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THE
PRINCETON
SEMINARY
BULLETIN
VOLUME XIX NUMBER 3 NEW SERIES 1998
Commencement 1998
And, Then, There’s Jesus THOMAS W. GILLESPIE
Crossing Over, Pressing On A. K. M. ADAM
Wicam Lecture
The Gift of Consciousness ANN BELFORD ULANOV
Thompson Lecture
Reflections on Worship in the Gospel of John MARIANNE MEYE THOMPSON
Faith and Identity in Nisei Self-Narratives PETER YUICHI CLARK
Book Reviews
Index Vol. XIX (1998)
PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
Thomas W. Gillespie, President
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Robert M. Adams, Chair
Ralph M. Wyman, Vice
Louise Upchurch Lawson, Secretary
Clarence B. Ammons
Justin M. Johnson
Fred R. Anderson
Thomas R. Johnson
M. Craig Barnes
Curtis A. Jones
Robert W. Bohl
Todd B. Jones
William G. Carter
Johannes R. Krahmer
Warren D. Chinn
Henry Luce III
Stewart B. Clifford
David M. Mace
Gary O. Dennis
Kari Turner McClellan
John H. Donelik
Julie E. Neraas
Peter E. B. Erdman
Young Pai
Thomas A. Erickson
Earl F. Palmer
Rosemary Hall Evans
Thomas J. Rosser
Mary Lee Fitzgerald
Arthur F. Sueltz
JohnT. Galloway, Jr.
Thomas K. Tewell
Francisco O. Garcia-Treto
Virginia J. Thornburgh
C. Thomas Hilton
Jay Vawter
David H. Hughes
George B. Wirth
Jane G. Irwin
Jane C. Wright
F. Martin Johnson
TRUSTEES EMERITI /AE
Frederick E. Christian
William H. Scheide
Sarah B. Gambrell
Laird H. Simons, Jr.
Margaret W. Harmon
John M. Templeton
Bryant M. Kirkland
William P. Thompson
Raymond I. Lindquist
Samuel G. Warr
George T. Piercy
David B. Watermulder
THE
PRINCETON
SEMINARY
BULLETIN
VOLUME XIX NUMBER 3
NEW SERIES 1998
James F. Kay, EDITOR
Daniel L. Migliore, BOOK REVIEW EDITOR
Rolf A. Jacobson, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
CONTENTS
Commencement, 1998
And, Then, There’s Jesus
Thomas W. Gillespie
233
Crossing Over, Pressing On
A. K. M. Adam
236
Wicam Lecture
The Gift of Consciousness
Ann Bel ford Ulanov
242
Thompson Lecture
Reflections on Worship in the Gospel
of John
Marianne Meye Thotnpson
259
Faith and Identity in Nisei Self-Narratives
Peter Yuichi Clark
279
Book Reviews
By the Renewing of Your Minds:
The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine,
by Ellen T. Charry
William S. Babcock
2 94
Essays in Postfoundationalist Theology,
by J. Wentzel van Huyssteen
Roger Trigg
295
First and Second Thessalonians,
by Beverly Roberts Gaventa
Calvin J. Roetzel
297
For Our Salvation, by Geoffrey Wainwright
Leanne Van Dyk
2 99
ii THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
The Parables of Jesus: Recovering the Art of Listening,
by Richard Q. Ford Donald Capps
An Introduction to Pastoral Care, by Charles V. Gerkin James N. Lapsley
Victims and Sinners:
Spiritual Roots of Addiction and Recovery,
by Linda A. Mercadante Elizabeth Brishcar
Word without End: The Old Testament as Abiding
Theological Witness, by Christopher R. Seitz Ralph IV. Klein
The Book that James Wrote, by Earl F. Palmer Alyce M. McKenzie
Crisis in the Church: The Plight of Theological
Education, by John H. Leith James E. Loder
Clergy Killers: Guidance for Pastors and Congregations
under Attack, by G. Lloyd Rediger David W. Augsburger
Sharing the Word:
Preaching in the Roundtable Church,
by Lucy Atkinson Rose David J. Lose
Teaming Up: Shared Leadership in Youth Ministry, by
Ginny Ward Holderness and Robert S. Hay Kenda Creasy Dean
The Christian Coalition: Dreams of Restoration,
Demands for Recognition, by Justin Watson Peggy L. Shriver
The Interim Pastor’s Manual, rev. ed. by Alan G. Gripe Ronald T. Allin
Religion, Society, and Psychoanalysis:
Readings in Contemporary Theory,
ed. Janet Liebman Jacobs and Donald Capps Leland E. Elhard
Showing How: The Act of Teaching, by Gabriel Moran Freda A. Gardner
Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham,
by Billy Graham Donald Macleod
300
3°3
3°5
306
308
3°9
312
3J3
3l6
3i7
V9
321
322
324
Jumping Skyward, by Stan Tate
William 0. Harris
325
CONTENTS
iii
Reminiscences of an Octogenarian,
by Bruce Manning Metzger James I. Cook 326
Index Vol. XIX (1998) 329
The Princeton Seminary Bulletin is published three times annually by Princeton
Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.
Each issue is mailed free of charge to all alumni/ae and, by agreement, to various insti-
tutions. Back issues are not available.
All correspondence should be addressed to James F. Kay, Editor, The Princeton Seminary
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The Bulletin publishes lectures and sermons by Princeton Seminary faculty and adminis-
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unsolicited material.
And, Then,
There’s Jesus
by Thomas W. Gillespie
Farewell Remarks to the Class of 1998 by the President
of the Seminary
IT WAS THE SUMMER of 1996. James Andrews had just retired from his
position as Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, the chief administrative
office of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and we were having lunch
together at the Springdale Golf Club across College Road from the Seminary.
Our conversation turned naturally to the issues that threaten to divide our
denomination, as well as to the continuing membership decline that threatens
to extinguish it. “Jim,” I asked at one point, “do you see any hope for this old
church of ours?” His answer was memorable. “No,” he said flatly. But, with a
twinkle in his eye, he added, “And, then, there’s Jesus.”
That is the message of assurance I pass on to you this morning upon your
graduation from Princeton Theological Seminary. Those of you who will
now enter into or return to the practice of ministry7 will serve an institution
that has been marginalized in American society.
“And, then, there’s Jesus.”
Sociologists of religion tell us that the American churches have entered into
a time of cultural exile.
“And, then, there’s Jesus.”
Pundits predict that many mainline churches will split under the pressures
of our irresolvable “culture wars.”
“And, then, there’s Jesus.”
Those of you who will now prepare for or enter into teaching careers will
do so in an intellectual ethos where there is no room for “truth with a big T
and in the singular,” as William James put it, and where there is only deep
suspicion of all meta-narratives such as Christians are compelled by the gospel
to tell.
“And, then, there’s Jesus.”
This proviso, which qualifies the powerful cultural currents that carry the
Christian Church now in one direction and then in another, is more than an
expression of ungrounded piety. It is a reminder that we confess and trust One
who transcends the categories imposed upon him by the Jesus Seminar. No
Jewish version of a wandering Cynic philosopher could ever trump the
234
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
principalities and powers of this world. Only the risen Jesus Christ, the One
who in his exaltation has been given the Name that is above every name, can
and does do that. It was to the Lord of history that Jim Andrews appealed
when he qualified his hopelessness about the future of our church by adding,
“And, then, there’s Jesus.”
The reality to which this proviso attests is expressed in such secular
proverbs as: “Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans,”
or “History is made behind our backs.” A case in point is the fall of the Berlin
Wall on November 9, 1989. Who among us believed that the Iron Curtain
would come down in our lifetime or that the Soviet Union would be
dissolved? The point is that there are forces and powers at work in human
history that override not only our individual hopes and dreams but our
cultural trends and political achievements as well. But “in, with, and under”
these forces and powers, to borrow Luther’s prepositions, is the working of
the living God towards those ends that we see revealed in Jesus Christ.
The name given in scripture to this dynamic presence of God among us is
the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God or the Spirit of Christ. It is this Spirit who
enlivens the church, illumines the church, and empowers the church. And
what is true of the church as a whole is equally true of its ministers.
Let me remind those of you who will soon be ordained that a seminary can
qualify you academically for ministry and the church can authorize you for
ministry, but only the Spirit of God can empower you in ministry.
When ministers and elders lay their hands upon you in the prayer of
ordination, that is not an act whereby those who have authority and power
transfer some of it to you. The laying on of hands is a symbolic act, as Calvin
put it, whereby the church receives the gift God gives in the person of the
ordinand. And in that act, the church prays that God will empower this new
minister with grace sufficient for the demands of the ministry now under-
taken. For this reason, Calvin dares to call ordination a sacrament, meaning an
outward promise of an inward grace.
Luke’s second volume in the New Testament provides canonical approval
of this understanding. We call it “The Acts of the Apostles,” but a more
appropriate title would be “The Acts of the Spirit through the Apostles.”
Recall how Luke begins the sequel to his Gospel: “In the first book, O
Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach. . .” (Acts
1:1). My inference is that what “Jesus began to do and teach” in the days of his
earthly ministry, he now continues to do by the presence and power of his
Spirit in and through the church. It is that presence and power, I believe,
which gives credence to Jim Andrews’ proviso, “And, then, there’s Jesus.”
235
AND, THEN, THERE'S JESUS
This dependence upon and confidence in God’s Spirit characterizes the
servants of God in both Testaments. Elisha pleads with Elijah that he be
granted a double portion of the Spirit that empowered his master, in order to
take up the mantel of prophetic ministry (2 Kings 2:9). Elisha was no dummy.
He recognized that the task of speaking for God required more, infinitely
more, than he himself had to offer.
That was a lesson the apostles learned also. And out of that experience and
wisdom came this assurance as Paul passed his mantle to Timothy, “God did
not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control”
(2 Tim. 1:7). The question of whether the reference here is to the human or to
the Holy Spirit is moot. It is the Holy Spirit who empowers the human spirit.
It is the Holy Spirit who sheds God’s love abroad in our hearts and thus
enables us to love (Rom. 5.5). And it is the Holy Spirit who exercises sound
judgment and discipline in relating to us and thus teaches us self-control.
This then is the assurance I give to you, the Class of 1998, as you go forth
now from this chapel to take up the work to which God has called you. No
matter what happens in the coming days and years, whether “behind your
back” or “while you are making other plans,” always remember this marvel-
ous proviso, “And, then, there’s Jesus.”
A. K. M. Adam , Assistant Professor of
New Testament at Princeton Theological
Seminary, preached this sermon at the
Seminaiy's Baccalaureate Service, held at
Nassau Presbyterian Church on May 17,
i998.
When the people set out from their tents to cross over the Jordan, the priests
bearing the ark of the covenant were in front of the people. Now the Jordan
overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest. So when those who bore the
ark had come to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped
in the edge of the water, the waters flowing fro??/ above stood still, rising up in a
single heap far off at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, while those flowing
toward the sea of the Arabah , the Dead Sea, weir wholly cut off. Then the people
crossed over opposite Jericho. While all Israel were crossing over on dry ground, the
priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood on diy ground in the
middle of the Jordan, until the entire nation finished crossing over the Jordan.
When the entire nation had finished crossing over the Jordan, the LORD said to
Joshua: “ Select twelve men from the people, one from each tribe, and command
them, ‘ Take twelve stones from here out of the middle of the Jordan, from the place
where the priests' feet stood, cany them over with you, and lay them down in the
place where you camp tonight. ' ” Then Joshua summoned the twelve men from the
Israelites, whom he had appointed, one from each tribe. Joshua said to them, uPass
on before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of
you take up a stone on his shoulder, one for each of the tribes of the Israelites, so that
this may be a sigi among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘ What do
those stones mean to you?' then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan
were cut off in front of the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed over
the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the
Isi'aelites a memorial forever. " (Joshua 3:14-4:7)
From what I’ve heard, some mornings you feel as though it has taken forty
long years to arrive at this meeting-place. Some of you will have
calculated how many quizzes, how many exams, how many papers, how many
pages of readings you have waded through. You may be looking back on long
wearisome walks through scorching heat and heavy snow, wide rivers of rainy
days flowing passed, mornings when you’ve woken up, when you could only
feel what a long, hard forty-year forced march it’s been— especially since you
know, you know in your heart and your bones and your flesh, that you’ve
practically reached your goal. You can see some folks up ahead who are
already scrambling up the riverbank, and you can just about tell that Jordan
Crossing Over,
Pressing On
by A. K. M. Adam
CROSSING OVER, PRESSING ON
237
River good-bye; get away, Jordan River, you’re climbing up into Canaan land,
into the Land of Promise, and make that a double shot of milk and honey. It’s
been three years, but your feet tell you that you started a lifetime ago. It’s even
been less than three years, but in just a matter of hours President Gillespie will
hand you a scroll that says, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into
the joy of your Lord.” Now the wilderness is behind you; the waters of the
Jordan are lapping at the feet of those Ark-carrying priests. As soon as Joshua
stops talking, we can collect our degrees, let the U-Hauls roll, and begin to
settle in and scope out our first ministry placements. It’s time to get to work.
So go then, my friends, with our blessings. M.Div. seniors, go out and set
your hands to the vocations for which you’ve been preparing these many
months. Th.M. students, go out fortified now with a second portion of
Princeton’s academic endowments. Ph.D. students, I don’t need to urge you
to get out— you’re already halfway through the door. Doctors of Ministry,
Masters of Arts in Christian Education, all our degree recipients, go out from
here in the power of the Spirit to spread the clear light of the truth that we’re
all pursuing through the confusions and gloom of a heedless world. Col-
leagues—Vice President Cassell, Dean Nicholson, Professor Douglass, Pro-
fessor Willis, Dr. Irvine, and especially my friends Dr. Whitaker and Dr.
Edwards— go from here to relish the rest promised to all those who long have
toiled in this beautiful vineyard. All, go from here strengthened by everything
we have learned together, encouraged by the love and the respect that hold us
together. You are disciples indeed, who have been trained for the kingdom of
heaven; go out and offer our world things old and things new from the
treasures Princeton Theological Seminary has put at your disposal. It’s time
to travel light, trusting that every good thing you give away will be replen-
ished many times over; it’s time to put those treasures to work on behalf of the
people of God.
I pray that among the treasures you’re carrying with you, gifts that we may
have helped you to understand and appreciate, among all the virtues we
nurtured and refined, among all of these, you know where to find hope.
Believe me — from this day forward, you will have no more precious, more
powerful, and possibly no more fragile treasure. I mean real, theological hope,
not just “optimism” or “positive thinking”; I’m talking about the kind of hope
that sets as its goal the things not seen, the kind of hope that gives us the
strength to wait with patience while we persist in building up God’s people,
while we strive to make a way for God’s way.
Begin your new ministries with the well-schooled insight and lengthy
bibliography, with lively inspiration, strong with the strength that we’ve built
238
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
up over this long wandering together. You know what’s correct doctrine, you
know how to parse, you know all the right counseling moves, and I’ve heard
you preach. Take with you these durable gifts, thanks be to God, but don’t
hang on to them so tightly that your grasp on hope falters, trembles,
equivocates. When the exhilaration of beginning ministry encounters the
intractable forces of turf conflict, institutional habit, and temperamental
colleagues, then too easily the confident trust we started to learn here
stretches and thins and frays.
When theological hope faces the challenge of everyday life, the most
obvious thing for us to do is to ratchet it down to a more realistic level. That’s
the maneuver we learn from friends and advisers who have our best interests
in mind; they warn us that hope is dangerous, because it may dissolve into
fantasy, because our bosses have so often sweet-talked us with a pie in the sky
instead of down-to-earth help and consolation. Hope, twisted and tugged in
every direction, flickers under the stress of a thousand daily demands and
pressures. Hope seems so weak, it looks so empty, that feet-on-the-ground
thinking pressures us to do some concrete planning instead. Now, we have to
plan, it’s responsible and even necessary, but it’s also seductive. Plans can
tempt us to think that we control circumstances, that we have the power to
establish design specifications for our world. Our plans threaten to become
our idols, to which we sacrifice time, money, relationships, our integrity itself,
even our faith. We risk displacing our hope in a misguided exchange for
agendas and timelines.
That’s a bad deal, sisters and brothers; what a sad loss that would be! How
else did you endure those long hours of preparation for Hebrew quizzes? How
else did you survive a year of GMioo? What carried you through CPE?
Through all-nighters and exam periods, through junior orientation and
long-winded baccalaureate addresses, how came you here today if not by
walking in hope?
Hope leads us out through the wilderness. Hope is our pillar of cloud by
day, our pillar of fire by night, whereas our plans are nothing more than a
hand-drawn road map with an uncertain itinerary. Hope draws us beyond
what we know, what we expect, beyond what we can ask or imagine, when
plans tangle us in the snarls of everydayness. Hope brought us out of exile,
through deprivation, beyond oppression, home to grace. Hope fed us with
quail and manna, hope gave us living water from the desert rock, hope
whispered to us that strong topic for our dogmatics paper, hope kept our
study group together in CHioi, hope brought us up to, over, through the
Jordan River right to where we stand this afternoon. Hope kept us close by the
CROSSING OVER, PRESSING ON
239
feet of the priests so we could cross on dry ground, hope picked us up and
dusted us off when some anonymous clown pushed us aside into the mud.
But— when we get out into our lives as ministers, we may not want to trust
God with our hope; we may want a king, like the other nations. Hope can
seem so impractical, and, after all, the congregation just started a five-year
capital campaign for construction of a new education building.
Yet we’re going to need hope, my friends, because once you clamber up
onto the riverbank beside the stones of witness, you are going to encounter
the temptation to trade in your hope for a mere king; you’ll feel that urge once
you get your boxes off the Hertz rent-a-camel and get your books and clothes
unpacked. You’re going to climb up into your new pulpit, or your new lecture
podium, or even into your comfy chair by the window, and when you look out
from that exciting new vantage point you’re going to gaze away to survey the
prospects of exciting new fields for your ministry, and what you’ll see . . .
beyond this little meadow, running along that line of trees ... is another river!
