This paper on the transforming power of the story of Jesus was presented by James Purves as a guest lecture on April 9, 2003, at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague. The full title was “Pursuing the glory and goodness: Christomorphism: Where neopentecostal and anabaptist meet?”

Introduction

The approach here offered is dogmatic rather than systematic: our method lies in identifying the essential ‘building blocks’ of Christian theology, not designing a complete system. The propriety of constructing a contextualised, narrative theology is allowed for; but subject to it having, as prolegomena, an adequate dogmatic foundation. It is the nature of that dogmatic foundation that we seek to address.

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires (2 Peter 1:3-4).

Part 1: The Story

The glory

At the age of 19 the realisation of a living Jesus impacted me, during a student outreach meeting, six months prior to my conversion. The sense of God’s glory, at variously times since described by me as ‘being born again’, ‘filled’ or ‘baptised’ by the Holy Spirit, overwhelmed me at conversion. It seemed that God’s presence came down with an experience of energy, of presence and power passing in and through my body. Involuntary shaking filled the room when I met with another in prayer. Convictions formed within me that God was saying certain things. A hunger for Scripture, prayer, fellowship and an appetite for witnessing gripped me. In the context of revival in the university’s Faculty of Law, I was inducted into a spirituality that embraces glossolalia, prophetic utterance, healing and deliverance ministry as normative to the Christian life.

At the same time, I was mixing with a peer group who were shaped by the Charismatic renewal movement of the mid-1970’s. Introduced to a biography of Edward Irving[1], a famous preacher whose sermons gripped London society in the early 1800’s, and whose reflections in Christology and Pneumatology prefigured those of both later Holiness and Pentecostal theologians, I also became involved in a sacramental and liturgical traditional of healing and deliverance ministry, connected with the Scottish Iona Community.

Two years after conversion, I was a ministerial candidate for the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, already trying to deal with a tension between:

1. A Federal Calvinism, emphasising Atonement through Christ’s propitiatory, substitutionary Sacrifice. This was allied to an Augustinian anthropology, emphasising Christ potest non peccare, set over against the mass of sinful humanity, non potest non peccare. Christ’s sinless humanity was presented as essentially different to ours. I was taught that, through the atoning power of the Cross, we receive the benefits of Christ, specifically through salvation imparted through my credal confession of the revelation of Christ as Saviour, grace for this life dispensed through the continuing ministry of Word and Sacraments.
2. An understanding and ownership of the implication of the assumed humanity of Jesus Christ, as explored by Edward Irving, focussing on the Incarnation as the wellhead of atoning power, as expressed in Athanasius’ De Incarnatione, further looking to the Irenaean model of recapitulation, which emphasised that Christ shared the whole experience of our own humanity.

There was, in these early days of my theological formation and, indeed, throughout the period of preparation for ministry, no consolidated, ontological understanding of what it means for us to share in the life of Christ. Expectation of sharing in the experience of Christ was diminished by a stress, arising out of Bezan Calvinism, of Atonement properly understood as propitiatory sacrifice. Sacramentalism, in the Reformed as well as the Catholic setting, had domesticated the modus operandi of the empowering, purposeful presence of God. My ministerial mentors impressed upon me, as a young pastor, that it was through the faithful, weekly exercise of the ministry of Word and Sacraments that the means of promoting Christian witness and fulfilling the Church’s missional purpose was pursued. As one of my predecessors in my present charge, Bristo Baptist Church (founded 1765) was fond of saying, ‘we are evangelical but not evangelistic’. This was not meant as a confession of shame: it was a positive affirmation of a philosophy of ministry that validated the weekly ministry of Word and Sacraments.

The Goodness

Goodness? Apart from seeking to be pleasant and caring as occasion required, it was only of real concern if it would help lead a person into wanting to know more about Jesus, a prelude to their conversion.

Part 2: Questions

What if ‘glory’ and ‘goodness’ are, in fact, integrally related components? What if this is something that God has ordained as necessary for us, in order to share in His missional purpose for a renewed humanity, sharers in the divine nature? What if the essence of Christian faith and living is not, in fact, related to an individualistic ownership of Cartesian, propositional truths; but more foundationally related to our engagement with the substance of the glory and goodness of God, alone through which we come to a proper engagement with his very great and precious promises?

