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Theology Today While this is a book for an educated audience, it is not directed primarily to specialists. Swinburne's prose is crisp and clear, and he does an exemplary job of presenting the structure of his argument without render ing the book inaccessible to those who lack his background in analytic philosophy. He wisely relegates his discussion of probability calculus and Bayes's Theorem (whence the 97 percent probability is derived) to a dense but readable appendix. Beyond those who are interested in natural theol ogy and the style of analytic philosophy of religion so skillfully practiced by Swinburne, however, it is a bit unclear who his intended academic audience is. This book lacks the extensive reference to New Testament scholarship one would expect of a book directed to New Testament specialists. His arguments will to some seem skewed in the direction of Christianity, for he does not consider arguments why it would be unrea sonable to consider that God would become incarnate, and he sets the probability that God would become incarnate at some point in human history at fifty percent, which will seem inflated to those unconvinced by his arguments. This is a book that will likely be well received by and useful to pastors, apologists, and educated lay people who are less inter ested in biblical and historical scholarship than they are in a careful and thoughtful reading of the New Testament, combined with a nonsectarian theology that offers a defense of the traditional doctrine of Christ's physical resurrection. This last audience in particular will be well served by Swinburne's book.
JASON RICKMAN
JOHN J COLLINS
JOSEPH SITTLER
PETER J PARIS
GERARD S SLOYAN
FORTRESS PRESS
Augsburg Fortress, Publishers 1-800-328-4648 fortresspress.com
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Theology Today three are about two hundred pages each: (1) methodological considerations and background information on post-mortem survival, the soul, and resurrection in Greco-Roman and Jewish sources; (2) Pauline letters and Paul's personal encounter with the risen Jesus; and (3) resurrection in other New Testament texts and in ancient Christian writings through the early patristic period. Afinalchapter in the third section treats resurrection and confession of Jesus as Messiah and Lord. The concluding sections get to the questions of interest to most readers: (4) the resurrection narratives as we find them in the Gospels and (5) two chapters devoted to the "so what" issues of historicity and Christology. The author is so repetitious and self-referencing that some readers may prefer to skip from the introductory chapter to the Pauline letters and, from there, to the Easter stories in the Gospels. Wright employs an extensive survey of background materials from Greco-Roman and Jewish sources to establish a univocal Jewish understanding of resurrection. God's creative power will restore the dead to a form of bodily life. He rejects the evidence that first-century Jews envisaged other modes of eternal life with God, such as astral immortality, transformation into the glory of the heavenly Adam, or incorporation into the ranks of angelic beings. Only a "transphysical" embodiment in the new creation that is the goal of God's covenant promise and of Israel's messianic hope fits Wright's reconstruction of the religious views of first-century CE Jews. Such a rigid understanding of Jewish texts is not necessary to Wright's more plausible suggestion that nothing short of an "embodied" encounter with the risen Lord and, consequently, an empty tomb can account for early Christian beliefs as articulated in the New Testament. Later Christian writers make the bodily character of resurrection central to their rejection of both gnostic spirituality and Greco-Roman views of the immortal soul. Wright points out the significant discontinuity between Christian claims about Jesus and the cultural archetypes often said to generate resurrection stories. Execution by the Roman governor is not a setting for a quasiimperial apotheosis, though Wright repeatedly appeals to the anti-imperial rhetoric of the exaltation and parousia of the risen Son of God. Nor can the bodily return to life of a relatively unknown Galilean religious leader be equivalent to mythic netherworld journeys or the heavenly ascent of Enoch or Elijah. In short, Wright concludes that, if all the early Christians sought to affirm was that they could continue Jesus' liberating vision of God's rule in the Spirit or that God had taken the crucified, suffering servant to God's right hand in the divine throne room, they would not have produced the Easter narratives. Christians told these stories because they refer to actual, historical events. Though Wright repeatedly flings charges of being victimized by Enlightenment rationalism or by Bultmann's demythologizing at those of us who are not certain whether a simple set of encounters between Jesus' disciples and a Jesus with a "transphysical" body can serve to explain what happened, he is equally trapped by modernism. The only acceptable
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Theology Today version of salvation for Wright is a new creative act of God that will be initiated by Jesus' return at the parousia. In other words, what Wright cannot believe is that there might be reality to all the dimensions of the Spirit encoded in the metaphors we use about angels, heavenly regions, and transformation into divine glory. A more sympathetic reading of Plato, Plotinus, Philo, the Jewish and Christian mystical traditionnot to mention Augustine, Aquinas, and Dante's Commediathan onefindsin Canon Wright's book opens up other possibilities for Christian eschatology. Wright's insistence on a univocal understanding of Christian eschatology leads him to attack the faith of ordinary believers. At best, the "in heaven" and "with the Lord" language is only about the intermediate state of the dead. Our funeral sermons should not promise the happy life in heaven or an immediate transition out of the body by an immortal soul. Easter refers to God's recreation, to the restoration of God'srighteousones in that creation, not to an individual hope for a next life or for life continued in a new sphere of reality. This principled rejection leaves one wondering what the pastoral significance of Wright's project will turn out to be.
PHEME PERKINS
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