There’s another blamed river in the future, and now that you’re looking, you
can see another river beyond that! We’ve got many rivers ahead of us, and over
the long haul, most of us aren’t going to enjoy more than an occasional respite
between rivers; often we will find that as we get further down the road, the
rivers get colder and swifter and wider.
It feels like it’s just not fair. Why did we spend those years in the wilderness
if it wasn’t to come to fair plains, fruited orchards, sunshine, and relaxation?
We just crossed the Jordan to come into what we’ve been promised. We
stayed fast to the path when we were tripped up. We held fast to the promises
when our brothers and sisters told us we didn’t belong. We kept pressing on
when the leaders of the nations attacked us. We stuck with our calling when it
seemed like the waters were cheating around the feet of the priests, just to give
us a chill. We spent hard years pressing on for the upward call, and when
we’ve finally made some progress, reached a landmark, a turning point, we see
more wandering, more rivers, more of the same and not an end after all.
This is a good time to remember your years in seminary which, by the time
you’ve crossed a few more rivers, will probably look in retrospect like a May
picnic catered by Amy Ehlin and her wonderful Aramark team, the cucumbers
and melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic (well, cucumbers and melons
anyway!). In retrospect, you may grumble, “Why did you call us to this
ministry, when we could have stayed and had a few more bowls of soup, eaten
a few more doughnuts, written a few more term papers with our friends in the
oh study group back in seminary?”
I have no word from the Lord for moments such as this, but I venture to
240
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
give my opinion as one who, by the Lord’s mercy, may be trustworthy. The
reason we have to keep going out, the reason we always have one more river to
cross, is that the good things we have built up together here are not a shrine to
be venerated in immobile adoration, but are more like strong, sturdy tools to
be used on behalf of a world that is still too much caught up in idle
speculation, in self-gratifying indulgence, in individualistic rights, in license
and exploitation, at the expense of earnest, hardworking folks who— just as we
climb up on the riverbank— are themselves being swept up in the turbulent
flow of the surging river. We have been built together into a house of hope, a
house not built with human hands. We have been built together into a house
whose foundation rests not in your first ministry call or your fourth or fifth,
not in the green valleys of high-steeple congregations nor in the gloom of a
squalid soup-kitchen (though soup kitchens are liable to be closer than some
high steeples); we have been built together into this house of hope to shelter
and protect one another and our neighbors as well, and the foundation of this
house rests by the side of an altogether different river, fed by the fountain of
the water of life. This river of life is for nourishing and healing, not for
crossing; its streams make glad the city of God, and they water our house of
hope, where we behold the Lamb, our Lord. That river and that house are
beyond the horizon for us now; we cannot see them yet, except by exercising
the kind of hope that we learn from living faithfully with one another.
And here I offer you my understanding of the secret rationale for seminary
life: for the past three years we have been teaching you not simply, not even
mostly , the names, dates, sources, terms, and techniques that mark you as a
credentialed practitioner of Christian ministry. What seminary life is about is
learning a way to live every day, every challenge, every river crossing and
every pressing-on for the upward call, in the enveloping presence of the Lord
our God. That’s something we can’t teach you one by one, on your own —
we’re not sending 210 Lone Rangers out there — but we teach you together , so
that by now you know that we all are part of one another’s hope: the
classmates and teachers that you liked, as well as the classmates and teachers
who frustrated and annoyed you. We are part of your hope (and you a part of
ours), and in God’s distinctively wry providential wisdom, some of us whom
you are relieved to escape today may turn out to have spoken a word that’ll be
of profound help at some future, unexpected moment. We are sharers in a
common hope, and partners in the obligation to bring one another across
every river as best we can. God has not brought us this far to leave us; and God
has not brought us this far together to permit us to go our separate ways. We
will never let you go — and we’re counting on you to hold on to us as well.
CROSSING OVER, PRESSING ON
241
Come along, then, go out from here; but do not leave us behind. We will be
with you in your study and in your social work; we will be with you at
reunions, when you come back to tell us what we’ve meant to you, and when
we remind you that you mean a lot to us; above all, in the hope by which we
orient all our lives, in the hope that sustains us, waking and sleeping, in the
hope that leads us beyond what we can ask or imagine, we will be with you
under the tree of life, built into a house of hope, beside the river of the water
of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. I’ll
look for you there.
But for now,
Get away, Jordan— we’ve got work to do on the other side.
Get away, Jordan— we’re pressing on to the upward call of God in Christ
Jesus.
Get away, oh my Jordan— we’ve got to cross over to see our Lord.
The Gift of
Consciousness
by Ann Belford Ulanov
Ann Belford Ulanov, the Christiane Brooks
Johnson Professor of Psychiatry and Reli-
gion, Union Theological Seminary, New
York, delivered the Women in Church and
Ministry Lecture at Princeton Theological
Seminary on March 3, 1998, in the Audi-
torium of the Mackay Campus Center.
I. Consciousness
E DO NOT need psychoanalysis (depth psychology) to convince us of the
necessity and value of consciousness. It is a gift we soon see in our
newborn children — a spark, a scintilla, a waking up to the world that allows us
to inhabit the world with our own creations through introjection and projec-
tion, through our receptions of and responses to what is given us. We see this
spark with excitement when our baby first recognizes us, when a student
suddenly gets a Greek verb structure, when our scientists crack a problem in
space. In New York City we all yelled out to each other, stranger to stranger,
on the street that day when we first put a man on the moon: “We did it! We
sent a man to the moon!” We know right away if that spark dwells in another
person, or fails to. One of our children would say when very young, “There’s
no one home inside him,” or, “Someone is home in him; he is busy inside.” In
the sudden recent death of a close friend, his three-year-old grandson said at
the funeral, which in the Greek Orthodox tradition is with an open casket,
“He is there but not in.”
Such language reminds us of the soul, but consciousness is not the soul; and
they cannot, I believe, be equated, thank God. For if our soul were limited to
our little blip of consciousness, that blinks off and on and frequently gets
invaded by compulsions and obsessions, or blotted out by panic and lethargia,
we would all be in a very bad state! Soul is bigger, wider, deeper than
consciousness and may include conscious consent, indeed, requires it for a
steady spiritual life, but cannot be reduced to it. Soul, as the thirteenth-
century mystic Hadewijch says, is the abyss where God meets us.1 Soul, I
would say, is the unlockable door in us through which God can barge in at any
moment, putting a paw on us, claiming us, quieting us, summoning us. Psyche
includes those conscious and unconscious processes than enable or disable us
Hadewijch. The Complete Works, trans. Columba Hart (New York: Paulist, 1980), 86.
THE GIFT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
243
to be persons in touch with ourselves, with others, with God. Soul is our
willingness to be a person in touch with others, our selves, and with God.2 * 4
Consciousness develops not only spontaneously when basic needs are
met— for food, shelter, rest, cleanliness, and exercise — but also and princi-
pally from someone else holding us, handling us in our bodies, and presenting
to us bits and pieces of the world.? We get an ego — the center of conscious-
ness—by someone else lending us theirs. To gain this precious sense of I-ness,
we need an other on whom to depend. We need support and response and
presence to become conscious. We depend on someone to evoke our self in
order to gain a self. That someone is often a woman, and always includes
women, and a womanly part of men. This puts the feminine mode of being
both at the start and finish of life and at the heart of the gift of consciousness.
All schools of psychoanalysis chart the growth of consciousness and the
dependence on which it rests. Indeed, no matter which school of depth
psychology we consult, they all reach further and further back in their theories
to discover the origin of our being at all, the ontological premises of becoming
a person. Here we find the familiar developmental stages of Margaret Mahler
of symbiosis, separation, rapprochement, or those of Melanie Klein of the
paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions which round out or fatten up the
traditional oral, anal, phallic, and genital stages of Freud and deepen the
psychosocial stages of Erikson’s trust, autonomy, industry, identity, generatdv-
ity, and so on. In the last decades, analysts even use religious language, words
such as sacred, prayer, faith, gratitude, and mystery, but in setting forth their
theories (with the exception of Freud and Jung), they almost always deny the
referent.
Regardless of which theory we follow, consciousness is recognized as
supported and promoted by some mysterious force including instinctual body
energy, which we call the unconscious. We recognise this energy in our
animal friends. Jung calls animals the true servants of God because they do
God’s will; they follow it guided by their instinct.-? We who have instinct also
have this mysterious consciousness which allows us to choose against instinct,
even to choose against God, and thus lose our animal eye.
Consciousness figures centrally in human life. We mourn its loss as an
immense catastrophe if our children get trapped in autism, or if poverty and
2 Ann Ulanov and Barry Ulanov, Religion and the Unconscious (Philadelphia: Westminster,
r975). 9!-92-
? D. W. Winnicott, “The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship [ i960],” in Matura-
tional Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Develop?nent
(New York: International Universities Press, 1965), 37-55.
4 C. G.Jung, Dream Analysis ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 37.
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
244
illness blight its imaginative flowering. War reduces us to crude instincts
where we abandon sympathetic consciousness of others in the pursuit of
survival. Pain can knock out consciousness altogether. From scripture, revela-
tion, and the evidence of mystics’ experience, we learn that our small
consciousness, this immense yet fragile gift, seems to figure centrally in our
response to God. We register from all these sources that God summons our
free response, requires our mindful obedience, desires our desire to answer
back, to contribute. We who are given the gift of consciousness are faced with
its Giver asking for the gift back as our free, intentional, glad offering.
Somehow our knowing, our imagining, our answering God’s presence is
cherished by God. The Great Commandment sums up God’s insistence on
desire, telling us how we should love: all-out, lavishly, first God, then self,
then neighbor. One love pours into the next, overflowing, like the great
streams of heaven cascading down upon us. Ethics changes from a duty to an
overflow, pouring out unceasingly from the source of reality itself, running
into our heart, soul, mind and strength, into and over, under and around our
neighbor and from our neighbor to ourselves and back again to God in
abundant life.
Hadewijch’s vision arrests us just here, reaching, all the way from her
thirteenth-century, right into our hearts now at the end of our twentieth. Her
vision displays a tree whose roots begin in heaven, growing downward to
earth. The branches nearest us are faith and hope. An angel says to her, “You
climb this tree from the beginning to the end, all the way to the profound
roots of the incomprehensible God! ”5 In this vision of the spiritual life, which
forms a major part of the love mysticism in the Flemish Beguine tradition, we
climb up to love which is God’s mysterious center. Our soul, which is a
bottomless abyss, forms a passageway to the depths of God, just as God is a
passageway for the liberty of our soul. In the abyss, consumed in the flame of
love, God beholds us, and we God. But only through conquering love — that is
loving God, the first thing first, with the whole heart, mind and strength— can
we be conquered by Love — that is, ushered into living in God. We must
conquer love, Hadewijch says, so Love can conquer us.
Our desire to love God thus wounds us. It dislocates all our other loves,
even our desire for a complete religious life, a finished spiritual journey, a
successful ministry. All these loves burn up, are set aside, dislocated like
Jacob’s hip, when Love that is God conquers us. If we are not so wounded but
go on walking upright on two feet instead of with a limp like the flame of
Jacob, then we do not become flame, we do not give wray to love. “For Love is
5 Hadewijch, Complete Works , xi.
THE GIFT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
245
that burning fire which devours everything.” “Love shows herself unreserv-
edly to the [one] who loves . . . But before Love thus bursts her dikes, and . . .
ravishes [us] out of [ourselves] . . we must be “one spirit and one being with
her and in her . . and “offer her noble service and the life of exile ... in all
obedience.”6
Exile and obedience for Hadewijch mean removing all obstacles in the way7
of loving full-out, aggressively conquering all that stands in the way of putting
the first thing first. From a psychoanalytic point of view, Hadewijch is a
woman who uses all her strength and all her eros; no repression of sex and
aggression here! She actually hears a voice that salutes her as the “strongest of
all warrioresses” the one who “conquered everything and opened the closed
totality . . .” to know “how I am God and man!”2 And her image of how God
comes into us is saturated with erotic intensity: “The two so dwell and
penetrate each other that they abide in fruition, mouth in mouth, heart in
heart, body in body, and soul in soul, both one thing through each other, but
at the same time remain two different selves.”8
The result of Hadewijch’s conquering love and being conquered by Love is
that she lives in the Trinity. She does not become unconscious, but her
consciousness is relocated, given back to its deepest foundation in the
“fruition of love . . . with an equal eye for justice.”9 She says of this new life, “I
have integrated all my diversity, and I have individualized all my wholeness.”10
Thus, she does not become whole in herself, but she lives with her whole
heart, mind, and soul as part of a greater wholeness.
In psychoanalytical language, in this achievement God is no longer only7 a
subjective object— alive and real to us, but marked as our own idiosyncratic
image and not shared in community with scripture and congregation. Nor is
God any longer only an objective object— a figure of tradition and scripture
that we know about but with which we do not feel personal intimacy in lively
(worshiping) connection. God surpasses our categories of subjective and
objective, and descends beneath our categories of immanent and transcen-
dent, to blaze forth as objective subject— living, breathing, close, and yet
beyond all. Hadewijch and those like her inhabit and transform Winnicott’s
transitional play space: living not only from the center of the self, but more,
6 Ibid., 60, 63.
2 Ibid., xxiv.
s Ibid., 66.
9 Ibid., 84.
10 Ibid., 1 13.
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
from the center of reality which Hadewijch inhabits and which inhabits her.
As Hadewijch puts it, “I have stayed to play in the Lord’s palace.”11
We are faced then in religious tradition with paradox. The precious gift of
consciousness, the ego life which the unconscious seems to promote as much
as it interrupts and revises, builds up only to be offered beyond itself, back to
the Giver. Hadewijch’s tree, whose roots grow down from heaven to earth,
meets the other tree pointed out by the serpent in the Eden garden. Adam and
Eve are addressed first by God and then by the serpent, told opposite
things — not to eat of the tree lest you die, and why not eat for you will not die.
Right there, in the moment of choice, consciousness flexes its freedom (what
Tillich calls dizziness and Kierkegaard calls dread). We took the route of the
serpent, choosing the know-it-all-tree, not the tree of life, thus perverting the
serpent’s power to the uses of our ego, instead of using our ego to relate to
that serpent and to develop the wiliness and cunning to do so. As a result, we
are exiled from the tree of life.
We whine about the consequences of this exile, reasoning that God created
us this way, and even created the serpent, so why are we to blame? The fault is
not really ours, so someone else should pay, thus manifesting the Adam in all
of us — that masculinized protesting logic, what Jean-Luc Marion calls the
logic of evil.12 First, we protest our innocence; then, we reason, well if I did do
it, you made me do it. Then, we conclude with revenge against an innocent
bystander because someone must pay for what we have suffered. Adam here
represents in us that process that turns against the other in blaming, that
denies and projects, fingering Eve as the culprit. The Eve in us speaks our
curiosity and active interest that can be beguiled and that needs the cunning of
doves and the wisdom of that very serpent to see and behold, and not be
beguiled. In any case, God answers our whining in person, saying in effect,
“Yes, I did create you this way and I will pay the cost, I will pay the debt, and
evil stops here.” God’s advent in Jesus means God comes personally to take
the blame we avoid. Though innocent, Jesus suffers as if guilty, accepting the
exile of the cross, not protesting but consenting to take on and into himself all
the pettiness, raping, pillaging, mean-spiritedness, the torturing and grudge-
holding, the ignorance and denials that we commit and suffer every day. He
mounts the cross, which in the recent show of Byzantine Art at the Metropoli-
tan Museum in New York City, depicts the serpent again, now as vine,
winding around the tree, now as cross.
In Hadewijch’s vision, the roots of the vine, of the living tree grow down
" Ibid.
12 Jean-Luc Marion, Prolegomines a la Charite (Paris: La Difference, 1986), 17-18.
THE GIFT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
2 47
from heaven, and we climb up into the fathomless love of God. Yet the
serpent so often depicted in primordial symbols and in contemporary people’s
dreams grows up from below. In psychoanalytical work, we climb down to the
source beneath and before the ego, to the unconscious roots of the ego’s
problems and potentialities. If we could look behind the tree above and the
serpent below, we would find the paradox of religious experience: the roots in
heaven and the roots in the depths join. What looks opposite is united. God
the Creator puts the serpent in the garden. The roots of God’s living tree
meet the roots of the serpent’s tree of life. They are all one, beckoning us to
become one, one in heart, mind, soul, and strength, loving all-out, lavishly, as
one people of God, all of us made visible in communion with each other here
in this garden on earth. The story that begins in the garden ends up in the city
where we no longer need separate sacred from profane; we no longer need
special temples (Rev. 2 1:22). God breathes everywhere; all of human conscious-
ness is permeated, saturated, rooted, and blooming in the living God.
II. Fear of the Psyche
With such good news, why do we suffer so and drive each other crazy? We
fear the gift given us and still make the choice for the know-it-all tree instead
of the living one. What is it we fear? I have found within our religious
tradition a tremendous fear of the psyche. Years ago I wrote about it as “The
Christian Fear of the Psyche.”13 Yet I know in my bones, my old bones at this
point having taught and practiced clinically for thirty-one years, that there is
no future for the church without including, consciously including, the psyche.
We fear the flame right there inside us, between us, and among us. Even when
it is offered us!