Can we not encourage this dual axis of awareness, that is captured in 2 Peter 1:3 – the glory (ontological awareness) and the goodness (ethical awareness) – in the reading and application of Scripture? Before looking to how we might do this, let us first clarify the dogmatic basis on which we would seek to build our hermeneutic.

Part 3: Dogmatic foundations

1. Truth is found in the context of God’s relating to people and the responding relating of people to God and, consequentially, people to people. Jesus is this truth, because He prototypical and paradigmatic of all these relationships.

We can only engage in theology out off this relationship, which is a process of our moving out off subjective, existential perceptions regarding ourselves and God, into relational dynamic anchored in Jesus Christ. Both the catalyse and paradigm for this is Jesus. In Jesus, we meet with mankind truly relating to God. In Jesus we meet with the One who is fully embraced in God’s relating becomingness to us and man’s responsive desire for God. In Jesus we meet with our humanity embraced and saturated in the glory and goodness that comes from God alone. This reciprocity of God’s becomingness to man and man’s response of surrender, in his desire for God, is founded for us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ.

3. This God who, through Christ, enrols us in His dynamic relationships defines Himself in relational terms. The key passage of Exodus 34.6-7a, is seminal here. As with Moses, we can only know God in and through seeking relationship with Him and His glory; and in being confronted with the self-disclosure of God in His goodness: And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in merciful love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.

The truth of the One who declares ‘I am who I am’ is found only when we are arrested and constrained by these dynamic characteristics of His goodness; and it is when these dynamic characteristics of His goodness are combined with the presence of His glory, the weight of His presence met with and embraced, that we enter into and are enabled by God in a manner true to His revelation in Jesus. All we need for life and godliness are this glory and goodness (2 Peter 1.3-4). Indeed, the full nature of the vicarious, atoning death of Christ can only be sufficiently grasped when we view it terms predicative of our humanity’s engagement with the relational intent of God’s character, in terms of compassion, grace, merciful love, faithfulness and forgiveness.

5. My relationships with others will be decisively shaped by my grasp of this identify that God invites me to embrace in Christ, recipient of and participant in His glory and goodness. Where my identity and self-understanding is firmly grounded in Christ, this will decisively shape the priority I give to seeking the presence of His glory and, at the same time, responding to His call to reflect the character of God’s goodness towards others.

Part 4: The hermeneutical challenge

To encourage people to engage with this dual axis that is captured in 2 Peter 1:3 – the glory (ontological dynamic) and the goodness (ethical dynamic), we need to engage with the Scriptures in a way that draws people into the process of discipleship that is centred on the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. For this, we would want to apply a condensed, prognostic question that addresses the basic, Biblical hermeneutic:

• Who were the people this Scriptural passage was first delivered to? Why was it addressed to them? What could this Scripture have meant to them?

However, in order to apply the dynamic of a Christomorphic life, we must go further than that. We have to look for a contextual application that allows for the glory and the goodness of God to be outworked in and through our ministry.

One way of doing this might be in asking the following questions.

‘Through the reading of this passage, in what way does the Word of God:

• confront me with our heavenly Father’s intent to bring the fullness of His glory and goodness to earth?
• challenge me to give myself more fully into the life of God’s Son, “to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death”?
• encourage me to recognise or further seek, as one among God’s people, the enabling presence of the Holy Spirit?’

It seems no accident that so much early preaching of the Scriptures was heavily allegorical, or that early, pre-Nicene formulations of the Trinity were emphatically economic. What mattered was the pursuit of Christomorphism: becoming more like Christ. In reading the Scriptures, it was the presence and pattern of Christ that was constantly looked for, the enabling of the Holy Spirit that was sought, the glory and goodness of Father that was acknowledged.

Where neopentecostal and anabaptist meet?

Neopentecostals have alerted the world afresh to the glory of God come to earth in and through Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Unashamedly experiential, they look with expectancy for God’s glory to come among them; and many of us have witnessed, participated in the reality of God’s present glory through the power of the Holy Spirit and been blessed by God because of it.

Image: Yuriy Bogdanov

PR

Notes

[1] [Editor’s note: For more on Edward Irving see Derek Vreeland, “Edward Irving: Preacher, Prophet and Charismatic Theologian” and Trevor W. Martindale, “Edward Irving’s Incarnational Christology,” along with many other resources at PneumaReview.com.]

