Book Reviews

Review of And Was Made Man: Mind, Metaphysics, and Incarnation by Robin Le Poidevin
Book Reviews , Featured , Philosophy , Theology / February 23, 2024

Poidevin, Robin Le. And Was Made Man: Mind, Metaphysics, and Incarnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023, 256, $84.00, hardcover. And Was Made Man by Robin Le Poidevin is an original, creative, and daring reflective proposal on the metaphysics of the incarnation. Poidevin is emeritus philosopher of philosophy at the University of Leeds. He is well-known for his work in the metaphysics of time having authored several books and numerous essays. Though he is an agnostic, Poidevin is interested in the philosophical issues raised by the incarnation and active in publishing in the various areas of the philosophy of religion. The book is divided into two main parts: (1) models of the incarnation and (2) various problems or challenges to the incarnation. He covers four broad models. First, on the relational compositional model the Son as joined together with a concrete human nature, thus the Son becomes a part of (though not identical to) a divine-human composite. Second, on the transformational compositional the Son, by acquiring a concrete human nature, is transformed into a divine-human composite. Third, on the divided mind model, which may or may not be “compositional,” the Son has two steams of consciousness in the single person. Finally,…

Review of Superheroes Can’t Save You: Epic Examples of Historic Heresies by Todd Miles

Miles, Todd. Superheroes Can’t Save You: Epic Examples of Historic Heresies. Nashville: B&H 2019. pp. 208, $20 paperback. Todd L. Miles is professor of Theology and Director of the Master of Theology program at Western Seminary in Portland, OR. We are easily enamored with escaping our normal everyday lives to enjoy watching our favorite superhero destroy the evil villain, bring justice to the oppressors, and save the day. Whether you are a Marvel or DC fanatic, most people cannot resist seeing the newest superhero movie that seems to drop every few months. The connection and love we have with superheroes seem to highlight a deeper truth that as humans, we all desire someone who is more powerful and stronger than us to come and save us from the difficulties and sufferings in our lives. All superheroes are attempts to create a “savior-like figure” who can rescue us from our depravity using their super-human powers. Yet as Todd Miles demonstrates in his book, Superheroes Can’t Save You, every superhero that we have created is an inadequate picture of the true hero of the story of reality: Jesus Christ. Superheroes Can’t Save You attempts to show how each one of our coveted…

Review of Doing Asian American Theology: A Contextual Framework for Faith and Practice by Daniel D. Lee

Lee, Daniel D. Doing Asian American Theology: A Contextual Framework for Faith and Practice. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2022, pp. 216, $24.00, paperback. Daniel D. Lee is the Associate Professor of Theology and Asian American Studies, and also the academic dean for the Center for Asian American Theology and Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Lee’s newest work, Doing Asian American Theology, presents his Asian American Quadrilateral (AAQ) as a heuristic tool to empower Asian Americans to live out Christian theology from their own contextuality/embodiment (p. 2). The elements of his AAQ are as follows: the first element is Asian heritage, which includes various inheritances from all across Asia, from the cultural to the religious (p. 68); the second element is the migration experience (p. 70); the third element is American culture, which includes American colonial histories in the Asian continent (p. 71); and the fourth and final element is racialization or, in other words, “the process of racial identity formation, navigating the Black/White binary, and the particular forms of discrimination the Asian Americans face as people of color” (p. 72). Lee’s AAQ constitutes the main thrust of the nine chapters in his book where he tries…

Review of You Need a Better Gospel: Reclaiming the Good New of Participation with Christ by Klyne R. Snodgrass
Book Reviews , New Testament / October 27, 2023

Snodgrass, Klyne R. You Need a Better Gospel: Reclaiming the Good News of Participation with Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022, pp. 174, $24, paperback.   The author is professor emeritus of New Testament studies at North Park Theological Seminary. He posits two chief problems facing ministers in today’s America: “our society has little interest in a gospel, and the church has failed miserably to do justice to its own message” (p. 2). Snodgrass maintains that the church desperately needs to recover its own gospel, what he calls “a better gospel,” a gospel better than simply a ticket to heaven when you die. Here is the author’s short explanation of the gospel: God is for us and loves us, and God intends to have a people, a “family.” Even when people ignore God, go their own way, and do what is wrong, God will still have a people. God grieves over the world, filled as it is with suffering, sin, and evil. That God is for us is demonstrated—revealed—powerfully through Jesus, the promised Deliverer. In Jesus, God identified with human suffering and evil, confronted sin, demonstrated how humans should live, in his own being took on our sin and…

Review of The Irreducibility of the Human Person: A Catholic Synthesis by Mark K. Spencer
Book Reviews , Philosophy , Theology / October 20, 2023

Spencer, Mark K. The Irreducibility of the Human Person: A Catholic Synthesis. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022. 448 pages. $34.95. The Irreducibility of the Human Person: A Catholic Synthesis is a rich philosophical exploration of the foundations for a theological anthropology. Mark K. Spencer covers tremendous ground that provides a unique contribution to the literature in the philosophy of theological anthropology—closely aligned with theological anthropology proper. Spencer’s treatment of the human person is less like a well-prepared steak and more like a buffet, but a themed buffet where the master chef has carefully chosen all the dishes, arranged them, and done so in a way that each mutually inform one another providing the palette with a variety of related dishes that make one both full and artfully satisfied. Let me explain what I mean by this by highlighting some of the features of The Irreducibility of the Human Person. Spencer contributes a novel reflection on the human person, but unlike most treatments that are largely coming from this or that tradition he blends the worlds of philosophical discourse in a harmonious way. It is analytic in that it prizes clarity, logical rigor, conceptual clarification, and drawing from…