A contemporary woman dreamed of being smacked hard on the back of her
head and spine, like the blow that wakes up all the energy symbolized as the
Kundalini Serpent rising through the bodily chakras to blossom into
communion with the divine. Then, in the dream, the woman fell down
backwards into a well, hanging upside down by her left foot. Looking down
she saw blooming at the bottom of the well a flaming flower shaped like the
fleur-de-lis. The smack and the falling symbolized to her the tremendous
effort to wake up and get unstuck from a lifelong anxiety and get connected to
life-giving energy. The flaming flower astonished her, stopped her, felt like a
living thing to her, given as a gift, symbolizing the presence of the holy even in
a dark pit of the well, a burgeoning life there in the depths, delicate and
feminine as a flower, yet sturdy and indestructible. To fear the psyche,
13 In Picturing God (Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley, 1986), 5-23.
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
through which such intimations of the transcendent are bequeathed to us
every day, would be as if this dreamer had shunned the gift, refused the flower,
reduced it to fancy interpretation or psychic complex. And did not take it.
We fear the spontaneity, the livingness offered us every day. Somehow, we
worry that if we accept the psyche too as part of the flesh that incarnates God,
it means we are replacing God with the psyche, replacing scripture with
dreams, that revelation has slipped from the roots in heaven to the roots in the
unconscious. Among professional learned Christians a deep suspicion is
leveled against the psyche as purportedly replacing God. I like Jung’s answer
to that accusation, when he said, “I can’t even replace a lost button with my
imagination or ideas. How could I ever replace God?”
I have thought a lot about this fear of the psyche and our defenses against it,
defenses that play out in ignoring the tremendous impact of depth psychology
on the interpretation of scripture, the doing of ethics, the understanding of
doctrine and symbol, let alone the practical work of ministry. It is not easy to
admit we could act out our aggression in a preaching style that bores our
congregations to death, or that hectors our flock to think a certain way and
makes them feel guilty. There is Freud’s death instinct at work! Freud’s own
wry remark calls us up short. He said he never found a large amount of sadism
in his makeup, so he did not have to devote himself to serving humanity. This
certainly puts a new light on our wish to serve others! We indulge a kind of
omnipotence of benevolence, as if somehow, we, not God, had, like Diana of
Ephesus, a multitude of breasts that never ran dry of milk.
The psyche can no better rival God than can politics, or our reason, or our
ethical maxims, or science. The psyche adds a new hermeneutic to the
theological enterprise as also the flesh through which God makes manifest the
mysterious doings of the good news, of love in action, of the blooming tree of
life. We are as vulnerable with the psyche as we are with any other human
enterprise — of taking the part for the whole. Thus, we have had the political
God, the psychological God, the jot-and-tittle God, the God of rules, the
God of formulas, the sexually defined God, the racially defined God, God as
dead, red, black, gay, female, male, psychological force, and revolutionary
activism. But, as Jung says, God never defends himself against our names for
him. '4 God is merciful, always forgiving us taking the part for the whole, our
god-image for the living God. God is ruthless, breaking through those
images, scattering the imaginations of our hearts, to address us with
immediate holy presence.
'+ C. J. Jung, Nietzsche's Zarathrustra : Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 2 vols., ed.
James L.Jarrett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 1:39.
THE GIFT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
249
The psyche, then, brings us to the frontier with the holy, as every other
human endeavor does. The psyche feels more momentous because it is nearer
to us, and utterly democratic, addressing each and everyone of us, cutting
across divisions of education, class, sexual stance, health (both mental and
physical), country, historical epoch, and culture. We share the same kind of
mental life, but not the same mental life. Hence, Hadewijch’s remarkable
statement from the thirteenth century, “I have integrated all my diversity and
individualised all my wholeness.”15 To recognize the reality of the psyche is to
enter into an additional level of community, where, like fellow-refugees, we
all face sex and aggression, dreams and symptoms, anxieties and potentialities,
needs and contributions. We all face the marvel of consciousness and the
impulse to give it back to its mysterious Giver.
Religion, and particularly the spiritual life, focuses on who the Giver is,
who it is that knocks at our door, who has been hunting us down the years,
saving the best place for us at the feast. Religion speaks of this other source as
the source above and beneath us, between and before us, a surrounding that
brings the vast eternal into the tiny precious now. Religion salutes what stands
forth from the center of reality as its author and goal, addressing us, calling us
into communion with itself. Our task is how to live ever aware of this as the
fundamental point of life, not to turn away, not to perjure and pretend we do
not know it. And not to pretend our pictures of it and our theories about it can
substitute for our living there.
III. Meaning
Ricoeur reminds us that we constantly and inevitably collapse the horizon
of the infinite into only one finite part that has mediated the infinite to us.
The better the meaning we fashion and fasten on, the more it mediates to us
the reality of the divine, the more our temptation to reify it, capture it, and
possess the truth through it. Thus, we come back, again and again, to the
know-it-all tree. We know the difference between good and evil! We
succumb to our knowledge of the good, the lure of its perfume and heady
power. We take what mediates the divine presence to us in place of the divine.
We read the map of the territory of the holy instead of going there, or
acknowledging it is already here. Jean-Luc Marion says that is why Jesus
ascends to heaven.16 He must leave us so we can find him finding us
everywhere. If he stays here in specific form, we substitute that for the
substance of his total presence.
■5 Hadewijch, Co?nplete Works , 113.
16 Marion, Prolegomencs, 163 ff.
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
25°
We are thus returned to the paradox of consciousness. How do we find and
create meaning without explaining it away or reducing it to our invention?
How do we recognize objective meaning, that we did not originate, without
excluding as frivolous (if not blasphemous) our subjective meanings that feel
so real to us? How do we get free of meanings that have trapped us, so that we
find it sinful to change them, even though they no longer transmit to us the
presence and power to which they point? Even our very own dreams which
arise spontaneously in our sleep can fall prey to a fetishism of the text— as if
they do not mean anything or make any difference until we interpret them!
And what of lost meaning, those of us who know despair, who can find no way
through but only round and round in repeated compulsions, suicidal
depressions, and antisocial behavior?
The clinical enterprise offers a good laboratory for these large human
issues. All of them come up in the work of depth analysis. That is not the only
place they turn up, but it is a good place to look at the issues of subjective and
objective meaning and the paradox of building up consciousness only to find it
relativized. In the clinical encounter, we face the problems of finding a
meaning which supports and builds up our consciousness, which we know is
objectively there and we can count on, but which is also alive and real to us,
quickening our spirit and feeding our blood. Meaning eludes us, nothing feeds
us. We know all about meanings that religion speaks of and that inhabit our
culture. But they are dead to us. We cannot connect. And we feel impotent to
create any new meaning. And even if we could, such meaning feels like
will-o’-the-wisp, a cotton-candy variety, ready to vaporize the moment we
taste it, a false bottom that drops us back into the void the moment we lean
our full weight upon it.
Most of us who seek out analysis feel similarly troubled. Trauma has
trapped us, one missing part makes the whole unviable. Either feeling suicidal
or homicidal, out of control in eating or anxiety, or overcontrolled so that the
suffering besetting us can only be referred to in the vaguest of terms —
something does not “feel right,” we say, or, “I can’t connect.” We feel
blocked, caught in repetitious plots with the same old ending, unable to break
through to new meaning even if we are breaking down. Hence the meanings
that we inherit from culture and from religion do not hold. The net frays,
breaks; we fear to plunge endlessly, without rescue or resource. We know the
existence of meaning only negatively— it has abandoned us, delivered us into
feeling that we live in a random world, with no foothold, no support for the
person we want to become, with no one touching us with love, wanting us to
see something wonderful, desiring with us intense conversation; no one
THE GIFT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
251
wanting to hear from us our news from the frontier with the transcendent. No
one wanting to find out what we feel or say in the face of death; we no longer
can laugh full-out. We feel bereft, drifting, or falling. We settle into routines
but get caught in repetitions which at once try to solve the problem we suffer,
both to express it and to hide it, to liberate us at last while barring our way.
Like a fairy-tale witch, we gnash our teeth, live in isolation where no-thing
grows, a victim of unlived life.1" What troubles us individually, troubles our
community too. For the one lost sheep, that one of us, or that part in each of
us— our secret shame, our unguessed violence— that sheep remains lost unless
we go out looking for it, and we cannot join with others until we find it, and
others cannot be a whole community as long as this one is missing.
An example will help — stark and startling to me, as in all my years I had not
seen such a cutting off of every aspect of life in mid-life as one man faced. His
job had let him go; dissolved were his research team, his space where he
worked, and the funding. So he could not just take up a similar job somewhere
else. His marriage wavered and entered a space of separation. The woman
who tempted him into a new life had left him and refused to acknowledge that
anything earthshaking had happened between them. His creativity abandoned
him. No job, no mate, no friend, no funds, no new on the horizon to beckon
him. Stalled in the water. No dreams even. And the very few that appeared
over months showed characters who could not have cared less about getting
conscious, growing, facing up to trouble, etc. He would dream of people who
did not want to go on the trip, who rejected the conversation, who refused to
go outside when someone was caught in a crime. Consciously, he was eager,
even desperate to engage the psyche, to delve into the whys and wherefores.
Unconsciously, nothing, and what little appeared put “cancelled” across his
plans. After six months of work, a dream arrived that announced a new level.
In the dream, set in the time of monarchy and carriages, he anxiously tries to
reach the queen through the crowds to get something from her as she sits in
her carriage. The queen puts three large coins in his hand, and he rushes
through the crowds to complete his mission: to give the coins to the
executioner— a large fat woman — to chop off his head. They discuss the best
way to do it clean and quick and the dream ends with the shwoosh sound of
the blade severing his head from his body.
What are we to make of this — to cut off his consciousness, to sever the
intellect from the body? Whatever meaning was to arrive, it would arrive by
another route, not his brain. Images did come which described this letting-go
17 Ann Ulanov and Barry Ulanov, The Witch and the Clown: Two Archetypes of Human
Sexuality (Wilmette, 111.: Chiron, 1987), chap. 2.
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activity. He felt himself to be “a piece of seaweed drifting on the ocean.” In
another, a dog barked as he entered an apartment, but he could make no
headway understanding what the dog meant because, “I don’t speak bark,” he
said. “I’m dying,” he said. “The core is melting.” “I can’t be a hyphen
anymore for anyone else’s life. I must be my own verb.”
The point was this: we constructed meanings which were subjectively real,
of causes that led to his present affliction. We also investigated possibilities of
where the present troubles were leading; their meaning was also to be found
in what they assembled to come toward him as his future. His consciousness
grew more sturdy which helped him endure “not-knowing” how his marriage
would come out, his unemployment, his sense of being totally cut off from any
sure direction, indeed, the whole hiatus that now defined his life. He felt
stronger, less panicked, more open to what might be addressing him in this
dramatic halt to his life. Plucked out of ordinary time of the daily routine and
eager to connect to the eternal time of the meaning of life, his consciousness
of the whys and wherefores, and of the “tendings-towards” sustained our
analytical work. But neither construction of meaning through creating the
causality from his past, nor the assembling of a future was enough.
To find the root causes in his ghetto upbringing where nihilism threatened
everyday in terms of random violence in his project’s building elevator, or
from retaliation on the streets if even accidentally he bumped some tough
guy, helped him face the nihilism now invading him. Before, he had always
been able to surmount it through his brilliance and his unending hard work.
He had gotten out of the ghetto and into a stimulating life that brought him
meaning by a sense of contributing to the greater good. But now, in mid-life,
he found himself back in a timeless zone like the ghetto, where nothing
matters and anything could happen. He could disappear under the waves, and
the world would not care; it would make no difference.
Nihilism, coupled with relentless violence, was, for him, the one lost sheep
that needed to be found consciously so the whole rest of him could again
function. We had to go back in the past to go forward into the future that was
beckoning. He needed now not to surmount the nihilism, but to see where it
led him when it was included. It led to chopping off his head — at first.
Another approach, another vision, was needed.
He and I could create, formulate, devise meanings and respond to the
weavings of meaning that generated the analysis, that came toward us, so to
speak. We could ask, why did all this happen now? What was being
constructed, what plan set up for the future? Why did events come in this
form and not some other? But were all these subjectively real constructions
THE GIFT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
253
anymore than just that; too flimsy to withstand reality outside the office,
outside the sessions we shared? Was there nothing objective here? No solid
durable meaning that we did not devise, on which he could rely? Was there
some objective path intended for him that he was groping to find which would
convict him with its authority and purpose, because he, and I, knew that this
path did not originate with us and that we did not invent it? Or, to speak from
a spiritual perspective, was there no enduring, objective, given meaning that
exists outside our subjective ones that cannot be turned into an idol? This
objective meaning is what religion stands for, and work with the psyche, I
believe, demands from its practitioners acknowledgement of the ontological
premises of their clinical methods. All language of the psyche springs from
language of the spirit, and psychological work functions at its best in
collaboration with the spirit.
To entertain in clinical work that objective meaning exists for each of us,
given to us outside our own invention and construction, while, at the same
time, receiving the task, taking it on, of making meaning, constructing lines of
causality from our past relationships with others (the object relations school)
and from the history of our defenses against instinctual conflict (the drive
theory), and of mapping how our ego has built up consciousness using the
images provided by our cultural historical context (ego psychology and
theories of cultural conditioning), means living in the paradox with which
religious experience is so familiar. We must really become conscious and do
our ego work to make sense of the insensible, the unbearable. And we must at
the same time know that all our conscious constructions of meaning are
relative — to our object relations, to our experience of instinctual drives, to our
cultural context, and to our ego functions. We need all these and we can see
through them.
If we can tolerate this relativity of consciousness, its necessity and
preciousness and its ephemeral nature, we can be freed from consciousness,
and freed for consciousness of our ego as looked at by some other presence
that makes itself known to us when we are sufficiently empty to make room
for it. We see our consciousness and no longer identify with it. We feel the
roots that grow down from heaven and up from the serpent tree below. We
look at our consciousness instead of only through it.
From the point of view of consciousness, this dislocation, this wounding as
with Jacob’s limping, feels like a breakdown, a cutting off of our head, decreed
by the queen. From the point of view of the larger psyche and reality beyond
the psyche, this breakdown breaks through. We empty of consciousness
which makes space to behold spontaneous life given us, through the
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2 54
graciousness of our Creator, the blooming flower surprising us at the bottom
of the well. But we must be turned on our head to find it. In religious
language, this emptiness is submission, a humble letting go of ourself, a losing
of our life to find that we are found by the consciousness of a greater Subject.
Sometimes we experience this being looked at by another presence very
forcefully in dreams. Dreams give us immediate experience of paradox: where
we are both subject and object, subjects but also objects of attention of a
greater consciousness that both includes and transcends us.
A woman in her sixties dreamed, “A dove all green in color had just come
through some ordeal and stood and looked at me. I made an impromptu
sound to call to the bird, and when I did, a little twig pushed out budding
green, the same color as the bird.” The dreamer suffered an enormous ordeal
of physical illness that stole her balance and slurred her voice. The bird
looking at her also embodied her ordeal; it had come through something hard.
Thus, in the dream she was seen and her suffering recognized; spontaneously
she responded, trying to make a sound to speak to the bird. When she did, a
twig barren of leaves, sent out a green shoot. The object of another subject,
her suffering looked at her through the animal eye of the dove. Being
religious, she associated the dove with God’s Spirit. Beheld, she wanted to
behold, to reach out in sound, in animal noise to acknowledge the suffering of
the creature that acknowledged her suffering. When she did, from die barren
twig a shoot of the new came into being.
Such a dream brings news of what lives in us beyond our egos and points to
what spontaneously creates the psyche and holds it. So do other human
events. Not just dreams. And not just psychic examples. Falling in love brings
news from the frontier with the transcendent— archetypal moments that
break in upon us at funerals, at births, at moments of loss, and at moments of
forgiveness where the old that had died and was gone returns in new
form — and we are given the power to recognize its gathering up of the
blighted old suffering and the delivering of it into new living. We climb up to
the roots of the It that lives me, not the I, but the Christ thrumming through
our veins. We climb down to the It that lives me, not the ego, but the
primordial unconscious, with its deep structures of the timeless that give us
archetypal pictures which Jung calls “the tools of God.”’8
We can talk about psychic structures and how they impact upon ego-
consciousness to break it down to emptiness so that we can receive the
spontaneous gestures of a life living deeper in us. We can talk about trauma
breaking up our trappedness in fruitless repetitions, breaking us down to this
18 C. G.Jung, Letters, 2 vols., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 2:130.
THE GIFT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
255
empty place. We reach an emptiness which allows awareness of the other to
come in, an other that steadfastly makes and remakes us, breaks us apart to
break through to us with its larger life, its eloquent presence that comes
through word, through image, through fur, through music, through utter
silence, through crowded emotion, through play, through the offering at a
worship sendee, and the high stepping of a rock concert. But the willingness
to respond, spontaneously to choose the tree of life, the effort, despite losing
our balance and our voice, to chirp at the bird who sees us, that response is
asked of us and given to us to give back.
IV. Living
To see this relocation of consciousness and give way to it, we need a
different kind of consciousness. At the end of the twentieth century, this kind
of consciousness partakes of a feminine mode of being, a process living in all
of us, male and female. We need to consent, to go down, to fall apart, to be in
the midst of, not to know with the clarity of logical progression and summary
conclusion, not to abstract and generalize but to cherish the particular as a
mother cherishes the particular child in her womb. We need to ponder in the
heart, not the head, and like Mary take the sword-piercing into our soul and
consent to be the mother of revolution, the bringer of the One who ends all
religion, all reifications of infinite into finite. She delivers into the world the
One who presides over and obviates all divisions of gender and class, of
education and beauty, of wealth and intellect, of creed and ideology. This One
brings the news that each of us is pondered as a special child of God, carried
and delivered into the world. This kind of consciousness ushers us to the foot
of the cross where, with that gaggle of Marys, we too are tough enough to
survive the stripping of all our projections onto God, all our God-images, and
idols of the holy, to behold the God who comes and makes all things new.