‘Divine Companion’ is an insightful and innovative exploration of ways of approaching both Christology and an understanding of the Spirit at work in our lives. The published version of a PhD thesis, this work is invaluable in exploring the interaction of classical Christological perspectives with contemporary Christianity, especially relating to Hispanic Pentecostal experience. The bibliographic references are themselves rich and contemporary, but the greater value of this book lies in the way it charts a move from classic patristics through the motifs of liberation theology to the concerns of a rapidly expanding, Pentecostal theological consciousness.

Sammy Alfaro is part of the College of Theology faculty at Grand Canyon University.

The primary thesis of the work is that an understanding of Christology that focuses on the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christ better facilitates the development of an understanding that is both pneumatological and rooted in classical Pentecostal beliefs; and that that this is more useful than a Christology focused on the ‘two natures’ of Christ.

This has two immediate effects. Firstly, it allows us to focus on the integrated whole of Jesus, expressed in and through His humanity. Secondly, it causes us to address the relationship between our understanding of the Holy Spirit’s workings and the life of Jesus Christ. As Alfaro puts it,

It is my perception that limiting Pentecostal Christology to a Chalcedonian framework will inevitably bifurcate its potential by ignoring one of Pentecostalism’s most important contributions: the centrality of the experience of the Spirit (p 56).

The notion of Jesus as our Divine Companion, is close to a participationalist understanding of the Christian life, where the integral process of justification-sanctification is found in and through our identification with the  life, ministry and victory of Jesus Christ. This participationalist hermeneutic is expressed through an emphasis on reading the conjunction of our life with the life of Jesus being marked by the work of the Holy Spirit in and through the humanity that we share with our Lord.

In this, Alfaro’s work compliments Richard Bauckham’s point, made so powerfully in Jesus and the God of Israel, (Paternoster, 2008), first published in book form in 1998, God Crucified. where he summarises his argument thus,

“The earliest Christology was already the highest Christology. I call it a Christology of divine identity, proposing this as a way beyond the standard distinction between ‘functional’ and ‘ontic’ Christology, a distinction which does not correspond to early Jewish thinking about God and has, therefore, seriously distorted our understanding of New Testament Christology. When we think in terms of divine identity, rather than divine essence or nature, which are not the primary categories for Jewish theology, we can see that the so-called divine functions which Jesus exercises are intrinsic to who God is…

“The inclusion of Jesus in the unique, divine identity had implications not only for who Jesus is but also for who God is.” (p. 10).

As Pentecostals and Charismatics, we are people who have been confronted by an intense experience of the Holy Spirit. This has led us to reappraise the importance we attach to the Holy Spirit within our Systematic Theologies, as well as reviewing our understanding of the Holy Spirit’s ministry. But this can lead us into territories of exciting and worrying discoveries. Does the Holy Spirit really do that? Can that person really have the Holy Spirit too, as they claim?

Fundamental to Levison’s thesis is his discovery that the Spirit is not only the bearer of charismatic endowment, but the very spirit of life that brings our life into being and on which we, as living beings, are contingent. From the Genesis narratives onwards, Levison traces life itself as contingent on the presence and empowering of the Spirit: the breath of God or wind of God are synonymous with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is there in Creation and giving birth to all life of all kind.

The challenge arises in that, in this reviewer’s perspective, Levison does not appear to engage with the challenge of discussing where the real experience and engagement with the Spirit of God ends and that of counterfeit and demonic spirits begins.

This insight is found by Levison in the writing of Luke. The Pentecostal experience is seen to combine both comprehension and incomprehension, not either or: “To opt for either ecstatic tongues or comprehensible foreign languages in the interpretation of the Pentecost experience, not to mention subsequent moments of inspiration in Acts, is to diminish the fulness of the spirit and to deplete the levels of resonance that Luke, like Philo and the author of 4 Ezra, preserves. Pentecost encapsulates not merely the ecstatic or the intellectual but a rare, inspired blend of both” (p 345).

From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

Wolfgang Vondey, ed., Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, Volume 2 (Pickwick Publications, 2013), 301 pages, ISBN 9781620327180.

It can be a terrible thing when we believe that we ourselves are right and all others are wrong. Terrible, because it can reinforce an arrogance caused by insecurity, causing us to be unwilling or resistant towards the legitimate Biblical perspectives and insights of others. Sadly, ignorance of the basis of faith shared with others, whose experience of church culture is sometimes so foreign and different from ourselves, can lead to caricature and even misrepresentation, often on the basis of anecdotal reflections or bad personal experiences.

