Book Notice: The Unrelenting God

David J. Downs & Matthew L. Skinner (eds.)

The Unrelenting God: God’s Action in Scripture: Essays in Honor of Beverly Roberts Gaventa
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013.
Available at Amazon.com

Beverly Gaventa is a brilliant scholar, having made contributions to the study of Luke-Acts and Paul. She is now at Baylor Uni having taught for many years at Princeton Theological Seminary and at Columbia Theological Seminary. We all anxiously await her Romans commentary in the NTL series! During my doctoral studies, I read through her work on conversion in the NT, which I found very useful.

She is honored for her work with a collection of essays by former students and colleagues covering, generally, the idea of God in the NT. Among the essays, particular highlights were:

Joel B. Green, “Conversion in Luke-Acts: God’s Prevenience, Human Embodiment.” Green basically looks at whether conversion is ethical, cognitive, or what and seeks out an answer based on Luke 3. Green contends that: “Accordingly, the central emphasis in John’s ministry on conversion cannot be segregated from its twofold embodiment – in the physical act of baptism and in the sociopolitical ramifications of God’s restoration of his people. Regarding the former, Luke’s epitome of John’s ministry participates in a universal exemplar of embodied cognition: the embodiment of moral-purity metaphor in expressions of physical cleanliness. Regarding the latter, ‘forgiveness of sins’ and its correlate ‘salvation’ cannot be reduced to an interior, subjective experience, but must be understood eschatologically and in terms of God’s faithfulness to Israel” (p. 35).

Matthew Skinner looks at “The Word of God and the Church” paying special attention to the meaning of “the word of God kept on growing” in Acts 6:7, 12.24, and 19.20 in light of the narrative dynamics of Acts. Skinner concludes that: “The word grows, not simply because converts increase the church’s rolls, but because they are brought into the arena of divine action, a place where they apprehend God and exist within God’s purposes as those are expressed in the gospel message of Jesus Christ” (p. 81).

Richard Hays critiques the CEB translation of Romans in “Lost in Translation: A Reflection on Romans in the Common English Bible.” The backstory is that Richard Hays and Beverly Gaventa did the original translation on Romans for the CEB, however, at some point in the editorial process, the translation was rigorously changed leading to several problems which Hays points out. These problems include: muting Paul’s apocalyptic notes, inconsistency on handling the pistis christou texts, making Pauline justification sound like a legal fiction, overly paraphrastic, and stylistically reductionistic … ouch! Hays concludes: “I must judge the CEB’s inflection of Romans to be disappointing. In the effort to achieve readability, it has not only sacrificed Paul’s stylistic elegance but also subtly obscured the letter’s theological coherence on key points. It has domesticated Paul’s gospel by muting its apocalyptic notes, dulling its sharp emphasis on the priority of God’s action in Christ to effect the justification of humanity, and reducing its rhetorical grandeur to a casual, plodding discourse.” Double ouch!!

Francis Watson covers “Is Paul a Covenantal Theologian?” saying at one point: “The purpose of the Pauline Gentile mission is not only the salvation of Gentiles but also the salvation of Israel; the apparent deviation from the covenant is in fact a detour whose goal is precisely the covenant’s triumphant fulfillment. According to this interpretation, Paul himself emerges as a covenantal theologian, one for whom God’s covenant with Israel is the most fundamental and comprehensive of all theological categories.”

It is a great collection of essays honoring a world-class scholar for her contribution to the study of the New Testament.