This God calls us by our name as the risen Jesus called the Magdalene, thus
allowing us to knit up the continuity of the One who was, whom we lost, with
the One now before us as the One who is, the “isness” of life itself. This
unknown we receive in the flesh, in the small, inhabiting us and changing all
our values.
For the unfolding of this arrival is not a series of products, like books,
babies, jobs, or even mental health. The dreamer of the green dove and twig,
discovers through her own ordeal of illness that the resurrected body still
bears its wounds. We live in history, and history shapes us in this life. The new
pushes out our boundaries and endows us with life, but does not magically
whisk away all the costs of mortality. Depth psychological treatment is not
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magic. It digs out and digs down to this dimension other than the ego from
which life springs. It dislocates and rearranges the ego to accommodate this
life if the soul is willing. It flows through us then, not from our ideas of the
good, but with its own. It brings news from the frontier. It brings life.
The result of contacting this dimension, and opening to what speaks
through it, is living, not products, but new living, living in the new. Analysts
know about this and describe it in their own vocabularies. Winnicott talks
about living creatively where we see everything afresh with enjoyable wonder.
Bion reaches toward the unnameable O that we hope for as the truth of every
session. Freud’s goal of love and work breathes the All into the mundane
everyday. Jung writes of seeing through the eyes not of the ego but of the Self,
that midway region between psyche and what transcends it. The ego serves
the Self and the Self serves the Transcendent. Hadewijch speaks of living all
the concrete humanity of God in Christ, which means the debt-paying,
offered for all others. Many, if not most, clinical encounters do not open into
specific religious vocabulary. But if they succeed, the client feels herself open
to a bigger region; she feels addressed by a larger encompassing reality to
which connection and conversation must be sustained. The repetitious
compulsions that break our spirit and lead us into analysis, must give way to
rituals of acknowledgement and confirmation of that other presence that has
come to the analysand through his or her own unconscious. Without some
ritual, the other remains anonymous to us. It needs to be named if we are to go
on in relationship with it.
We need, then also, in addition to the feminine processing of experience in
the flesh, in the small, in the deep downward inhabiting, the masculine
processing as well, to name, to find words for, to abstract and communicate.
We need to stand forth and relate to it and describe its tremendous impact
upon us. We need to say such things as, yes a specific way, a path exists for
each one of us, objectively there, given; yet to find it, we must create and
construct, and improvise our ways to it. We must articulate the tension
between the ego patterns we impose on life and the fact that they are relative,
invented, not final, but without which we never find our final path. We need
to speak about how our consciousness is structured by forms outside
consciousness which support and subvert it at once, that in fact we are dancing
to a pattern going on in each session of therapy which is beyond the full
control or comprehension of the participants. A living thing, or presence
inhabits the space and functions, to push and prod and delicately touch us to
open to its arrival. Sometimes the analysand thinks the analyst knows all about
this pattern. I’ve been described by patients as the cattle prod in their
THE GIFT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
257
transference. But I know front my side, that I too am responding to something
that is right there, shaping and pushing me, flattening me and punching me
down like so much bread dough to let the hot air escape. Only from the whole
interaction of subject and subject does an objective meaning reveal itself.
If we hold onto our ego view, we refuse the larger pattern and eventually
split into polarized versions of the dance pattern with its many conjunctions.
Then, we get the wars of masculine versus feminine, of adult versus child, of
community versus individual, of theory versus praxis, analyst versus analy-
sand, first world versus third world, and on and on. We degenerate into the
know-it-all explanations of power relations. Even ethics is helper to helpee
which is always power-minded, however muted.
We fall into a polarized differentiation of haves and have-nots, even with
Winnicott, who helpfully translates the old dualities into psychological ones.
For him, the “haves” possess a sense of self in a body that the “have-nots”
lack. This description recommends itself to us because it cuts across the
familiar lines of class, color, gender, and wealth. Alice Miller also ably points
out how we displace onto social injustices the rage and mourning we defend
against by idealizing parents whom we defend, for example, as “beating me
for my own good; it made me strong.” To become conscious of the rage and
mourning for what we missed does not keep us from joining causes against
injustice. It makes us more effective because we are more flexible, no longer
smuggling an unconscious personal agenda into the commonly suffered
injustice. Wren-Lewis finds the same avoidance as Miller does when he traces
economic injustice to our denial of the spontaneous, autonomous life
bubbling up in everyone. Only by seeing this gift of life in the other and in
ourselves do we join together to build a society that includes all equally.
Masud Khan says that when we deny dream space, we act out in society the
rage and despair, often in criminal ways, that would plot our nighttime
reveries.19 Two Jungian analysts who investigated Mezoamerican myths find a
meaning in the horrifying symptom of young adults, often women, cutting
themselves ritually.20 They cut their arms or face or other body parts because
they cannot house archetypal forces, so they become obsessed and possessed
by them, and act them out on their bodies. At the same time, such cutting is an
effort to cut through conscious numbness, a cut-offness from the psyche.
Cutting tries to cut through, to make contact. So like any symptom, it
bespeaks the problem and the solution. Larger ritual placement of the
Khan, M. R. “The Use and Abuse of Dream in Psychic Experience,” The Privacy of the
Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1974), 306-315.
20 N. Doughtery and J. West, “Skin: Boundaries, Penetrations and Power” (paper
presented at the National Jungian Congress, Chicago, 1997).
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
symptom can help the analytical couple find how to cut open a portal between
a too small consciousness and a deeper flow of life within such women’s bodies
and souls.21
V. Ethics
If the product of going down into a different consciousness is living, and
not money, sermons, recipes, fame, lectures, degrees, jobs, and all the things
of this life that we reify, prize, and make into idols, then our relationship with
each other changes. Ethics changes from a giving of helper to helpee to a
receiving and yielding of overflow. Living from a core that animates and feeds
all of us, we feel and know the spark of its presence between us and among us
that keeps all of us in being and redeems us from sadness. We become one of
the animals in a tide of instinct that guides us, and that we consent to, making
us human animals specifically marked, not by stripe or hoof or fur, but by
consent, again and again. Something flows through us, out and back from a
center beyond us, which contacts us also through a deeper consciousness and a
consciousness of the depth. It generates us. It engenders us. Like the Sioux
medicine man Fool Crow’s “hollow bones,” we become empty to accommo-
date its fullness. All together, we share its presence; if one of us goes missing,
we cannot proceed until we go out and look for the one who is missing. That
may be a part of us or a group of us. It deserves to be found. We also see that
others carry things for us. The one suffering severe mental restriction carries
the cross I do not carry and evokes from my gratitude a willingness to carry
the cross assigned to me. We see that each of us does not, contra the fervent
press of psychological workships, achieve wholeness, but we become part of a
greater wholeness. We do not enter into congress with this presence flowing
through us in the role of co-creators, but instead as co-respondents. The pun
both indicates our capacity for betrayal as well as full-out risk-taking response.
We enter into and are pulled into the currents of a thrumming, humming love
that undergirds all reality, flowing ceaselessly out of its center into and round
and among all of us, back and forth between us, then lunging down again into
the depths. Only to pour out generously upon us.
An image of Saint Dorotheus pictures the way the ethics of overflow works.
Each of us as a spoke of a wheel finds, as we draw closer and closer to the
wrheel’s center to the cog from which all the spokes turn and revolve, that we
inevitably also draw closer to each other. This is consciousness, so precious a
gift to us, that we give back into its Giver.
21 Ibid.
Reflections on Worship
in the Gospel of John
by Marianne Meye Thompson
The 1997-1998 Thompson Lecture was
given by Marianne Meye Thompson on
March 16, 1998, on the Seminary campus.
Dr. Th 07 up son, a minister of the Presbyte-
rian Church (U.S.A.), is Associate Profes-
sor of New Testament Interpretation at
Fuller Theological Seminaiy, Pasadena ,
California.
MY POINT OF departure this evening is taken from two quotations, both
from C. K. Barrett, the noted Johannine scholar. The first quotation
comes from Barrett’s magisterial commentary on John, originally published
in 1955 and revised in 1978. In that second edition, Barrett adds a short
comment on John 4:23, a verse that reads as follows: “The hour is coming,
and now is, when true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in
truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him." Focusing on the explanatory
clause at the end, Barrett remarked, “This clause has perhaps as much claim as
20-3of to be regarded as expressing the purpose of the gospel.”1 You may
recall that John 20:31 reads, “These things are written that you may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have
life in his name.” Barrett’s assertion that 4:23 rivals 20:31 in capturing the
purpose of John may look like just a passing comment, but it actually charts a
huge shift in the Fourth Gospel’s center of gravity. In essence, he gauges
“worship” in the Gospel of John as possessing fully enough mass to counter-
balance all that had hitherto been imputed to “belief’ or evangelism as
constituting the evangelist’s purpose. But he also shifts the center from the
Son to the Father. It is tempting to speculate that the gloss which Barrett
added in 1978 is a response to a number of studies which, in the years between
the two editions of the commentary, laid increasing stress on the Gospel as a
“dogmatic” Gospel which makes Jesus the object and content of belief.2 In any
case, Barrett’s assertion conveniently underscores and unites two items of
concern in the present lecture: namely, the centrality of God in the Fourth
Gospel, and the singular importance of genuine worship to its argument.
A few years before the publication of the second edition of the commentary,
Barrett had emphasized the centrality of God in the Fourth Gospel in an
article whose title posed the question, “Theocentric or Christocentric?” As
might be anticipated, Barrett answered that the Gospel is best described as
1 The Gospel According to St.John, 2nd rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 238.
2 Most notably, perhaps, Ernst Kiisemann, The Testament of Jesus: A Study of the Gospel of
John in the Light of Chapter 17 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968).
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
theocentric. But Barrett nuanced his position as follows— and this is my
second quotation:
It is inconceivable that John should have written the kind of book he did
write if he had not wished to attach unique theological significance to the
historical figure of Jesus, or rather (as [John] might have preferred to say),
had he not seen theological truth of unique importance arising out of that
historical figure. There can be no doubt then that for John the historical
figure of Jesus was central for his understanding of God; central, but not
finaD
Not long before this, Barrett had made a similarly enigmatic statement—
“There could hardly be a more Christocentric writer than John, yet his very
Christocentricity is theocentric.”*
I begin with these quotations, because I wish to address myself to the
substance of Barrett’s twin affirmations regarding God and worship, and to
argue that not only are his predications separately correct, but that they also
belong together as an apt description of the theological concern of the Fourth
Gospel. I begin with them also because these assertions stand against the main
current of Johannine studies today, which flow along a somewhat different
course. That course is charted, for example, by Robert Kysar in his lengthy
“Report on Recent Research” on John, where he notes, “No one seriously
doubts that the heartbeat of the theology of the [Fourth Gospel] is found in its
christology.”’ A1 though that comment was made over ten years ago, other
scholars treat the Gospel’s christocentricity as virtually a truism.3 * 5 6
In good Johannine fashion, however, there are some doubters in the ranks. I
put myself with Thomas, demanding— I hope not faithlessly— “Unless I see
the indisputable marks of the Gospel’s christocentricity, I will not believe.”
To be sure, the designation of the Gospel as “christocentric” has not arisen ex
nihilo or from the formless void, but rather has been created out of some very
3 “Christocentric or Theocentric? Observations on the Theological Method of the
Fourth Gospel,” in La Notion biblique de Dieu, ed. J. Coppens; Bibliotheca Ephemeridum
Theologicarum Lovaniensium 41 (Leuven: University Press, 1976), 364.
* “ ‘The Father is Greater than I’ (John 14.28): Subordinationist Christology' in the New
Testament,” Essays on John (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 246.
5 Aufitiegund Niedergang der romischen Welt, 2:25.3 (1985), 2443.
6 Adele Reinhartz affirms Kysar’s assessment with the comment, “Christology is the
central theme of this gospel,” and adds, “This is virtually axiomatic in Johannine studies.”
The Word in the World: The Cosmological Tale in the Fourth Gospel, SBLMS 45 (Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1992), 30 and n. 1). By contrast, see the statement by William Loader, that
“the theocentricity of the gospel is widely recognised.” The Christology of the Fourth Gospel:
Structure and Issues, BET 23 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1989), 140. Loader cites works by
C. K. Barrett, C. H. Dodd, Ernst Haenchen, Ferdinand Hahn, and Rudolf Sehnackenburg
in support of his contention.
26i
WORSHIP IN JOHN
real “stuff’ in the Gospel. There is unquestionably an emphasis on the work
and role of Jesus in John, and that work and role are developed in striking and
distinctive ways. But precisely in those distinctive developments the Christol-
ogy of John demands to be set in a genuinely theological framework. As
Leander Keck once put it, “every statement about Christ implicates God,
beginning with the designation of Jesus as the Anointed.”?
The intense focus in recent decades on Christology as the heart of the
Gospel fits hand in glove with an understanding of its place and polemic
vis-a-vis Judaism. A persistent description of Johannine theology is that it
repudiates Judaism by means of its allegedly christocentric “replacement
theology.” Such a characterization rests much of its case on the Gospel’s
presentation of Jesus in light of and with respect to various Jewish practices
and institutions of worship. Typical characterizations include statements such
as the following: “All previous religious institutions, customs and feasts lose
meaning in [Jesus’] presence.”8 Or: “Jesus supersedes the great pilgrim
festivals; he fulfills the symbolism of the feast of tabernacles . . .Jesus fulfills
and thus supersedes the purity regulations of Judaism. ... In Jesus the
Messiah the old Temple and cult has been rendered redundant.”9 Or: “Jesus
even replaced the Sabbath, Passover, Feast of Booths, and Feast of Dedica-
tion.”10 These readings — from Raymond Brown, James Dunn, and Craig
Koester— argue that John’s treatment of worship-related themes repudiates
Judaism and its cultic practices and religious feasts, and does so by radically
reinterpreting these practices and feasts through and in the person of Jesus
Christ.
On a slightly different tack, J. Louis Martyn refocused the argument about
the relationship of Jesus and Judaism from the text to the community behind
the text and for which the Gospel was written. As is well known, Martyn
argued that the Johannine community’s gradual development of a relatively
exalted view of Jesus eventually drove the wedge between it and the synagogue
community from which it broke or was expelled. But even the high Christol-
ogy of the Johannine community could not, on its own, account for the
? “Toward the Renewal of New Testament Christology,” New Testament Studies 32 July
1986): 362-77. See also J. D. G. Dunn, “Christology as an Aspect of Theology,” in The
Future of Christology: Essays in Honor of Leander E. Keck (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 202-3.
8 Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, 2 vols., (New York: Doubleday,
1966-70) 1:104.
’James D. G. Dunn, The Partings of the Ways Between Christianity and Judaism and their
Significance for the Character of Christianity (London: SCM Press; Philadelphia: T rinity Press
International, 1991), 93—95.
10 Craig Koester, The Dwelling of God, CBQMS 22 (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical
Association, 1989), 108.
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
palpable tension in the Gospel between the two communities. Rather, this
tension developed because a relatively exalted view of Jesus was coupled with
the practice of worshiping him. This practice led to the charge of ditheism which
is implicitly a charge of false worship.11
Martyn’s proposal has the merit of taking seriously that one of the sources,
if not the main source, of conflict between John’s community and the
synagogue was the community’s practices of worship. 12 John’s community was
in conflict with “the Jews” not simply because of what it believed, but because
of the way in which its beliefs were mirrored in its practices . Whether or not one
thinks that the Gospel is as “transparently revelatory”1? of the community as
Martyn does, his interpretation of the conflict in John not only in terms of
what is to be believed, but how one is to worship, seems right on target. Some
interpreters, however, have argued that in its treatment of this conflict, John’s
Gospel essentially creates a broad, ugly ditch between itself and “the Jews,” as
if all common ground had been removed.12? This conclusion seems rather off
the mark.
I propose to reexamine certain passages related to worship of God in the
Gospel by setting them against a taxonomy of contemporary Jewish polemics
regarding worship. The literature of Second Temple Judaism testifies to a
wide range of ongoing discussion and argument about the character, means,
and object of true worship, ranging from sectarian debates about halakhic
practice, purity regulations, the temple, and issues of calendar (Jubilees,
nQTemple, 4QMMT); to the possibility of various visionary or mystical
experiences allowing for participation in heavenly worship (e.g., Songs of the
Sabbath Sacrifice, 1 Enoch); to the necessity of the continued defense of
monotheism and monolatry (e.g., Embassy to Gains , Joseph and Aseneth). By
reading Johannine polemics against this backdrop, I hope to show, first, the
II History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, rev. ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979), 72, 75,
78-
12 David Aune has emphasized the importance of the cultic practices of the Johannine
community, arguing that the “essential elements of the theology of the Fourth Gospel
generally, and the eschatology of the Gospel in particular, were developed within the
context of the worship, preaching and teaching of . . . the ‘Johannine community.’ ” The
Cultic Setting of Realized Eschatology in Early Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 63. See also
Larry Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism
(Fortress: Philadelphia, 1988), 13, “The cultic veneration of Jesus in early Christian circles
is the most important context for the use of the christological titles and concepts.” See also
Martin Hengel, “Christological Tides in Early Christianity,” in Studies in Early Christology;
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995), 370, 383.
't The phrase comes from Richard Bauckham, “For Whom Were Gospels Written?” in
The Gospels for all Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audience (Edinburgh: 1'. & T. Clark;
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 26.
'4 See, for example, Halvor Moxnes, Theology in Conflict: Studies in Paul's Understanding of
God in Romans, SuppNovT 53 (Leiden: Brill, 1980).
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WORSHIP IN JOHN
need for greater exegetical precision in tracing the argument of the Fourth
Gospel. This precision, in turn, can spur us to rethink some assumptions
commonly held about the Gospel, its Christology, and its stance over against
Judaism and its festivals, rituals, and worship.
