This is an enlightening book about the role that Christian understandings of the dignity of the individual have had in the modern push for human rights. In four chapters, it offers vignettes about pioneers in the human rights movement(s), and showcases the role of the distinctively Christian element in their arguments. As such, the book provides a valuable historical offset to some recent attempts to set the notion of rights over against Christian commitments, and presents a clearer view of the playing ground than some other treatments might give.

I referred above to the “individual,” but Moyn intentionally steers clear of that term, preferring instead to speak of the “person” as something borne of neither individualist nor communitarian notions. Here a little more explanation on his part would have been helpful, especially as the question of the “person’s” status vis-à-vis the community is the most obvious issue defining the “playing ground” that I mentioned above. Moyn’s use of “person” is intended in service to the thinking of “personalism,” a notion “linked quickly to spiritualism and humanism and not infrequently to European identity,” and which functioned to dispute the opening moves of “liberalism and communism” (p. 69). This use of “person” only made me wish all the more for a detailed map of Moyn’s operating concepts. (The “individual” is something that can be “depersonalized,” as it was [Moyn says] in the French Revolution [p. 37].)

It is important to note that Moyn places the dawn of Christian human rights in the wake of World War II, with some attention to events shortly before that. (The book lacks a subtitle, which could have made this limitation in scope clear.) Moyn says little about the role of Christian thinking in the so-called “invention” of the individual, often attributed to the Enlightenment. Instead, his chapters discuss figures that cash out this individualism (or personalism) in the service of common decency—figures like Boris Mirkine-Guetzévitch, Éamon de Valera, Jacques Maritain, and Gerhard Ritter (the “first historian of human rights”). Most of this history, of course, is not Anglo-American, and many of the names will probably be new for most readers.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in ethics, or in modern history. It is also helpful for thinking through philosophical anthropology, although it is the need for the perspective this book offers (rather than the depth of its treatment) that makes it valuable on this score.

Reviewed by John C. Poirier

Publisher’s page: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1716.html

Adams has written a fine study of the familial, social, occupational, and financial aspects of life in Judea in the period from the sixth century BCE to the first century CE. Each aspect is expertly introduced and discussed in the light of the literary record and material remains. The presentation is clear and accessible. The result is a useful insider’s point-of-view (as it were) for various figures we meet in the post-exilic OT writings and the NT gospels – something like a time-travelogue.

Part of this work’s value consists in its bringing these different aspects of Second Temple life together under a single cover. We can, of course, study each aspect in depth elsewhere, but here we have them all within the space of 200 pages. It would be wrong, however, to characterize this volume merely as a state-of-the-question survey: Adams makes plenty of original contributions throughout the book, and his arguments show an impressive command of Judean material culture. Sociology is consulted where it has something useful to say, but is never given rein over the facts on the ground.

Adams gives particular attention to those who wielded less power in society: women and children, the poor and indebted. This theme culminates in a final chapter on “the ethics of wealth and poverty”, in which we see a variety of stances adopted in Second-Temple sources (including Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and Ben Sira). Adams follows this line of ethical thinking to its effects within apocalyptic writings. This seems to be one of Adams’s abiding concerns, and it fits well with the plan of the book. Thankfully, his discussion of these issues does not lead to an exaggeration of the imbalances that existed.

Reviewed by John Poirier

Preview Social and Economic Life in Second Temple Judea: https://books.google.com/books/about/Social_and_Economic_Life_in_Second_Templ.html?id=8qt1BwAAQBAJ

Publisher’s page: https://www.wjkbooks.com/Products/0664237037/social-and-economic-life-in-second-temple-judea.aspx

In this intriguing book, Samuel Adams tries to figure out what it means to do history about the Bible if we assume that God actually exists. The proposition is an interesting and important one: biblical studies has a legacy of being forced to decide whether to approach its object of study either theologically or historically, with the implication that historical approaches are not intended to reckon with the reality of God. In this revision of his PhD thesis, completed under the supervision of Alan Torrance at the University of St. Andrews, Adams picks at the historical method of popular biblical scholar N.T. Wright to ask whether his account of history can cope with a God who is more than simply an element in the worldviews of the biblical authors. Ultimately, Adams believes that Wright’s Critical Realist approach to history is insufficient when applied to knowing God as it does not take account of the implications of making God the object of knowledge. Having diagnosed the problem Adams sets out to offer a solution, situating himself as a theologian who is attempting to resolve a problem built into Wright’s method by drawing on the resources of apocalyptic theology (181-2). This is a bold claim, considering the status of Wright.