This book is for those who are prepared to view things a different way. It is the second volume in a series looking at Pentecostal involvement in cross-denominational discussions regarding the basis of Christian unity. It is intended as a source book and reference work, divided into two parts. Firstly, a selection of narratives that represent ecumenical dialogues in which Pentecostals have recently been involved. Secondly, a selection of official reports on conversations between Pentecostals and two major denomination groupings, as well as the fruit of a conversation between Oneness and Trinitarian Pentecostals.

But this book is useful for more than that. It illustrated one important function of Pentecostalism, which is moving the agenda from abstract and obtuse theological concepts and categories into ‘what is real is what is experienced’. It invites an engagement in an ecumenism that focuses on missional matters, and the exploration of experiential realities: what it means to enter faith, to grow in faith, or to receive the Holy Spirit.

The narratives in part 1 are valuable in showing how people, coming from diverse backgrounds, can find a ‘cross check’ in confirming the propriety of their Christian practices. For whether we readily recognise it or not, there is—at the theoretical, dogmatic level—not always a lot to choose between in the differing systematic theologies offered by competing traditions because of shared roots in historic Christianity, they are sometimes simply amended copies or slight variations of one another. It is at the level of practices that we see the difference. The value of these conversations is in how they lead us to reflect on what we do; and on why we do what we do.

This collection of records and documents is also a book providing a good resource for those looking for a way of finding a positive interface between Pentecostals and both Lutheran and Reformed, as well as Roman Catholics.

Reviewed by James Purves

This work is the product of a teacher and scholar’s lifetime experience. Eddie Gibbs has taught at Fuller for many years, and before that had extensive experience in England. He has intimate knowledge of the development of both church growth and missional thinking, and has been a studied observed of both Fresh Expression and Emerging Church. The result is this work in which he masterfully grasps and communicates the compass of his subject, presented in simple yet profound prose. I found reading this to be quite compulsive, bringing both insight and spiritual enrichment.

Gibb explores the thesis, ‘There are five megatrends impacting the churches of the West. These are the transition from modernity to postmodernity; the transi­tion from the industrial to the information age; the transition from Christendom to post-Christendom contexts; the transition from production initiatives to consumer awareness; and the transition from religious identity to spiritual exploration’ (p 19).

To these five I would add a sixth: the transition from an understanding of personhood defined by (i) complex, plural relationships; towards personhood perceived in terms of (ii) fragmented individualism.

Eddie Gibbs (DMin, Fuller Theological Seminary) is professor emeritus of church growth in the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

This 6^th megatrend is amplified by each of the 5 megatrends that Gibbs identifies and describes. The trend from modernity to postmodernity reduces descriptors and definitions that supported societal traditions and identities, further reinforced by the retreat of people from discursive interface face-to-face into detached interaction at information terminals. The diminution of awareness towards the traditions of Christendom and the increase of the pursuit of consumption prompts an easing away from the essence of Judaeo-Christian traditions and their emphasis on plural, organic identity.

But community itself as an emphasis is not enough. Many who have experienced the too often introspective emphasis on relationships of the Charismatic renewal of the 1980’s can bear witness to how community can turn in on itself. An emphasis on being relational must also be intentionally missional. Gibbs observes that one identified factor of succeeding church is a stress upon, ‘Communitas Not Community: The most vigorous forms of community are those that come together in the context of a shared ordeal or those that define themselves as a group with a mission that lies beyond themselves—thus initiating a risky journey’ (p 36).

In looking at new attempts in mission and outreach, Gibbs opines that these ‘will only gain significance as they reach out to the de-churched and never-churched segments of the population, rather than providing the latest attraction for bored, frustrated, or angry current churchgoers. They also need to be strongly in evidence in urban contexts, recognizing that our culture is driven by urban values and images, with suburbia increasingly becoming culturally marginalized’ (p 44).

Gibbs reappraises the nature of effective leadership in a post-modern environment, stressing the role of the leader as a catalyst, encouraging creative thinking and initiative. In the post-Christendom environment, churches need to recognized that they have not yet arrived, but are to move forward experimentally in mission. A focus on place needs to be replaced by a focus on people; a community of people on pilgrimage.

Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears, Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 335 pages, ISBN 9781433501302.