I. A Taxonomy of Post-Biblical Polemic Regarding Worship
The Fourth Gospel’s treatment of themes having to do with (true) worship
can be illumined by the ways in which the Old Testament polemic against the
worship of other gods and idols is taken up in the literature of early Judaism.1 5
As is well known, the prophetic denunciation of the worship of other gods
mocks those who worship “dead idols,” made by human hands, rather than
the “living God,” who creates all things, including the artisans themselves.16
“[Idols] are the work of the artisan and of the hands of the goldsmith; . . . they
are all the product of skilled workers. But the Lord is the true God; he is the
living God and the everlasting King” (Jer. 10:9-10). Rather than a created
artifact, the living God is the creator and source of life (Ps. 36:9, Jer. 2:13;
Ezek. 37:1-4). Although the words of the prophets are directed particularly
against God’s own people who, because they have been called and redeemed
by God, are to offer homage to that same God, the polemic can also be spoken
against the nations who worship idols, for they worship that which is created
rather than the Creator of all peoples and nations. 17
In a number of texts of Second Temple Judaism, the polemic against idol
worship develops the theme of the uniqueness of the “living God” by
stressing the universality and unity of God’s creation, the unity of that same
God, and hence the universality of obligation owed to the one true God.18
These foundational principles become the basis for polemic against belief in
and worship of other gods. Yet these principles can be used quite differently. I
suggest that there are at least four positions taken with respect to the worship
of God: (1) assimilationists were willing to engage in worship of Yahweh, either
u On the style of ancient polemic, see especially Luke T. Johnson, “The New Testa-
ment’s Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic,” Journal of Biblical
Literature 108 (1989): 419-41.
16 1 Sam. 17:26, 36; 2 Kings 19:4, i6;Jer. 23:36; Deut. 5:26;Josh. 3:10; Ps 42:3, 84:3; Isa.
40:18-20; 41:21-24; 44:9-20, 24; 45:16-22; 46:5-7;Jer. 10:8-10.
17 In the LXX monos theos is more common than he is theos, underscoring the point here
that the emphasis on “one God” serves as a call to undivided devotion, even as later Jewish
polemic saw the unity of God as basis for the one temple.
18 Paul Rainbow, “Monotheism and Christology in 1 Corinthians 8:4-6,” (D. Phil, diss..
University of Oxford, 1987), 44-46, lists ten features of monotheistic speech of Second
Temple Judaism, one of which is the theologoumenon “living God.”
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alongside or under the name of another god;19 (2) apologists such as Josephus
and Philo limited proper worship to Israel’s God, but sought to find common
ground with pagans by showing the ways in which they shared religious,
philosophical or moral convictions with Judaism;20 (3) separationists labeled
the worship of pagans either idolatrous or demonic, or perhaps both;21 (4) and
sectarians , such as the covenanters of Qumran, found objectionable practices
even among their fellow Jews who also worshiped the one God of Israel.
Of these four positions, the Fourth Gospel perhaps comes closest to the
sectarian position, as found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in suggesting that it is the
worship practices of coreligionists that signal their betrayal of truth. Much of
the invective of the Scrolls is directed against those Jews who have abandoned
the covenant, failed to observe the Law, improperly celebrate festivals, or
defiled the holy temple and city (iQpHab 2.6-7, 8.10; 12:8-10; 4QpPsa
2:14-20; CD 4:17; 6:11-21). Similarly, Johannine polemic charges that “the
Jews” fail to understand the testimony of Moses in scripture, oppose
righteousness and truth, and are not true children of Abraham. The use of the
Jewish calendar to frame the Gospel, and the recurring themes of purity,
temple, worship, and various festivals, suggest that sharp differences over
19 Perhaps the most notorious exemplars of this position are those Jews who were willing
to follow Antiochus Epiphanes’ commands to engage in pagan sacrifices and worship.
According to Josephus, the high priest Onias (Menelaus) had persuaded Antiochus “to
compel the Jews to abandon their fathers’ religion” in order that he might “secure his own
position” (Ant. 12:283; 2 Macc. 13:4). What sort of justification Menelaus may have
suggested for such practice is not known, but it is not unlikely that he and others adopted
the view that religious particularism or exclusivism was an unenlightened barbarism. For
further discussion, see Elias Bickerman, The God of the Maccabees: Studies on the Meaning and
Origin of the Maccabean Revolt, Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 32 (Leiden: Brill, 1979),
esp. 64-65, 76—92; Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in the Encounter in
Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, 2 vols., (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 1:264-65;
Emil Schiirer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, rev. ed. by Geza
Vermes and Fergus Millar, 3 vols., (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973), 3:1.523.
20 See Schiirer, History of the Jewish People, 3:1.154. A Christian example of such an
overture is found in Paul’s speech to the Athenians in Acts 17, when he says that “the God
who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth ... is not far from
each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ ” (Acts 17:24, 28). This
God, Paul proclaims, does not live in hand-made temples, nor ought one to represent God
by hand-made artifacts. The emphasis on God as living, acknowledged as the source or
Creator of all that is, accounts for the polemic against the worship of animals and artifacts
even in writers who also endeavor to demonstrate the commonality between the concep-
tions of deity in Judaism and in other religions.
21 Following the trajectory of prophetic denunciation of idol worship, some Jewish
writings leave no room for common ground between Jews and pagans: Jews alone worship
the true God, and any other worship is offered to idols and demons (Dan., Bel, Jdt., Joseph
and Aseneth, 1 En.), themes already attested in passages such as Deut. 32:17, Ps. 96:5 and
106:37. See here the Epistle to Diognetus, which attacks pagan worship of idols (chap. 2), and
Jewish worship for thinking that God needs die sacrifices of food which they offer (chap. 3).
See Schiirer, History of the Jewish People, 3:1.138; Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:261-67.
i65
WORSHIP IN JOHN
practices in worship figure into the Johannine polemic as well. But, in the
Fourth Gospel, as in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is not the object of worship that
is at issue, but rather the practices.
II. The Polemic Regarding Worship in the Gospel of John
Jesus, the Temple, and the Worship of God
I would like to pursue this reading of John by turning first to the treatment
of the temple in the Fourth Gospel. In his book The Scepter and the Star, John
J. Collins writes, “Alienation from the Temple cult was one of the root causes
of Jewish sectarianism in the Hellenistic era.”22 The community at Qumran
serves as a prime exemplar of such alienation, but its literature testifies to
diverse remedies for the ailment, including the establishment of a new,
eschatological temple; a “takeover” or rededication of the present Jerusalem
temple (4QpPs 37:3, iofi); and, an interpretation of the community itself as an
alternate temple where atonement for sin is made.2? Not surprisingly, these
views are coupled with sharp polemic against the corrupt practices of the
priests in the Jerusalem temple (CD 4:16-18; 5:6-7). The Scrolls testify not
only to the community’s dissatisfaction with the way in which the office of the
priesthood was exercised, but also to its differences with the Jerusalem
priesthood in calendrical matters and halakhic regulations regarding purity
(4QMMT). In view of the deficiencies of the current priesthood, the current
temple cult was deemed ineffective. But atonement for sin could be made
within the “holy house for Aaron,” the community itself (iQS 8:6, 8:10;
9:3-6, 26; 10:6, 14). 24
Jewish literature written after the First Jewish War and the destruction of
Jerusalem encounters a difficulty of another sort, one that has to do with
accounting for the absence of the temple. Not unlike the sectarians, Josephus
lays the blame for the pollution of the temple at the feet not of Gentiles, but of
fellow Israelites. While on the one hand Josephus faults the high priesthood
for its corruption, greed, and violence {Ant. 20.8.8 §181; 20. 9. 2. §§206-7),
22 The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature
(New York: Doubleday, 1995), 84.
n The relevant passages from Qumran (iQS 5:5-7, 8:4-10, 9:3-6; CD 3:18-4:10; iQpH
12:3) are discussed by Donald Juel, Messiah and Temple: The Trial of Jesus in the Gospel of
Mark, SBLDS 31 (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977), 159-68.
24 Yet other documents point to the promise of a new or eschatological temple, and in
these documents, the equation of the temple with the community is either lacking or
ambiguous. The particular text most in discussion here is 4QFlor (4Q174); see the
discussion and bibliography in Collins, The Scepter and the Star, 106-9. h *s not clear that
4QFlor equates the temple with the Qumran community itself; so also Juel, Messiah and
Temple, 164.
266
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
elsewhere he criticizes the revolutionaries for turning the temple into a
fortress. Although he continues to refer to it as the “Holy Place” (J.W.
4.3.607 §§147-54), he also laments of the temple, “You were no longer the
place of God” (J.W. 5.1.3 §§19-20). Josephus even goes so far as to argue that
while the revolutionaries have polluted the temple, the Romans have
endeavored to keep it pure, thus subverting the assumption that it is Gentiles
who render sacred space unclean J.W. 4.182-83; 5:362-63; 6:99-102;
6:124-28). Likewise, Josephus virtually exonerates Pompey for his obvious
profanation of the temple by arguing that, because of his piety and virtue, he
ordered it to be cleansed immediately J.W. 1:152-53; Ant. 14:72-73).
Obviously then one of the key attributes of the temple is purity, and its
absence accounts for the destruction of the temple.
The purity of the temple underlies the presentation of the temple in the
Fourth Gospel. As is well known, in the Fourth Gospel the cleansing of the
temple appears early. It is preceded by and paired with the changing of water
to wine at a wedding feast in Cana, which defines Jesus’ glory not only as
bringing the fullness of the messianic age, but also as effecting an appropriate
purity. That Jesus changes the water of the “Jewish rites of purification” into
the wine of the messianic era could be construed in various ways: the vine
could be said to replace the water or, more sharply, to displace it. Both of
these ways of interpreting the text depend, to some extent, on a negative
valuation either of these Jewish rites or of the concept of “purity” per se, as
well as on construing “messianic fullness” as “messianic replacement .” But the
effectiveness of the narrative depends upon affirming the central importance
of purity, while identifying it not with priest or Law, but with Jesus, already
presented in the first chapter of the Gospel as Messiah, Son of God, King of
Israel, and Son of Man (1:51). Jesus is portrayed as Israel’s Messiah , and the
miracle at Cana does not signal messianic replacement but rather messianic
fullness, in keeping with the words of the prologue, “from his fullness have we
all received.” But the account in which this point is scored has to do with the
“Jewish rites of purification.” Messianic fullness thus entails messianic
cleansing. Early on, the Gospel forges an integral link between the Messiah,
the “King of Israel,” and the Jewish rites of purification.
The Johannine version of the cleansing of the temple follows this account,
rather than the account of Jesus’ triumphal and kingly entry into Jerusalem,
described both in John and the Synoptic Gospels in terms of Zechariah 9:9.
John alone thus juxtaposes the cleansing of the temple with another account
about cleansing or purity, rather than with an account about a symbolic royal
action. In the Fourth Gospel, the account concludes with Jesus’ challenge
WORSHIP IN JOHN
267
regarding the destruction and raising of the temple in three days. An editorial
comment makes it clear that Jesus was talking not about the Jerusalem temple,
but rather about “the temple of his body” (2:21). To be precise, then, the text
does not say that if the Jerusalem temple is destroyed it will be replaced by
another temple, but rather that if the temple of Jesus’ body is destroyed, it will
be raised up in three days. By referring Jesus’ word regarding the destruction
and rebuilding of the temple to his own death and resurrection, John presents
Jesus as the indestructible eschatological temple. 25 The argument is not that
Jesus’ followers do not need a temple, but rather that in him they have a
temple which cannot be destroyed.
Later in the Gospel it becomes evident that the Messiah “cleanses” his
followers through his death, prefigured in the act of washing their feet
(13:1-11), as well as through his life-giving word, which leads them to faith
(15:3). John thus underscores the singular importance of purity or cleansing
and their provision through the word and deed of Jesus. Jesus thus effects the
purification of his followers. John, however, goes further. Just as the temple
symbolized the purity of Israel and of Israel’s God, so too Jesus embodies,
manifests, and transmits true purity.
This takes us back to the narrative of John 4, where Jesus, the Messiah of
Israel, engages in debate over the true site for temple worship with a woman
of Samaria — a discussion conducted while standing over a well of water,
symbolic of cleansing! The primary understanding of the temple in both
chapters two and four is that it is the locus of God’s presence.26 In this
understanding of the temple, God’s purity and God’s presence are necessarily
conjoined, so that “the notion of purity associated with the Temple . . .
intensifies the sense of divine nearness. . . . The closer one gets to the inner
25 For discussion and bibliography concerning the link between Messiah and temple, see
N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victoiy of God, vol. 2 of Christian Origins and the Question of God
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 489-519.
26 “In the eyes of the people [the temple] constituted primarily the divine dwelling-place
of the God of Israel which set them apart from other nations” (The Jewish People in the First
Century : Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institu-
tions, vol. 2, ed. S. Safrai and M. Stern (Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976),
906. For recent discussions emphasizing the centrality and importance of the temple and its
significance in first-century Judaism, see E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63
BCE-66 CE (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1993), chaps. 5-8,
and The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 262; as well as the older
discussion by G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of the
Tannaim, 3 vols., (Cambridge, Mass: Flarvard University Press, 1927-30), 1:369b Craig
Koester, in his recent study on symbolism in the Fourth Gospel, comments that the
pericope of the cleansing of the temple suggests that “the function of sacrifice ... is fulfilled
and replaced by Jesus.” Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mysteiy, Community
(Minneapolis: Portress, 1995), 83. But the polemic is much more pointed in a book like
Hebrews than in John, where it is at best latent.
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
sanctum, the nearer one is to the perfection of the divine presence. ”27
According to the Johannine prologue, one is near to “the perfection of the
divine presence” in Jesus: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and
we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of
grace and truth.” This assertion recalls the accounts of God’s dwelling with
Israel in the wilderness, as well as the revelation of God to Moses in response
to his demand, “Show me thy glory” (Ex. 33:18). The language of John 1:14 is
that of theophany, of the revelation of the glory or presence of God.28 So also
in John 1:51 the disciples are promised revelation: heaven will be opened, and
heavenly presence will be manifested. Jesus is the “sanctuary” in and through
which God’s presence, God’s glory, is manifested.29
In this context, Jesus’ retort to the Samaritan woman (“the hour is coming
. . . when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the
Father”) regarding the proper place of true worship constitutes neither a
polemic against external ritual and forms of worship, nor an argument in favor
of the interiorization of worship, nor a criticism of the idea of “sacred space”
per se. To be sure, these are all common ways of interpreting the statement
that “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. ”3° In The
Partings of the Ways, for example, James D. G. Dunn asserts that John
criticizes the very notion of “sacred space.” Dunn writes:
The claim is plain: the worship made possible by Jesus has left behind and
rendered redundant all the old disputes and concerns over holy places,
sacred spaces, sanctified traditions. Such concern now hinders or prevents
the real worship for which God looks. That worship does not depend on a
particular sanctuary, central or otherwise. For the Fourth Evangelist the
position is clear: Christ has taken the place of the Temple; the concept of a
particular sacred space to be guarded and defended against rivals and
r The Anchor Bible Dictionary, s.v. “Temple, Jerusalem,” by Carol Meyers.
28 Compare Rev. 21:22-27, which speaks of the absence of the temple in the holy city,
since the temple has been rendered superfluous by the very presence of God, whose glory is
the light of the city.
29 The verbal parallels with the Temple Scroll from Qumran are striking. In 1 iQTemple,
col. 29, we read this description of the temple: “And find favor they shall; they shall be my
people, and I will be theirs, forever. I shall dwell with them for all eternity. I shall sanctify
My [te]mple with My glory, for I will cause My glory to dwell upon it until the Day of
Creation, when I Myself will create My temple; I will establish it for Myself for everlasting
in fulfillment of the covenant that I made with Jacob at Bethel.” The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New
Translation, trans. Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook (New York:
HarperCollins, 1996), 469.
3° John Ashton reads this passage as a formal and explicit statement of the “interiorization
of worship.” Understanding the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 465-66.
WORSHIP IN JOHN 269
defiling encroachment is no longer appropriate in the eschatological ‘now’
inaugurated by Christ’s comingT
Dunn’s characterization of the Johannine understanding of worship in the
temple seems to me right in what it affirms and wrong in what it denies. On
the one hand, it is clearly true that “the worship made possible by Jesus ... is
the real worship for which God looks.” But the conclusion is not that
“worship does not depend on a particular sanctuary.” Quite clearly, it does. In
Jesus, protected sacred space and holy place are not somehow rendered
meaningless; precisely the opposite, for the “holy place” is Jesus himself. As
the locus of God’s presence, Jesus serves as the “place” of epiphany, and so
reidentifies the “place” of worship. 32 The holy ground of revelation becomes
the sanctified space of worship.
This view reflects John’s interpretation of the expectation (such as one finds
in 11Q Temple) that God will someday build the eschatological sanctuary.
Indeed, the Fourth Gospel makes clear that the eschatological hour has
struck: “But the hour is coming, and now is, when . . . those who worship [the
Father] must worship in spirit and truth.” The Johannine polemic with
respect to the temple does not so much contrast mo rites, or two religions, or
two forms of piety, but rather two eras and their respective manifestations of
the presence of God. True worship is thus not a matter of first discovering a
new object of worship, but is rather a reorientation of one’s worship through
and in the presence of God in the messianic temple, Jesus. What Richard
Bauckham says generally about early Christian worship applies also to John:
“The widespread views that Jesus was a radical critic of traditional Jewish
worship, that early Christianity did not have a cult in the proper sense of the
term, and that Christianity eliminated the usual distinction between the
sacred and the profane, are exaggerated claims based on modern theological
biases with tenuous historical support in early Christian literature.”^
Indeed, a close examination of the Gospel leads to a somewhat more
nuanced understanding of the arguments regarding worship in the Fourth
Gospel: The Gospel is not a “radical critic of traditional Jewish worship” so
much as it is a critic of the failure to recognize the eschatological hour and the
way in which worship is appropriately offered in that hour. And insofar as it
understood Jesus to be the manifestation of God’s glory and presence, early
Christianity validates “sacred space,” while nevertheless relocating it. The
3* The Partings of the Ways, 93-94.
v See Ernst Haenchen, A Commentary on the Gospel of John, 2 vols., (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1984), 1:222.