Review of From Paradise to Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch, 4th Edition by T. Desmond Alexander

Desmond Alexander. From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch, 4th ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022, pp. xxv + 422, $29.99. There are certain volumes which have imprinted themselves as being par excellence textbook material with respect to faculty and students alike. T. Desmond Alexander’s From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch, now in its fourth (!) edition, is one such work. Initially published over twenty five years ago (Baker, 1995) From Paradise to the Promised Land is sui generis with respect to its pedagogical sensitivity and academic integrity. In this carefully revised, expanded, and updated fourth edition, Alexander does not disappoint in continuing to well-serve his audience through introducing the major themes of the first five books of the Bible alongside substantial, erudite engagement with modern critical approaches to the composition of the Pentateuch, effectively guiding readers through this stimulating, not insignificant portion of Scripture (see the back cover). According to the author, “the present volume seeks to (1) focus on the main themes of the Pentateuch, viewed as a unified literary work, and (2) guide the reader through the maze of modern approaches to the study of the Pentateuch” (p….

Review of Echoes of Exodus: Tracing a Biblical Motif by Bryan D. Estelle

Estelle, Bryan D. Echoes of Exodus: Tracing a Biblical Motif. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2018, pp. 351, $42, paperback. Bryan D. Estelle is professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary, California, where he has taught since 2000. Estelle received his doctorate from The Catholic University of America. He is the author of numerous essays, articles, and books, including Salvation through Judgement and Mercy: The Gospel According to Jonah. Bryan Estelle takes his readers on a tour de force of one of the Bible’s most significant themes, moving from Creation to the world-to-come in a sweeping survey of texts. On the surface, his book reflects a straight-forward yet comprehensive tracing of the biblical motif of exodus. In reality, Estelle has created a case study rich in methodological insight and hermeneutical acumen. In Chapter 1 he introduces the linguistic and philosophical backgrounds of intertextuality. He follows this discussion by stating his hermeneutical presuppositions and outlining his method for determining an allusion, including carefully clarifying what he means by typology. In chapter 2 Estelle identifies the cosmic-mountain ideology of the ancient Near East in the Creation account and demonstrates the similarities between creational realities and the Tabernacle. Estelle is clear that both…

Review of Psalms of the Faithful: Luther’s Early Reading of the Psalter in Canonical Context by Brian T. German

German, Brian T. Psalms of the Faithful: Luther’s Early Reading of the Psalter in Canonical Context. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017, pp. 232, $24.99, paperback. In this work, Brian German presents a fresh perspective on the function of the faithful synagogue as an interpretive category within the Dictata super Psalterium, Martin Luther’s first lecture series through the Psalms in the years 1513-1515.  According to German, professor of theology at Concordia University Wisconsin and director of the Concordia Bible Institute, part of the importance of the Dictata for understanding the early Luther is the way in which it furnishes us with an almost daily account of his struggle to make sense of each passage unfolding before him.  This struggle, German points out, provides a window, not only into the interpretive development of the young Doctor, but into the specific theological principles adopted, abandoned, or merely altered throughout his journey.  As he says, “Luther, well informed of the sacred tradition but not yet sure how best to use it, set out on a journey through the Psalter to see where it would take him” (p. 10). German, an able guide throughout, begins by situating his discussion within the complex history of interpretation…

Review of Conquered Conquerors: Love and War in the Song of Songs by Danilo Verde
Book Reviews , Old Testament / March 22, 2023

Verde, Danilo. Conquered Conquerors: Love and War in the Song of Songs. Atlanta: SBL, 2020, pp. 271, $40, paperback. Danilo Verde is a postdoctoral associate with the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies in KU Leuven, Belgium, in addition to being a member of the Biblical Studies research group at the same university. In this revised edition of his dissertation that advances the frontiers of scholarship in Biblical Metaphor Studies, Verde provides readers with an insight into the military metaphors, similes and scenarios undergirding the Song of Songs’ depiction of human love, for which no extensive research using cognitive linguistics exists. Conceptual metaphor theory and blending theory were mainly employed by Verde to demonstrate that the root metaphor LOVE IS WAR undergirds the Song’s conceptualization of both the Song’s lovers and their love, marking the Song as both conceptually unitary and thematically coherent, despite its seeming fragmentary composition. In organizing his argument, Verde adduces four surface metaphors – WOMAN IS FORTIFIED CITY (pp. 45–102), MAN IS CONQUEROR (pp. 103–132), WOMAN IS CONQUEROR (pp. 133–168), and LOVE IS STRIFE (pp. 169–202) – which he claims serve not only to sustain the aforementioned root metaphor throughout…

Review of Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers by Michael J. Hollerich
Book Reviews , Church History / March 1, 2023

Hollerich, Michael J. Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2021, pp. 316, $95.00, hardback. Recent trends in early Christian studies have turned their attention toward questions of textuality: what does it mean to read a text, what choices informed an author’s inclusion or omission of details, and how has a text been received among its readers? Moreover, what does it mean to be a reader? These concerns rise to the surface rather quickly when engaging with Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History. In Making Christian History, Michael Hollerich (Professor of Theology, University of St. Thomas) provides students of early Christian studies, patristics, and Christian historiography with a necessary ground-clearing of all things Ecclesiastical History—and, in doing so, makes a welcome contribution to the field writ large. To be clear, Hollerich does not aim to provide commentary on Eusebius’s work itself; instead, Hollerich begins with the work’s composition and analyzes the ways it has been both received and reappropriated since. In other words, Hollerich’s interest lies primarily in the social and cultural impacts Eusebius’s work had rather than trying to dissect the contents within the work itself. This caveat noted, Hollerich provides a helpful introduction…