This is an engaging production by the dynamic, founding pastor of Mars Hill Church together with an experienced, theological teaching collaborator. It expresses the experimental fusion of mission focused churchmanship with a particular style of conservative, evangelical theology. This, indeed, is the power and potency in Driscoll’s approach. His dogmatic theology is clear, simple and acceptable to a large section of North American evangelicalism. What Driscoll offers is this theology, usually married to a conservative ecclesiology, combined with a very powerful contemporary, missional focus.

Driscoll challenges the collapse into relativism and pluralism that many would see associated with postmodern and emerging church movements. He offers a clear, doctrinal basis while allowing for an experimental missiology.

The potential weakness of this approach will be evident to some readers. For those who sense the validity of expressions from more than one doctrinal camp, this book will disappoint in dealing with nuances and varied flavours within the Word of God in Scripture. While many, for example, will have no quibble in agreeing to the propriety of stressing penal substitutionary atonement (p. 20), the appearance of favouring this to the extent of excluding other Biblical aspects to atonement that are valued and seen as basic by many, such as the stress of divinisation (2 Peter 1.4) found in Orthodox theology, may be problematic. That said, the book’s stress fits well with a perception of churchmanship that focuses on the priority of proclaiming a message of the Kingdom that is exclusively penal and crucicentric, together with a perception of church that emphasises agency over against modality.

In the book, there is a real attempt to develop a fuller perception of church and discipleship. Building on a perception of church modelled on the Reformed stress of Christ as ‘prophet, priest and king’, the authors comment that ‘the most common overemphasis is the (prophetic function’s) confessional reduction of the gospel to Jesus’ death, forgiveness of sin, and imputed righteousness leading to eternal; life in heaven. While this is true, it neglects Jesus’ exemplary life, resurrection, imparted life of regeneration, and the rich life of the missional community of the church on earth until we see him face-to-face’ (p.25).

This book is important because it expresses a theological journey that many, within the North American context, are finding faith through. For this reason in itself, it is worth engaging with.

Reviewed by James Purves

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Timothy Ward, Words of Life: Scripture As the Living and Active Word of God (IVP Academic, Downers Grove, 2009), 184 pages, ISBN 9781433501302.

This book is full of contemporary appreciation of the dynamic power of Scripture and invites a reappraisal by the reader of what we really think about the Bible. There are sections that will evoke a loud ‘amen’ from among Pentecostals and Charismatics, as when Ward insists that God always does what God’s Word says (p 26ff.). There are also warnings, though, as when Ward identifies a tendency among some Charismatics to place the Scriptures in an apparently less valued place than ecstatic and spontaneous eruptions of revelation, such as in worship services. He also bewails the reduction of well researched and applied expository preaching and the increase of anecdotal surmise and impressions. He insists that we need to avoid the ‘refusal by some to link God’s ongoing dynamic action through the Spirit directly with the speech acts communicated by the words of Scripture’ (p 158).

Timothy Ward, a Church of England vicar and an unashamed Calvinist, has produced this book on the back of his earlier thesis publication, where he examined an understanding God’s Word as His ‘speech act’. He successfully unwraps the implications of a properly Reformed doctrine of Scripture in the contemporary church. The result is excellent and most helpful to all who instinctively hold the Scripture in the highest regard yet sense, albeit unwittingly, the contemporary pull away from a high doctrine of Scripture in differing parts of the church today.

Ward’s dealing with how the doctrine of sola Scriptura should be applied in the church in a manner faithful to the Magisterial Reformers is especially helpful and illumining. Ward emphasises that the Bible is not a talisman, and needs to be read in order to hear the Word of God released towards us today. We need to have a higher appreciation of it as the very words of God released to us. He points out that a doctrine of sola Scriptura properly roots the understanding of the Bible and the exercise of its authority within the Christian community, and contrasts this with a more individualistic use of the Scriptures, without reference to the Christian community’s authority, as ‘solo’ Scriptura (p 154).

This is a serious and well researched piece of writing, written at the pastoral and applied level. Any preacher, who has been disturbed by the challenges of ‘post-modernity’ and ‘post-foundationalism’ and wonders what they are really meant to be doing with the Bible, would benefit from reading it.

Reviewed by Jim Purves

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Walter Brueggemann, Journey to the Common Good (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 125 pages, ISBN 9780664235161.