33 Anchor Bible Dictionary, s.v. “Worship.”
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
270
symbols of Judaism which are used to explicate his identity are therefore taken
up into the person of Jesus, the Messiah of Israel.
Jesus, Passover, and the Worship of God
Bauckham’s contention that early Christianity did have a cult leads us to
cast a quick glance at John’s treatment of Passover, one of the major festivals
of first-century Judaism and of symbolic importance to the Gospel of John,
particularly as it lies behind the account of the feeding miracle in John 6.
Specifically, I want to suggest that just as the Gospel of John “relocates”
sacred space in Jesus, so too it re-envisions Passover as God’s saving work
through the person of Jesus.
The Johannine treatment of the festivals has provided some of the most
important data for christologically focused readings of the Gospel which
emphasize discontinuity with Judaism. We may recall some of the statements
quoted earlier: “All previous religious institutions, customs and feasts lose
meaning in [Jesus’] presence”; “Jesus supersedes the great pilgrim festivals; he
fulfills the symbolism of the feast of tabernacles . . . Jesus fulfills and thus
supersedes the purity regulations of Judaism. . . . In Jesus the Messiah the old
Temple and cult has been rendered redundant”; and, “Jesus even replaced the
Sabbath, Passover, Feast of Booths, and Feast of Dedication.”
Before proceeding further, note the awkwardness of such statements,
which, for example, in contrasting Jesus with Passover, contrast a person with a
festival, something that people do in order to commemorate something which
has happened or which has been done by someone else. One can imagine a
comparison between two figures, such as Moses and Jesus, or between two
festivals, such as the Passover celebration and the Lord’s Supper, but to argue
that Jesus replaces Passover would be analogous to arguing that the Lord’s
Supper replaces Moses. All analogies break down; this one, it seems to me, has
been running on empty for a long time .
Moreover, in the statements just cited, it was asserted that “Jesus super-
sedes the great pilgrim festivals.” If the feast of Passover commemorates
God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt and God’s leading of the people
through the wilderness, then it makes little sense to speak of Jesus as
“superseding” or “replacing” either God’s activity or Israel’s remembrance of
it. More precisely, the contrast lies on the one hand between God’s saving
action in the deliverance from Egypt, the provision in the wilderness, and the
giving of the Law at Sinai; and, on the other, God’s saving action in the
deliverance, provision, and teaching now offered through Jesus Christ, who is
the bread of life.
WORSHIP IN JOHN 271
“Bread” and “life” are key themes in John 6. As is often pointed out, the
Law was sometimes symbolized by manna, w Bread itself was a symbol for the
nourishment as provided by the Law, and therefore the bread sent from
heaven, the manna, served aptly as a symbol for the Law. It is then but a short
step to conceiving of wisdom, sometimes equated with Torah or viewed as
embodied in it, as providing nourishment or inviting people to her feastT
Even as the Law was given at Sinai, and as wisdom accompanied and guided
the Israelites all along their pilgrimage towards the promised land (Wis.
10-1 1), so now Jesus, the living bread, provides the sustenance for eternal life.
The exodus, with its miraculous feedings in the wilderness and the giving of
the Law thus prefigures God’s act of deliverance through the Messiah, Jesus. 36
But Jesus neither replaces nor displaces that earlier act of God. John’s
presentation of Passover assumes that God did indeed act to deliver, sustain,
and guide Israel in the wilderness. John 6 strikes the note of finality and
fulfillment with Jesus’ promise that God is now providing food that leads to
life rather than death in the wilderness (6:27, 33, 35, 47-51, 51-58). In this
hour, God renews the covenant (6:44-46) and gives the gift of faith (6:29, 36,
40), so that those on the journey may not grumble as did the faithless
wilderness generation. Just as God sustained the life of the people of Israel in
the wilderness, so now God provides through the “true bread from heaven”
the “bread of life.”
The juxtaposition of these two life-giving acts of God is not merely a
heuristic device, as though the first Passover provided a template which could
simply be discarded once it had been grasped that salvation is now accom-
plished in Jesus. To be sure, the stakes in John 6 are high. Specifically, what is
at stake in the argument of John 6 is the recognition and acknowledgment of
God’s activity in Jesus, construed in terms of God’s working (6:29), provision
of bread and life (6:32-33, 50-51, 57), and teaching (6:44-45). In Jesus, the
eschatological hour has struck, with the result that the salvation of God has
34 Mek. on Ex. 1 2:17; see esp. Bruce J. Malina, The Palestinian Manna Tradition (Leiden:
Brill, 1968).
35 Deut. 8:3; Isa. 55:10-11; Sir. 15:3; Wis. 16:20, 26; Gen. Rah. 70:5 (on Gen. 28:20),
which quotes Prov. 9:5. The midrash on Ex. 16:4 combines God’s promise of the “bread
from heaven” with the invitation of wisdom to “Come, eat of my bread,” found in Prov. 9:5,
thus at least insinuating the identification of manna and wisdom. In more than one place,
Philo allegorizes the manna as the divine gift of wisdom; see Mat. 44 §§259-260; Her. 39
§ 1 9 1 -
36 The extravagant provision for the 5000 calls to mind promises of the messianic age, and
the feeding itself suggests the return of the treasury of manna from on high in the age to
come (2 Ap. Bar 29:6-30; 1 En. 10:19). bee Bertil Gartner, John 6 and the Jewish Passover,
ConNT 17 (Lund: Gleerup, 1959), 14-20; Brown, John, 1:265; Malina, The Palestinian
Manna Tradition, 91-93; Hengel, “The Dionysiac Messiah,” in Studies in Early Christology,
315-16.
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
come to its fullness. Eschatology inevitably assumes some discontinuity
between past and present, or present and future. But the discontinuity does
not eradicate all continuity, because the eschatological activity is always
ultimately lodged in the one life-giving God. Just as Israel’s God is one God,
so the life-giving work of God is one story. In John 6, then, the emphasis falls
first on the continuity of the narrative of God’s redeeming work from Moses
to Jesus, and then on the discontinuity brought about by the striking of the
eschatological hour. Consequently, to assert that in Jesus’ presence all Jewish
festivals lose their meaning is to misinterpret the character of Johannine
polemic. Jesus does not replace the Jewish festivals, and neither does God’s
deliverance “replace” the deliverance of the exodus from Egypt. Rather, the
festivals of Israel, which present and re-present that narrative of God’s saving
wrork, are taken up into those Christian festivals which celebrate the
continuation of that narrative. More sharply than in the Synoptics, the
interpretation of the Lord’s Supper in John finds its meaning in Israel’s
Passover.
The Living God and the Polemic Regarding Idolatry
We have looked briefly at temple and Passover and the polemic associated
with them in the Fourth Gospel, themes which aptly illustrate Barrett’s point
that the Gospel’s “christocentricity is theocentric.” For if Jesus is indeed the
true temple, what is at stake is God’s presence, glory, and dwelling in him; and
if he is the living bread of heaven, it is God who provides it. The more that is
at stake in the christological symbol, the more dependent it is upon a
theological framework. This point is further made by the Gospel’s use of the
phrase the “living God,” in its argument for understanding the manifestation
and worship of God in and through Jesus. As noted earlier, the epithet “living
God” was often used in biblical and post-biblical polemic in attacks on pagan
idol worship. But it is once again the Dead Sea Scrolls which show' how that
same basic polemic could be used against one’s own fellow Jews. The Rule of
the Community , for example, dictates that the priests and Levites shall
pronounce this curse: “Cursed by the idols which his heart reveres, is the one
who enters this covenant leaving his guilty obstacle in front of himself to fall
over it” (iQS 2:11-12). Those of the lot of Belial stray “from following God
on account of [their] idols” (iQS 2:16-17). Again the document speaks of the
spirit within the sons of truth which “detests all unclean idols” (iQS 4:5).
Those outside the covenant community are said to stray from following God
(2:16); they will be consumed with “everlasting destruction” (2:15). Such a
one “will not become clean by the acts of atonement . . . Defiled, defiled shall
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WORSHIP IN JOHN
he be all the days he spurns the decrees of God.” We have here traditional
polemic against idol worship applied to those who do not adhere to the ways
and customs of the Community (but cf. i iQTemple 2.1-15, 62.13-16). Such
polemic is even used against would-be members of the community, whose
insincerity and lack of genuine repentance prohibit them from becoming true
members of the community. And yet while the Scrolls speak of these fellow
Israelites as “sons of darkness” and as belonging to the lot of Belial, and speak
of their sins in terms of idolatry, nevertheless the same Scrolls do not rouse
these so-called “apostates” to worship the living God. The Qumran commu-
nity may have summoned fellow Israelites to appropriate ways of worshiping
God, and to membership within the holy community, but they do not need to
argue about the proper object of worship, which can be taken for granted.
Whatever else they may be, fellow Israelites are not crass idolaters.
By the time of the writing of the New Testament, “the living God” had
become a standard designation for God (Mt. 26:63; Heb- 3:12; 9:14; 10:31;
12:22; 16:16). There is but one explicit parallel in the Fourth Gospel, in the
epithet the “living Father” (6:57). The reason for its absence is near to hand:
the term “living God” generally occurs in either polemical contexts, in attacks
on the worship of false gods or the idols of pagans, or in paraenetic contexts to
encourage gentile converts to hold fast to the one true God. John’s Gospel
lacks such an emphasis because its argument is neither a polemic against
idolatry nor an exhortation against turning back to paganism.
Within the Gospel of John, the commonplace that God is the living or
life-giving God, functions as a warrant for claims about the life-giving work of
Jesus. Particularly in chapter five, with the healing of the man at the pool in
Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, Jesus is presented as arguing that he works even
as God works: that is, he does the life-giving work reserved for God on the
Sabbath day. This declaration alludes to the argument— found, for example,
in Philo and rabbinic writings — that although God ceased creative work on
the Sabbath, God did not cease from work that sustained the creation. 37 Even
on the Sabbath, God gives life to the world. Thus, says Jesus, “My Father is
working and I am working still.” It is the character and prerogative of God
alone to give life, but Jesus exercises those powers as he bestows life. To some
extent, then, it can be said that whereas the Synoptic Gospels present Jesus as
justifying violations of Sabbath law, the Fourth Gospel actually presents Jesus
as keeping the Sabbath — but keeping it as God keeps it, by engaging in
v See the discussion and references in C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel
(Cambridge, UK: University Press 1965), 320-23; Barrett, The Gospel of According to St.
John, 256.
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
2 74
properly divine life-giving work. Thus, this discourse, which argues that Jesus
exercises God’s prerogative to give life, does so by defending the Son’s
dependence and obedience on the Father: “the Son can do nothing on his
own” (5:19). The argument for the Son’s dependence on the Father is an
argument for the unity of their work. Ultimately it is an argument for the
unity of God.
The assertion that God gives life through Jesus resonates with those Jewish
texts which argue against idolatry on the grounds that such worship confuses
the Creator, the giver of life, with that which is mortal, and worships that
which was created by human hands rather than that which is uncreated. Not
surprisingly, from the very beginning of the Gospel, the Logos, incarnate as
Jesus of Nazareth, is aligned with the life-giving Creator: “All things were
made through him” (1:3); “in him was life” (1:4); “the world was made
through him” (1:10). The Word is the means through which God created life.
Not only so, but the Word participates in or partakes of the unique life-giving
powers of God in an unparalleled manner: “Just as the Father has life in
himself, so he has granted to the Son to have life in himself’ (5:26). Clearly,
the Gospel predicates life-giving powers of Jesus not simply to attribute to
him the highest possible status, but also to show the necessary unity of the
work of Jesus and God in giving life, and to align itself with monotheistic
faith, which assumes the unity of the creation and its source in the One God.
Just as we earlier argued that the Fourth Gospel’s treatments of festivals
indicates not that Jesus somehow “replaces” them, but that he is the locus and
mode of God’s presence, and also of the worship of God, so here we see that
Jesus becomes the agent and mode of God’s life-giving work. This theological
point has the most far-reaching implications for re-centering the worship of
God.
III. Summary: The Worship of God in the Fourth Gospel
The argument in the Fourth Gospel about true worship of God stands
somewhere between the extremes found in Jewish polemic. No charge of
idolatry or blasphemy is leveled by the Gospel against “the Jews.”!8
Furthermore, neither of the two charges leveled against idolaters — that they
worship that which is made by human hands, and that they exchange the
created for the Creator— characterizes John’s argument regarding the “true
worship” of God. Nor, for that matter, is such rhetoric apparently typical of
38 The charge of blasphemy is, of course, leveled against Jesus by the Jews; 5:18; 10:32-39;
I9:7-
WORSHIP IN JOHN
275
the Jews’ criticisms of Jesus and his followers. The Gospel’s only censure
pertaining to the means, mode, or place of worship as wrell to the object of
worship, is leveled against the Samaritans who worship “what they do not
know.” Jews, by contrast, worship “what [they] know.”
In short, the polemic of the Gospel, particularly as it has to do with
worship, depends on the fact that it can be assumed that Jesus and his
adversaries are talking about the same God, but that they differ over how and
where God’s presence is manifested and what that implies for the worship of
God. The Gospel assumes that God’s presence is manifested in the temple —
now, however, re-construed as Jesus himself, wrho is remembered in the
Christian “Passover” as the life-giving bread. Therefore, John argues that
worship ought to be directed to God in the realm of that temple, in ways
which remember the deeds of God through Jesus, and by directing honor to
the one who gives life through Jesus. While the Fourth Gospel speaks
absolutely— the Jews of the Fourth Gospel have never seen God, have never
heard God, and have never known God — these absolute statements mask the
extensive common ground between Jesus and “the Jewrs.”39
This common ground is only further mapped when we observe that,
according to John, Jesus’ own disciples have never seen God either. In fact, no
one in the Gospel sees God — except the Son, who makes him known (1:18;
6:45-46). Because Jesus is primarily the means, mode, and place of divine
revelation, to “see him” is to “see the Father,” an assertion which in no way
predicates an identity of, or equivalence between, these two figures, but rather
assumes the comprehensive revelatory role of the Son. The images used to
interpret his significance focus on Jesus’ role as the means of revelation and
salvation (e.g., wisdom, word, lamb, bread, light); on his role as the place or
locale of revelation (the heavenly ladder, the temple); or, on various agents (e.g.,
Moses, Messiah, Son of Man, the Prophet) who mediated the message and
judgments of God to the people. Together these images conflate the roles of
the mediator, the agent, and the means through which God is made known
and manifested, in the person of Jesus. Never do these means or intermediary
figures take the place of God: the temple is not worshiped; Moses and the
Prophet are commissioned and empowered by God; and, w hile wisdom and
word may impart God’s very thought, they are always explicitly expressions
derived from God.
The concentration of all these revelatory entities in the person of Jesus is an
39 D. E. Aune comments, “Though Christians worship the same God as Jews, the role of
Christ in defining God is an essential and distinctive feature of Christian worship.” Anchor
Bible Dictionary, s.v. “Worship, Early Christian.”
2-j6
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
argument for the singularity and unity of the mediator and, hence, an
argument for the unity of God. Even as Philo and Josephus ground the
universal demand for worship of God in the unity of the one true God, so
John grounds the all-encompassing role of Jesus’ mediating work in the unity
of God. Means, place, and time of revelation come together in the person of
Jesus, and the concentration of all these functions in the person of Jesus
depends upon the assumption of the unity of God. The fundamental
assumption of the unity of God is thus ultimately the basis for the argument
that the presence of God is manifested fully in Jesus, and that the life which
Jesus offers is the very life of God. Such an argument is comparable to, if not
directly derived from, the Jewish arguments for one temple as fitting for the
worship of the one God.
To see Jesus as the means of genuine worship in the Fourth Gospel is one
aspect of John’s “agency Christology,” and coheres with those christological
affirmations which designate him as “the Word” and Son of God, which
speak of his union with and dependence on God, and which argue that he
manifests God’s glory. All these formulations underscore Jesus’ role as the
means of revelation and salvation. Such arguments also provide the basis for
what Christians came to understand as the Trinity. Consistent with other
formulations in the New Testament, the Son is the means of creation, the
means of revelation, the means of God’s manifestation and presence. Because
the Son is the means through which the one God creates the world, so he is
also the comprehensive “means” through which worship is to be offered to
the one true and living God.
Popular misconceptions notwithstanding, trinitarian formulas arise not
from somehow “elevating” Jesus to the status of divinity, as though the
problem were getting him “high” enough, and as though the ultimate
christological question was “how high is he?” Rather, trinitarian formulations
rest ultimately on those statements which affirm the comprehensive manifes-
tation of God through and in the Son. Even the distinctive Johannine
confession of the Word as “God” does not lead to a different conclusion, for
the designation of the Word as “God” likely points, as it does in Philo, to the
way in which the unseen God is nevertheless genuinely manifested or “seen”
as the “Logos.” The Logos is the visible manifestation of deity. In like
manner, the Fourth Gospel asserts that God cannot be seen — not by anyone,
except the Son, who has made him known and who himself reveals, manifests,
and embodies the Father. In that sense, he is truly “God.” The issue is not
whether he is “equal” to God in the sense of sharing the essence or having as
high a status, but whether his deeds and life genuinely and comprehensively
WORSHIP IN JOHN 277
mediate the life of God. Thus, the charge that Jesus “makes himself equal to
God” could be dismissed on the grounds that, on the one hand, Jesus does not
make himself anything! But, on the other hand, Jesus is “equal to God” insofar
as and because he mediates God’s presence and offers the very life of God.