Adams begins by describing Wright’s approach to history. He is particularly interested in what the former Bishop of Durham has to say about how we come to know things. Wright argues that knowledge is gained when we come into contact with things outside ourselves, and Adams rightly diagnoses here the epistemological underpinning of Wright’s project. Although Adams does not dispute that Wright’s approach helps him understand what the biblical writers intended to say, he does not think it can address the ‘reality’ which they were writing about: it addresses their worldviews, rather than the subject matter of the text.

Following Torrance, Adams sees this as ‘God-talk-talk’ (talk about what people have said about God) rather than ‘God-talk’ (talk about God). For example, Adams accepts that Wright can understand the apocalyptic worldview of the writer of revelation, but argues that this is completely different from understanding the revelation (‘apocalypse’) of God in Christ. Although Wright wants to move from the history of Jesus to talk about his status as Christ, Adams argues that his theological comments are actually only comments about the worldviews of the biblical authors (56) and never quite manage to become truly theological statements. Wright describes descriptions of God, not God – despite his claims to the contrary.

Here, Adams comes to his main criticism: Wright’s method is naturalist because “the knowledge of God is treated no differently than the knowledge of reality external to the knower in general” (74-5). Rather than allowing God – as a unique object of knowledge – to shape the way he is known, Adams sees Wright as imposing an inappropriate way of knowing onto God. Because of the importance of ‘contact’ to Wright’s own account of knowledge, Adams goes on to argue that this is actually self-contradictory: Wright has previously argued that we come to know things through contact with external reality, so surely such a different reality should be known differently?

Theology as a reflection on God and his creatures is eternal, but some of the questions we ask and our discourse about God are rooted in our experiences, cultural beliefs and worldview. Therefore our understanding of theology is also rooted in our culture. The author, Professor Samuel Kunhiyop, (the current ECWA General Secretary and Professor of Ethic at Bingham University, Karu, Nigeria) fully aware of this, produced African Christian Theology sequel to his African Christian Ethics. In this book, Kunhiyop discusses a myriad of themes and topics in African Christian Theology. This book, therefore, constitutes an excellent introduction to systematic theology in relation to the traditional African worldview. The book can be referred to as “African Systematic Theology”. The book is written to address questions that arise from an African context. It helps readers to discover how theology affects our minds, our hearts and our lives. It is a sort of contextual theology. If Christian theology will be relevant to the occasion of any local people, it must take in to consideration the context in which theology will be done, particularly their cultural worldview (this is Ngugi Moshete’s thesis).

Professor Samuel Waje Kunhiyop exemplified this fact in the book. He sets out his method from the outset of the book “though I write as one who is convinced that Christianity based on biblical revelation stands above other religions, but my own understanding of Christianity in African context is that it should take African situation seriously while seeking to be true and explicit teachings of the scripture.” The author maintains that “Scripture is always interpreted within a context; Africa is the context in which I seek the true meaning of Scripture” (Samuel Waje Kunhiyop, pxiii). With this view, the author explores traditional African worldview about God and how he reveals himself. The book, though simplified and abridged (as said by the author), is divided into ten chapters with one appendix. Each chapter covers the major themes of systematic theology in a lucid manner. That is, the book seeks to articulate theologies in a way that ordinary Christian can understand. To ensure that the book actualizes its purpose, the author sets out some important hints on how to get the most of the book. In this thematic analysis in each chapter of the goal the author sets to achieve is to “articulate a theology that originates from an authentic search for the meaning of Scripture in order to apply it to contemporary African life” (p.xiii).