This excellent little book presents three addresses given by the author. This, together with the narrative theology represented, makes this work eminently readable and engaging. Brueggemann, a pre-eminent Old Testament scholar, is deliberately provocative whilst thoroughly rooted in contemporary Old Testament perspectives, bringing to the reader an insight of how the world of Biblical Studies can effectively and usefully address issues facing the church and our witness today.

In three chapters, Brueggemann looks at Scriptural narratives which engage the liberation from captivity in Egypt through to the Sinai visitation and instructions of God; the conflict between the revelation of God and the choices made by Israel in the succeeding years; then the challenges of engaging with God’s vision for reconstruction in the post-exilic period. Brueggemann takes each of these and, having identified the main narrative themes present, applies them to present issues and challenges affecting the North American context.

Two features of this book were of especial interest to the present reviewer. Firstly, Brueggemann expertly brings the narrative themes together and shows how his observations find expression in and through the ministry and teachings of Jesus Christ. In this way, he properly shows how the Old Testament narratives lead to their realisation in and through the ministry of our Lord. His skill in doing this is exemplary, and whilst the reader may not agree with all his final observations, the method which he employs in bringing the whole scope of Biblical testimony into play is, in itself, something for all to learn from.

Secondly, Brueggemann holds to an understanding of righteousness which, in the present debates between advocates of imputed righteousness and other forms, brings an important contribution. As Brueggemann puts it, ‘Righteousness concerns active intervention in social affairs, taking an initiative to intervene in order to rehabilitate society, to respond to social grievance, and to correct every humanity-diminishing activity’ (page 63).

This is a manageable piece of scholarship for the working pastor to digest, an informative as well as a challenging resource both for personal study and sermon preparation.

Reviewed by Jim Purves

Preview Journey to the Common Good: books.google.com/books?id=aN0JVqSMIHAC

Michael F. Bird, Introducing Paul: The Man, His Mission and His Message (Dowers Grove: IVP Academic, 2008), 192 pages, ISBN 9780830828975.

Periodically, Biblical scholars emerge on the Christian scene who can communicate profound truths to the busy pastor in a way that he can understand. One of a new generation of such is the Michael Bird, an Australian Baptist who teaches at New Testament in a conservative theological school in the north of Scotland.

Bird’s genius lies in his natural combining of humour, contemporary cultural awareness and incisive scholarship. He is already the author of a number of books, and in this recent production offers an overview of Paul’s writings and theology. There is nothing stodgy about Bird’s work. Bird is fluent and engaging in his prose, which is no mean achievement given some of the writers he makes mention of. His scholarship is orthodox, conservative and thoroughly up to date. His intermediary position, for instance, in the debate between John Piper and Tom Wright has proven helpful and incisive for the present reviewer.

For anyone who would like to get ‘up to date’ on issues of Pauline scholarship, in a way that will help student, teacher or preacher, this book is thoroughly recommended.

Reviewed by James Purves

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Andrew D. Clarke, A Pauline Theology of Church Leadership (New York: T & T Clark, 2008), 189 pages, ISBN 9780567045607.

This work is important for those considering how best to ‘do church’ and who are also seeking after a Biblical model of leadership. The volume, a theological monograph in the Library of New Testament Studies series, is both theologically up to date and pastorally relevant for today. Clark, a senior lecturer in New Testament Studies in the University of Aberdeen and also the leader of a new church in rural Aberdeenshire, continues and develops the theme of Paul’s understanding of leadership which he addressed in his earlier work, Serve the Community of the Church: Christians as Leaders and Ministers (Eerdmans, 2000). In that work, Clark had noted how Paul’s understanding of Christian leadership should be distinguished from contemporary, social understandings of leadership in the 1st century Graeco-Roman context.

Andrew D. Clarke

Clarke argues that we can only understand Paul’s perspective on leadership and apostolic authority within the ecclesial context in which he worked. That is, a context of house churches where relationship and transparency was integral to the leadership role. He sees the various descriptors—overseer, elder and deacon not as offices, as they would later become in the Ignatian model, but properly as descriptors, often interchangeable or overlapping, of leadership dynamics within the local churches.

For Clarke, the critical ingredients for Pauline leadership were both an ability to teach and an ability to model Christlikeness to others: functions that necessitated relational accountability of such leaders within the local church communities they sought to lead. Clarke see that an attempt to appeal to Paul for models of ministry that vindicate power structures within larger people groups is to remove him from his context.

Reviewed by Jim Purves