Although the emphasis on Jesus as mediator is often decried as a “functional
Christology,” this emphasis alone provides the basis for Trinitarianism rather
than tritheism.
While it may be appear to be honoring to Jesus, then, to extol the Gospel as
christocentric, the Gospel itself demands that its Christology be set within the
context of theology, of thinking about God. The solution therefore is not to
try to “strike a balance” between Christology and theology, as though these
were two fundamentally different or even opposing enterprises which one
needs to weigh somehow on the scales of theological justice. The Gospel’s
theocentricity can encompass its christocentricity, but it cannot work the other
way. I have tried to argue tonight that in the Fourth Gospel it does not work
the other way.
At the outset of this lecture, I suggested that a close reading of selected
relevant passages would lead to greater exegetical precision about the
Gospel’s treatment of such themes and institutions as purity, the temple, and
Passover. Such precision would show that the Fourth Gospel does not reject
any of these Jewish practices and institutions out of hand. Rather, they are
encompassed by means of the /Geological assumption that in the eschatological
hour God’s presence and salvation are manifested through Jesus, the Messiah
of Israel, through whom God brings Israel’s hopes to fullness. On this reading
of the Gospel, we would be led to rethink some commonly held assumptions
about the Fourth Gospel, including the assumption that the Gospel repudi-
ates Jewish institutions and practices by means of its “replacement theology,”
an assumption which seems to have become virtually axiomatic in Johannine
studies today. We would also be led to rethink the assumption that the Gospel
is “christocentric” and be forced to abandon that characterization as a grid by
which exegetical conclusions are predetermined.
Finally, we return to the quotations from C. K. Barrett, with which I began:
“There can be no doubt then that for John the historical figure of Jesus was
central for his understanding of God; central, but not final. . . . There could
hardly be a more Christocentric writer than John, yet his very Christocentric-
ity is theocentric.” Such formulations are not merely another instance of the
scholarly predilection for slicing hairs ever thinner. Rather, they get at
something crucial to the Gospel, namely, that the Gospel is “writing about,
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
and directing our attention to, God. ”4° Far from demoting Jesus, the
argument for theocentricity rather raises the stakes. The threat of John’s
Gospel came not because he had excavated a broad ugly ditch between Jesus
and Judaism, or between church and synagogue — but because in portraying
Jesus as the manifestation of the presence of God, he surely drew a line in the
sand.
4° Barrett, “Christocentric or Theocentric?” 363. See also the comments by Dermot
Lane, The Reality of Jesus: An Essay in Christology (Dublin: Veritas, 1975), 142: “1 he ultimate
purpose of christology is to illuminate our experience and understanding of the mystery of
God. Christology if it is to achieve this goal must be theocentric.”
Faith and Identity in
Nisei Self-Narratives*
by Peter Yuichi Clark
AMONG the many diverse populations currently described by the umbrella
term “Asian Pacific American” are almost 848,000 Japanese Americans
(about 0.3% of the total United States population). This group has been
represented in the U.S. in large numbers since the 1890s, and their history —
like that of many other minority groups — is one of community" building and a
striving to claim civil rights guaranteed under the constitution, despite many
incidents of racial prejudice and institutionalized discrimination. This particu-
lar population, which endured a long internment by the federal government
during the Second World War, identifies itself by using generational catego-
ries (Issei for first-generation immigrants, Nisei for their children, Sansei for
their grandchildren, and so on). Because many of the Nisei spent their
childhood or early adulthood as internees, their experience as U.S. citizens is
distinctive and yet can inform us about Asian-Pacific-American identity,
culture, society, and faith. In this chapter we will look at the recollections of a
particular group of Nisei who embraced the Christian faith and discover three
themes that undergird their religious experience: the centrality of a diaspora
community, the nurturing of endurance in suffering, and a conviction of
divine Providence viewed through a Japanese cultural lens. These themes are
interwoven in a way that reiterates the predominantly communal focus of
Nikkei [Japanese Americans] as well as of other Asian-Pacific-American
ethnic groups. Furthermore, from a developmental-psychosocial perspective,
the spiritual journeys of these Nisei illustrate some of the rhythmic tension
that psychologist Erik Erikson theorizes is characteristic of people’s aging
The Rev. Peter Yuichi Clark is a doctoral
candidate at Emory University in Atlanta ,
Georgia , and General Staff Support Chap-
lain at Emory University Hospital. He
delivered this lecture , here revised for pub-
lication, on February 19, 199 7, at Prince-
ton Theological Seminary , to mark the
fifty-fifth anniversary of the signing of
Executive Order 9066 by President Fran-
klin D. Roosevelt, authorizing the removal
of over 100,000 persons of Japanese ances-
try to internment camps and relocation
centers.
* I am grateful to Timothy S. Tseng, Sang Hyun Lee, Henry Leathern Rietz, Mari
Kim-Shinn, Andrew Wertheimer, and David Yoo for their support and my colleagues in
the Emory University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Person,
Community, and Religious Practices, for their suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay.
280
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
years — dancing between endurance and resistance and fatalism and hope, or
as Erikson himself phrases it, “integrity versus despair.”
Broadening our focus, I believe these Nisei’s stories tell us something about
how religious affiliation and commitment can serve as a sustaining and
(potentially) transforming influence in Asian-Pacific-American people’s lives,
especially when experiencing oppressive situations, and they tell us something
about how Asian-Pacific-American communities preserve their history and
culture. To hear these insights, though, requires us to pay attention to the way
that these people tell their stories; we must be sensitive to how those
narratives express their selves and to how they affect us as listener-recipients
of their stories. As Paul Ricoeur reminds us, narratives structure time and
make it human; so we will seek to share their lives-in-time and, I hope,
thereby experience an ensouled encounter.
The stories on which we will focus here are the self-narratives of Japanese
Americans interviewed by the Nisei Christian Oral History Project between
1981 and 1990. This project, undertaken for the Northern California Japa-
nese Christian Church Federation (NCHOP, known colloquially as the
Dome!) and the Japanese Presbyterian Conference, has collected currently
over 200 oral histories of elderly Nisei and has presented edited transcriptions
of thirteen such narratives in two volumes entitled Nisei Christian Journey : Its
Promise and Fulfillment d For several reasons, these narratives should not be
construed as offering a representative sample of Nisei. The participants were
all members of mainline Protestant congregations in northern California, and
many of them were recommended to the NCOHP committee for interview-
ing. All of the participants were retired from their vocational careers, and
most of these people had been involved in either the petit-bourgeois eco-
nomic niche or the human-service professions. The committee edited the
interviews for publication, deleting references with unflattering (or poten-
tially libelous) overtones about living persons, but it is unclear what else has
been omitted. Further, certain aspects of the data gathering process are not
explained in the text: for example, the interviews were structured to elicit
chronologically driven narratives, and they were conducted in English by one
of eight interviewers, who were usually known by the participants. Neverthe-
less, while it appears that these interviews were gathered and selected without
adhering to strict ethnographic methods, I believe that through a qualitative
content analysis they can offer us valuable insights about the life events,
1 Nisei Christian Oral History Project, Nisei Christian Journey: Its Promise and Fulfillment ,
2 vols. (Monterey: Japanese Presbyterian Conference and the Northern California Japanese
Christian Church Federation, 1988, 1991). Subsequent references to these hooks will use
the abbreviations “NCJi” and “NCJ2” and page numbers.
FAITH AND IDENTITY IN NISEI SELF-NARRATIVES 281
sociopolitical settings, and relational constellations of Japanese people in
America.
For many of the interviewees, their early childhood was marked by the
awareness that they were seen as different because of their ethnic origin. The
awareness emerged through a variety of events, some rather simple and stark.
Koji Murata,1 2 for example, remembers that
The YMCA, even though it was a Christian organization, did not allow the
Japanese to swim in the pool. They finally set aside a special time for us. I
think it was before 7:00 a.m. and after 9:00 p.m. on Saturday nights. We
used to go because we loved to swim. I remember swimming in the YMCA
pool Saturday nights and as they started to drain the water, the water would
go down. We didn’t think of it as being discriminated against. We thought,
“Wow, what a break to go swimming at the Y!” (NCJ2, 127)
Rhoda Akiko Iyoya recalls another incident involving her Depression-era
school:
I remember school plays and especially the school pageants. In those days
they did the Christmas plays in schools, the whole nativity scene and
everything. For the angels they would pick the blonde, blue-eyed girls and I
always wished I could be an angel, but I knew I never could be one because I
was not blonde and blue-eyed. I accepted it in the end. (NCJ2, 15)
Both tell these stories without much rancor. Yet, it is intriguing to note that
both of these people would recall incidents of discrimination in which
Christian symbols and institutions figured prominently. As we will see later,
this may underscore the power of organized religious expressions as a
legitimating force in society.
Experiencing racial discrimination, and adapting to its presence and effects,
thus became a way of life for Japanese Americans as it had for other
minorities. With the surprise bombing of the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor
on December 7, 1941, both Issei and Nisei feared that the racism would
intensify, that they would be blamed, that they would be harmed. All of the
participants remembered where they were that morning— in a manner similar
to recollections of the day that John F. Kennedy died — and they reported
feeling stunned. “I felt like somebody shot me,” Ichiro Yamaguchi said
(NCJ2, 80). Most Japanese Americans began hearing reports of Nikkei being
arrested and imprisoned for suspected espionage; some took those stories
1 Respondents in the NCOHP interviews were identified by their real names, anil I
follow that practice in this essay as well.
282
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
seriously and began making preparations. Osame Doi reports that “[w]e were
in constant fear that the FBI would raid our homes for supposed contraband
so Mama and Shuki had to dispose of any incriminating objects. Looking
back, we had nothing to hide, but out of fear, a sword was buried in the
backyard” (NCJi, 7).
Then came the signing of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, in
which President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the creation of restricted
military areas “from which any or all persons may be excluded” and ordered
that “to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom,
such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be
necessary.”} This order made possible the forced evacuation of 112,000
Japanese American people (almost two-thirds of whom were United States
citizens) from the West Coast to sixteen assembly centers and then to ten
relocation camps further inland.
For many of these people, the Internment experience was humiliating.
They were assigned numbers, loaded onto trains, moved to the camps, and
had to live in hastily converted stables or drafty barracks. There was little
privacy in living quarters or at toilets; “the standing joke,” Hatsune Helen
3 The full text of the paragraph from which this quotation is taken reads as follows:
“Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States,
and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the
Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time
designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or
desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the
appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be
excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave
shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military
Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to
provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation,
food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the
Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made,
to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or
locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney
General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the
responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in
respect of such prohibited and restricted areas.” See the Federal Register 7, no. 38 (February
25, 1942), 1407. President Gerald Ford officially proclaimed the order terminated on
February 19, 1976, the thirty-fourth anniversary of the order’s issuance. A reproduction of
the original order and other documents from the Internment period are available in Leona
Hiraoka and Ken Masugi, editors , Japanese- American Internment: The Bill of Rights in Crisis,
portfolio N61 (Amawalk, NY: Golden Owl, 1994). For background information on the
internment and redress issues, see Brian Niiya, editor, Japanese American History: An A-to-Z
Reference from 1868 to the Present, comp. Japanese American National Museum (New York:
Facts on File, 1993); Ronald T. Takalo, Strangers from a Different Shore: A Histoiy of Asian
Americans (New York: Little, Brown, 1989); and Roger Daniels, Sandra C. Taylor, and
Harry H. L. Kitano, eds., Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress, revised edition
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991).
FAITH AND IDENTITY IN NISEI SELF-NARRATIVES 283
Kitaji recalls, “was if you had to go to the latrine, you bowed to people as you
went to an unoccupied hole” (NCJ2, 102). Yet they summoned up their
creativity and sense of community in the camps, establishing schools, churches,
and other support organizations to improve life inside the fences. This does
not mean, however, that the Nisei simply accepted their lot. Several of the
participants reported feeling betrayed by the government: “The Constitution
stated the way America was supposed to be. I believed that America was
different, but I just lost respect for the government when it reacted the way it
did,” June Hisaye Toshiyuki declares (NCJi, 59). In one incident, Kimi
Sugiyama observes, “Somebody asked them [the soldiers], ‘What are you guys
doing up there?’ They said, ‘We’re protecting you.’ ‘If you’re protecting us,
aren’t those machine guns supposed to be facing outwards, not at us?’ That’s
when it scared me” (NCJ2, 68).
The humiliation of the internment provoked a sense of shame, which James
Fowler defines as “the awareness of the self as disclosed to others, or to the
self, as being defective, lacking, or inadequate.” The particular tone of shame,
though, was primarily of a type of ascribed shame “due to enforced minority
status.”1* During the war, Japanese Americans coped with this shame in several
ways. A few unsuccessfully sought legal redress in the federal courts, as in
Hirabayashi v. U.S. (1943) and Korematsu v. U.S. (1943, 1944). 5 Many, like
June Toshiyuki, decided that it was shikata ga nai—a situation that could not
be helped — and said, “OK, if this is our lot then let’s make the best of it”
(NCJi, 68). Others, though, decided to leave the camps, either to enlist in the
U.S. armed forces or to pursue their education in the Midwest or on the East
Coast, once these became possibilities. Yet those who left did so with a
distinct sense of responsibility to preserve the integrity of their ethnic group.
Royal Louis Manaka, who served with the highly decorated (and frequently
pummeled) U.S. Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Europe, real-
* James W. Fowler, Faithful Change: The Personal and Public Challenges of Postmodern Life
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 92, 119; Fumitaka Matsuoka, Out of Silence: Emerging
Themes in Asian American Churches (Cleveland: United Church Press, 1995), 102.
5 Gordon Kiyoshi Flirabayashi was convicted in 1942 for refusing to register for
evacuation and for curfew violations; Fred I'oyosaburo Korematsu was convicted in die
same year for violating the military order that excluded persons of Japanese ancestry from
designated areas. Both cases were appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which
upheld the convictions. See Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943), and Korematsu
v. United States, 319 U.S. 432 (1943) and 323 U.S. 214 (1944); the texts of these Supreme
Court opinions are available on the World Wide Web at <http://www.findlaw.com/
casecode/supreme.htmI>. Korematsu’s conviction was vacated in 1983 and Hirabayashi’s
convictions were vacated in 1986 and 1988 on the granting of writs of error coram nobis
(literally, “error before us”), a legal process that can be invoked only after defendants have
been convicted and released from custody and only to raise errors of fact that were
knowingly withheld by prosecutors from judges and defense attorneys.
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
ized that he and his comrades were “the tip of the arrow” in most of their
military operations, and he feels that “the 442nd was the main factor in
making the nation realize that the Japanese Americans were true American
citizens” (NCJi, 83).6 His service helped bring honor to himself and his
community. This same sense of dual motivation — to improve one’s own lot
and to advance the cause of Japanese-American people— underscores Osame
Doi’s account of her placement by the American Friends Sendee Committee
at the Lankenau Hospital School of Nursing: “They were willing to accept a
Japanese American student for the first time. I was told that if it worked out,
they would accept others. There were reasons to excel, not only for myself,
but for other Nisei. It was good to see other Nisei in classes to follow”
(NCJi, 9). Both of these responses— military enlistment and educational
advancement— could be interpreted as ways of “saving face” and counteract-
ing shame personally and on behalf of one’s community.
Not surprisingly, both in this time of crisis and in the years that followed
the ending of the war and the closing of the internment camps, the Japanese-
American people turned to their religious faith for strength and wisdom.
Many Nisei Protestants attended church services organized within the camps;
and several participants remember encouraging words given by Caucasian
clergy to them. Nobuko Lillian Omi, for example, remembers a sermon by E.
Stanley Jones in which he used Isaiah 40:3 1 as his text and said: “Don’t let this
experience destroy you. Use it like an eagle to lift yourselves up. The eagle
doesn’t go against the storm clouds, it uses them to rise higher, giving it
strength and this is what you people will have to do so you won’t be
destroyed” (NCJi, 100). 7 Koji Murata found comfort in another hakujin
(literally, “white”) minister’s words: “He said, ‘Instead of cursing the dark-
ness, let’s brighten the room with candlelights like stars in the sky.’ I thought
6 This sentiment can be seen quite bluntly in the letter that an interned Japanese pastor
wrote to one of his parishioners in the army: “Dear Nobuo, You have dedicated yourself to
your country. It is a beautiful thing. I am proud of you. ... I am sure through your own
dedication you can understand the great meaning of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the
cross. He dedicated himself to the Kingdom of God just as you have dedicated yoursell to
the beautiful America that you hold in your heart. ... I want you to fight bravely for your
nation and for humanity, and if it is necessary, sacrifice yourself for your nation just as Jesus
Christ did on the cross for the Kingdom of God” (in Matsuoka, Out of Silence, 24). This
intersection of ethnic pride, Christian theology, and civil religion in America illustrates
what Fumitaka Matsuoka calls the “strange, painful, and seemingly contradictory” efforts
of Japanese-American Christians to preserve their identity as people of Japanese ancestry
and as full U.S. citizens.
i Dr. Eli Stanley Jones (1884-1973) was a Methodist missionary' to India and a prolific
author. He founded the Christian Ashram movement in India, was a frequent nominee for
the Nobel Peace Prize, and served as confidant for a number of world leaders including
Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Niemoller, Martin Luther King, Jr., and — somewhat ironically,
under these circumstances— Franklin D. Roosevelt.
FAITH AND IDENTITY IN NISEI SELF-NARRATIVES 285
that was wonderful that stars shine in the darkness of the sky. He urged us to
be like candles in the darkness, that we be the light bearers” (NCJ2, 131).
These words of consolation and encouragement were indeed helpful re-
sources for these Nisei. Yet they also can be heard in another way. As Max
Weber has taught us, efforts at theodicy serve not only to bolster people in the
non-privileged classes — in this case, the interned Nikkei — but also respond to
the “psychological need for reassurance as to the legitimacy or deservedness
of one’s happiness” among those in the privileged class.8 Thus these pastors’
religious affirmations, while offered (no doubt) with good intentions by the
clergy and received by these Nisei in the same manner, may have reinforced
the statuses held by both groups.
