Deus Misereatur

Jesus Is Lord, Caesar Is Not: Evaluating Empire in New Testament Studies by Scot McKnight My rating: 3 of 5 stars Scot McKnight and Joseph Modica have pulled together New Testament Scholars to examine a trend flowing through New Testament studies these days: (1) Empire criticism and (2) postcolonial critique. The first chapter surveys Roman imperial ideology and the development of the imperial cult. Nystrom shows that early on, the imperial cult was loose and not as "in-your-face" as has sometimes been presented, because it was often a footnote of the normal religious fabric in the Empire. The following chapters, written respectively by Diehl, Willitts, Pinter, Skinner, Strait, Bird, Cohick, Bevere and Sheets, take on specific New Testament writings showing how empire criticism and postcolonial critique view the Scriptures. They each then show the holes and cracks in these two streams of hermeneutics. To summarize the end result of these short articles, McKnight and Modica...

Praying with the Church: Following Jesus Daily, Hourly, Today by Scot McKnight My rating: 3 of 5 stars Prayer. Sounds like a harmless enough word. People pray in all sorts of ways, whether in gasps of ejaculated cries for help in a crisis, or in planned "quiet time" moments, or in coordinated settings of congregational worship. Yet, in my years of being a pastor, I find that probably most Christians struggle with how to pray, how to generate enough energy, tenacity and creativity to sustain a "prayer life". In my experience part of the problem comes with the notion that all of my prayers need to be of my own crafting. I, personally, have only so much in the area of creative juices, and then I run dry. One remedial question to ask is, do I have to always concoct my own prayers for them to be real? Scot McKnight, professor of New Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, resoundingly says "No!" in his 176 page paperback titled, "Praying wi...

The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited by Scot McKnight My rating: 3 of 5 stars I will be doing a sermon series soon titled "What Is the Gospel". I had assumed "The Gospel" for years, and have heard others whittle it down to one or three or four points. But some time back I began to re-think what the Scripture, and Jesus, mean by "The Gospel". So I was delighted to pick up Scot McKnight's 184 page hardback and dive into it. The strengths of the book are numerous. I think he builds a good case for what the Gospel actually is: the resolution of the story of Israel in Jesus, and thus the the story of God's world rescue operation - a world rescue operation that has Jesus, the Messiah of Israel and true Lord of the world, at its center. McKnight takes slow steps to carefully unfold each part, building brick-by-brick, until he comes to the end result. Whether the reader will be totally satisfied with his conclusion or not, he will hav...