I read through this book, I kept earmarking page after page where helpful insights were shared about the various parts of the Old Testament. The sections covering narrative plot and characters were especially helpful and full of examples. Laurence Turner stressed placing each narrative in context to its larger narrative, and on sticking to the flow of the author as much as possible when developing a sermon. Paul Kissling discussed a unique strategy of comparing the speech of the characters over and against the narrator’s account, as a way of finding the main point of a given story. Christopher J.H. Wright’s chapter on preaching the Law was also superb. He stressed the connection Law has with grace as seen in the historical setting given in the Pentateuch. He also unpacked the lesser-known missiological aspects of the Law: namely, Israel living out God’s Law as a testimony to the nations, and the application this has to the Church today.

Federico Villanueva’s chapter on Lament was particularly insightful as he writes from the standpoint of a non-Westerner (he ministers in Manila). Tremper Longman’s chapter on wisdom literature, particularly his discussion of Ecclesiastes and Job, was also very helpful in finding ways to grasp the main point of these books and how best to apply it to today’s Christians. Similarly, Grenville Kent’s discussion on the Song of Solomon was also very helpful. Even though he steers clear of a direct allegorical interpretation, he finds value in analogy and metaphor. His discussion of where God makes an appearance in the Song, and why, is worth quoting here:

So if Yahweh had appeared directly in the Song, the culture may well have misunderstood him as condoning fertility religion or even as just another fertility god. The Song clearly separates worship and sex. it is ‘a non-mythological, non-cultic, non-idolatrous, outright, open celebration of God-given sexual love’. (pg. 130, quote from John G. Snaith The Song of Songs (Eerdmans, 1993), pg. 5.)

The chapter on Isaiah, by H.G.M. Williamson did a great job stressing the literary unity of Isaiah. He traced the theme of righteousness and justice showing how such wide themes inform the specific context of any given passage in the book. Daniel Block challenges us to preach Ezekiel, and offers several helpful charts and analyses of the book and its central message. Alison Lo gave a wonderful, yet brief treatment of the Minor Prophets. She excelled at relating the context and themes of those books to today’s world and its problems. She also discussed the interrelation of the books as a wider whole (the “book of the twelve”), and provided a fascinating outline of Zephaniah.

Gordon Wenham’s discussion of various “difficult texts” in the Old Testament was in the whole, masterful. Some may disagree with his stance on Gen. 1 — explaining the wider context of the ideas about the world of the time (and thus not getting into a discussion of whether the six days are literal 24 hour days), but his comments on the imprecatory psalms, the “eye for an eye” law, apparent divine-sanctioned genocides, and OT slavery are both helpful and wise. R.W.L. Moberly’s chapter on preaching Christ from the Old Testament cites a lot of material that applies to this concern. He stresses that the wider context of the Old Testament includes the canonical grouping of the books and their use by the Church. He sees a second narrative (the NT) interpreting the original narrative in a sense similar to a detective story where at the end, all the initial elements of the plot make perfect sense. He also allows for imagination to impact interpretation and helpfully walks through some examples in how to think through this in a practical manner.

The chapters in the book are not all of equal value. The praise poetry, and apocalyptic literature sections were not as helpful to me. Some of the contributors may not be as immediately accessible as others. But the beauty of this book is how it offers a manual for the preacher who is choosing an OT text to preach. This book won’t be the only resource consulted, but it offers a sensible approach and several helpful points for encountering just about any text in the Old Testament. Throughout, it stresses a literary and canonical approach that focuses on the Old Testament we have, not imagined historical reconstructions. This ensures the book’s usefulness by people of a variety of particular persuasions within evangelicalism.

I trust tools such as Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching, will encourage many pastors to pick an OT book for their next sermon series. This book will prove useful for any Bible student, and I highly recommend it. May the beauty of the Old Testament captivate the hearts and minds of more teachers and preachers, and be preached with power to the congregations that God has entrusted to their care.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Inter-Varsity Press for review. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

Pick up a copy of this book at Amazon.com or through IVP direct.