This is not to imply that religion, for the Nisei, became Marx’s opiate.
Indeed, if we observe the long-range impact of these people’s Christian faith,
we perceive an opposite trend toward activism (with a relentless drive for
survival as a distinct ethnic group) which helped fuel the intense forty-year
lobbying of the U.S. Congress to apologize and pay reparations to internees,
culminating in the passage of Public Law 100-383 (the Civil Liberties Act of
1 988). 9 The tenor of their faith involves several features, of which we will
briefly examine three: the centrality of community, their vision of God’s
presence amidst suffering, and the nature of divine Providence.
The first characteristic of Japanese-American Christian faith is its founda-
tion in communal experience. Much has been written about the ethnocultural
propensity of Japanese people to identify themselves closely with groups such
as stem families, prefectural associations, and work teams.10 Yet in insisting
that one’s fate is interwoven with the community’s, they have learned that
“salvation can be achieved only with others” or, as their Pure Land Buddhist
friends often say, “I take refuge in the Sangha ,” the community of believers.11
8 Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, trans. by Ephraim Fischoff (Boston: Beacon Press,
1963), 107.
9 Public Law 100-383 provided for individual reparation payments of $20,000 to each
surviving internee and an education fund of $1.25 billion. It was signed by President Ronald
Reagan on August 10, 1988, but the first redress payments were not made until October 9,
1990, during the Bush Administration. See U.S. Statutes at Large 102 (1990), 903-916, and
U.S. Code, supplement I, title 50 appendix, sections 1989b to i989b-9 (1988).
10 For example, see Chie Nakane, Japanese Society (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1970); Takeo Doi, The Anatomy of Dependence, rev. ed., trans. John Bester (Tokyo:
Kodansha, 1981); Stephen S. Fugita and David J. O’Brien, Japanese American Ethnicity: The
Persistence of Community (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991); and Sylvia Junko
Yanagisako, Transforming the Past: Tradition and Kinship among Japanese Americans (Stan-
ford: Stanford University Press, 1985).
11 The first quotation is from Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman
Ramos (New York: Seabury Press, 1970), 142; the other is one of the “Three Treasures”
regularly recited in congregational services by believers in the Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha
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Faith survives only when nurtured with others. Rhoda Iyoya arrives at this
conclusion through her musings on compassion: “As we share our lives with
others, they share theirs with us and in doing so we can support each other.
That’s what we mean by compassion and God’s love and God’s compas-
sion. . . . Life wasn’t meant to be neat and perfect. . . (NCJ2, 32). Using less
explicit theological language, physician Henry Hajime Kazato approaches this
theme by talking about church: “The thing that is very important to me is that
you get a feeling that it is your church and not just a church that I go to. It is
the church that I belong to and am a part of. Especially since my folks are gone
now, the church is in a sense a part of my family” (NCJ2, 50). The members of
the community are not perfect— as Jack Nishida phrased it, “the only person
who is religious [i.e., a “saint”] is the person in the pine box” (NCJi,
127) — but they are bound together in the on (mutual indebtedness)12 and amae
(dependence)'3 of community life, which for these Christians is nourished by
tradition. Most Japanese-American Buddhists are of this faith group, organized as the
Buddhist Churches of America on the U.S. mainland. “I take refuge in the Buddha” (i.e.,
Amida Buddha, who has promised to save all sentient beings) and “I take refuge in the
Dharrna" (the teaching that guides us toward birth in the Pure Land) are the other two
affirmations or “treasures” avowed. For BCA liturgical resources, see Carol J. Himaka, ed.,
Shin Buddhist Service Book (San Francisco: Buddhist Churches of America, 1994); for a
recent and accessible introduction to Jfodo Shinshu , see Kenneth K. Tanaka, Ocean: An
Introduction to Jodo-Shinshu Buddhism in America: A Dialogue with Buddhists and Others
(Berkeley: WisdomOcean, 1997).
12 On means “obligation, kindness,” and has the connotation of “indebtedness.” In her
post-war study ofjapanese culture, Ruth Benedict asserts that Japanese people feel that they
are part of a vertical chain of on that encompasses many blessings from various sources: life
(from one’s parents), good fortune or a successful harvest (from kami, gods or ancestral
spirits), employment (from the company and one’s supervisor), and national peace and
prosperity (from the emperor, the nation, the gods). On applies to all and because of its
nature cannot be fully repaid; thus the task of demonstrating one’s gratitude becomes a
perpetual moral duty. Yet anthropologist John Connor argues that Benedict’s understand-
ing of on is strongly affected by the feudalistic and authoritarian climate of prewar Japan,
and that Japanese Americans emphasize external obligations and duties much less than their
Japanese counterparts. See Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of
Japanese Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946), and John W. Connor, Tradition and
Change in Three Generations of Japanese Americans (Chicago-. Nelson-Hall, 1977), 107-110.
'J Amae is the emotional tendency to presume on another’s love, a “passive dependence,
or passive love, [that] manifests itself in the desire to be indulged by the object of amae,"
according to psychiatrist Takeo Doi in The Anatomy of Self: The Individual versus Society,
trans. Mark A. Harbison (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1985), 34. For critiques of Doi’s influential
views, see Alan Roland, “How Universal is Psychoanalysis? The Self in India, Japan, and the
United States,” in Culture and Self: Philosophical and Religious Perspectives, East and West, ed.
Douglas Allen (New York: Westview Press, 1997), 27-39; Hisa A. Kumagai, “A Dissection
of Intimacy: A Study of ‘Bipolar Posturing’ in Japanese Social Interaction— Amaeni and
Amayakasu, Indulgence and Deference,” Cultural Medicine and Psychiatry 5 (1981): 249-72;
Takie Sugiyama Lebra, “Self in Japanese Culture,” in Japanese Sense of Self, ed. Nancy R.
Rosenberger (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 105-120; Yasuhiko Take-
tomo, “ Amae as Metalanguage: A Critique of Doi’s Theory of Amae," Journal of the
American Academy of Psychoanalysis 14 (1986): 525-44; and Peter N. Dale, The Myth of
FAITH AND IDENTITY IN NISEI SELF-NARRATIVES 287
grace. This vision embraces not only the Nikkei, but also is opening toward
all, including those who are experienced as the oppressors. In the words of
Paul Nagano, an American-Baptist clergyman who ministered in the Poston
relocation center and is now director of the Council for Pacific Asian
Theology,
We have been placed in [an] internment camp. Our stories are full of
suffering and pain. And yet I am deeply convinced that we have to go
beyond rage, resentment and fear of those who placed us into such [a]
predicament. We all must live together. ‘4
The imagery that seems most apt here is that of the Israelite tribes being
taken into captivity. If we are the people of the diaspora , the people scattered
among potentially hostile strangers (quite literally for Japanese Americans,
since in many cities after the war they were unable or unwilling to reestablish
“Japantowns”), how do we. maintain our identity, our sense of who we are?
The response that these Nisei (and many other Asian Pacific Americans) have
made is by intentional involvement in ethnically-based social and cultural
institutions, such as the Domei churches and Pure Land Buddhist temples. '5
Though geographically dispersed, for these people the Japanese-American
Christian community affords them the opportunity to “sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land” (Ps. 137:4) and not forget “Jerusalem,” their ancestry and
heritage, even as they “seek the welfare of the city where I [God] have sent
you . . . for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jer. 29:7 ). The dilemma
now facing Japanese Americans and their churches (and other Asian Pacific
Japanese Uniqueness (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986). See also Frank A. Johnson’s
reformulation of Doi’s aniae theory in Dependency and Japanese Socialization: Psychoanalytic
and Anthropological Investigations into Amae (New York: New York University Press, 1993),
200-206.
14 Cited in Matsuoka, Out of Silence, 1 16. Cf. the argument made by Parker J. Palmer in
The Company of Strangers: Christians and the Renewal of America's Public Life (New York:
Crossroad, 1981).
'5 This inference finds some substantiation in anecdotal evidence. In my field research,
several Buddhist and Christian ministers serving Japanese-American congregations have
mentioned to me how Christian church members will miss their regular worship service to
help the Buddhist temple with its annual bazaar (and vice versa), sometimes with the
comment that “for most of my people, it’s more important to be Japanese American than it
is to be Buddhist [or Christian].” That comment would not be true of the NCOHP
interview participants, who all profess strong commitment to their Christian faith, but it
does seem to advance Paul Spickard’s point— not to mention Weber, Troeltsch, Geertz and
others— that these religious institutions help to maintain a distinct ethnic cultural commu-
nity and create, convey, or symbolize that shared culture to their adherents. See Paul R.
Spickard, Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformations of an Ethnic Group (New
York and London: Twayne Publishers and Prentice Hall, 1996), and cf. Brian Masaru
Hayashi, “For the Sake of Our Japanese Brethren”: Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism
amongthe Japanese of Los Angeles, iSp’p-ipqz (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
Americans also), as Paul Spickard has noted, is whether— as assimilation
grows with successive generations— these institutions can find interests and
concerns that will attract people, elicit their participation, and help continue
and strengthen the unique ethnicity that they celebrate.
The second theme involves the Nisei’s understanding of God’s presence
amid suffering. The Japanese- American Christians interviewed in the NCOHP
project often express not a desire to be released from pain and suffering—
shikata ga nai , after all — but rather a prayer for endurance and for an
awareness of God’s care. Jack Nishida understands his grief over his wife’s
death by thinking about the inevitability of pain in life: “I guess there is no
way to avoid pain in life. Otherwise we wouldn’t be human beings. If there was
no such thing as pain, we wouldn’t be human. We have pain because we are
human and pain is part of being alive” (NCJi, 129). Enduring the pain is
perceived by some Nisei Christians as part of their faith journeys, as implied
by Nobuko Omi’s story of her father’s death: “Rev. Kikuchi just happened to
come in as Papa was asking for him and said, ‘Mr. Kadowaki, this is your cross.
You have to bear it.’ ‘Amen,’ my father replied and clasped his hands.
Accepting his cross, he died very peacefully” (NCJi, 96). Even if the suffering
or pain provokes anger, there is the sense among some participants that such
anger cannot be expressed — perhaps because of the deeply embedded Japa-
nese cultural value of enryo or emotional reserve.16 June Toshiyuki, for
example, holds that all hardship has an educative function: “But He [God]
always sees us through. It cannot be punishment” (NCJi, 66). Rhoda Iyoya,
meanwhile, sounds afraid of either alienating God or losing her faith in the
aftermath of her son’s suicide: “My impulse was to be angry at God for having
this happen to me, and yet, through my life experience I felt, if I’m angry, if I
turn away, what have I got? I’ve got nothing! That’s really all I had. I was
stripped completely bare. God’s presence was the only thing I had” (NCJ2, 3 1).
Her voice echoes the ancient psalmist’s cry: “Do not cast me away from your
presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me” (Ps. 51:11). Both Iyoya
and Toshiyuki express a vital belief of the Christian faidi — that because of
the Incarnation God knows our pain and will not abandon us when we suffer.
Yet this tenet, as expressed and sincerely felt by the Nisei, may well be a
Christian accretion on the Buddhist-influenced understanding that all life is
16 Enryo is a Japanese word indicating polite restraint, refusal, or modesty that has
overtones of social control within the Japanese- American community. It prevents a person
from demanding or expecting too much of another, and it also holds in check a person’s
tendency to be openly emotional in public settings. For a Meadian discussion of the role
that enryo plays in the Nisei’s interpersonal relationships, see S. Frank Miyamoto, “Prob-
lems of Interpersonal Style among the Nisei,” Amerasia Journal 13 (1986-87): 29-45.
FAITH AND IDENTITY IN NISEI SELF -N A RR AT IVES 289
suffering and thus suffering is unavoidable unless and until enlightenment is
realized.17
The third theme builds on the previous two and is a response to the
question: So what is the relationship that these Christians enjoy with this
God? If Dave Yutaka Nakagawa’s experience is typical of this group, we might
find an important clue. Once when working with a youth at summer camp, he
said: “I realized that I am what I am because I know Christ as my Leader”
(NCJi, 27). The terminology of leadership is intriguing, given the fact that
today many Christian adherents speak of Jesus as “Lord” but seem nearly
oblivious to its governance connotations. Using the term “Leader” restores
the metaphor’s connotative power and elicits the speculative possibility that
Nisei Christians may have constructed a God-image akin to the daimyo of the
medieval samurai era, a feudal authority who protects his people and is
intimately related with them, even when his decisions defy comprehension — a
benevolent, if mysterious, divine Providence.18 I take this path based on the
suggestive force of the life of Japanese theologian Ebina Danjo (1856-1937),
who began his career as a samurai of the Yanagawa fief. When feudalism
collapsed in 1868, at the birth of the Meiji Restoration, he felt adrift:
I had firmly decided to “offer up” my life for him [the daimyo\. However,
the Yanagawa fief was lost, the castle burnt, and my young lord had been
killed. I felt terribly lonely. Because the young lord was dead, there was no
one to whom I could offer my life, and this was the essence of my loneliness.
To whom could I offer my life after this? '9
Thanks to an American schoolteacher, Ebina found a new object of loyalty in
Christ, a new daimyo , one to whom he could offer his life and prayers. My
suspicion is that these Nisei Christians, their fiefs lost and casdes burned by
government-endorsed racism, turned with vigor (like Ebina) toward their
divine dabnyo for strength and compassion in a desperate time. Such an
identification with a charismatic Leader, Freud and Erikson both would
observe, reinforces the bonds of community one feels with those others who
also swear fealty to Christ the daimyo.10 It also allows believers to identify with
'7 Cf. the argument of Shigeo H. Kanda in “Recovering Cultural Symbols: A Case for
Buddhism in the Japanese American Communities,” Journal of the American Academy of
Religion 46 (1978, supplement): 445-75.
18 On God-images see Ana-Maria Rizzuto, The Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic
Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
19 Cited in Robert N. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-traditionalist World
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 105.
20 See Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (192 1), in The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 1 8, ed. James Strachey et al.
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
that Leader’s vision, which in both the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels is a God
who champions the cause of the downtrodden and the oppressed and who
frees humans to seek justice for themselves and their neighbors. Thus, I would
argue that these Nisei Christians not only found comfort and assurance in
their theological tradition, but also (implicit in that tradition) the challenge
and empowerment to resist the injustices they suffered and to support the
redress effort.
Given these characteristics of their religious expressions, it appears that
these particular elders demonstrate an intriguing combination of resistance
and resignation, fatalism and hope which sounds reminiscent of the psychoso-
cial tension described in Erikson’s eighth developmental stage of integrity
versus despair. For Erikson, integrity involves “the acceptance of one’s one
and only life cycle and of the people who have become significant to it as
something that had to be and that, by necessity, permitted of no substitutions”
and that “an individual life is the accidental coincidence of but one life cycle
with but one segment of history, and that for [the individual] all human
integrity stands and falls with the one style of integrity of which he [or she]
partakes.”21 For these Nisei, this aspect of integrity captures both their sense
that they could not avoid having to live through discrimination and the
internment (it was shikata ga nai) and their conviction that they still could
decide how to respond to their situation, and they chose to do so with faith.
This faithful choice, made in adulthood and reflected upon in late adulthood,
seems to convey another aspect of Erikson’s paradigm — the interconnected-
ness of developmental crises and virtues with one another, that “at the end the
life cycle turns back on the beginnings” and mature faith is the offspring of
the hopefulness nurtured in childhood.22
The historical occurrence of the internment, and the decades of institution-
alized discrimination that preceded and followed it, also reveals what Erikson
calls the human tendency to create pseudospecies, the temptation to define
ourselves by considering “our” group— by whatever parameters we measure
ourselves — to be truly human and other groups as somehow subhuman. As
their civil rights were violated, their belongings sold, and their families
(London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1955), 69-143; and Erik H.
Erikson, The Life Cycle Completed: A Review (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 85-88.
21 Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), 1 39-140.
22 Erikson used the phrase “developmental crisis” to describe the various transitions that
he believed all people must negotiate in order to mature as human beings. By using the
word “crisis,” he is advocating a connotation similar to the pictographs that represent the
word in Chinese: that each developmental moment is significant and holds both “danger”
and “opportunity.” The quotation is from The Life Cycle Completed: A Review (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1982), 62.
FAITH AND IDENTITY IN NISEI SELF-NARRATIVES 291
sometimes separated, the Nisei experienced some of the effects of pseudospe-
ciation — highlighted by the fact that, while Executive Order 9066 could have
been interpreted so as also to relocate German and Italian Americans (peoples
who shared the ethnic heritage of many in the majority culture), their mass
relocation was never attempted. That the Nisei refused to let this incident be
forgotten testifies to their tenacity.23 It also is an invitation to the larger U.S.
culture to adopt a more inclusive sense of identity wherein the national motto
e pluribus unum could be reinterpreted (as Fumitaka Matsuoka has done) to
mean not “out of many, one” but rather “within one, many.”
Having attended to the life narratives of these Nisei, we must also note
what we did not hear in their stories. Aside from references to “after the war,”
none of the thirteen people interviewed and published mentioned either the
Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic bomb blasts. There is a silence that hangs over
this topic, one that feels similar to the silence that many Nisei have about their
internment experience. 223 I do not know whether it is actually due to the
participants’ reticence or perhaps because of editing considerations, so any
assertion I could make will be tenuous. However, I do wonder if we are not
witnessing here an instance of repression (as in Freud), psychic numbing (as in
Lifton), or a threat to integrity (as in Erikson) in which the fate that befell
their cousins in Japan is still too painful to fully face, or if perhaps it is that the
Nisei want so much to be accepted as Americans that they are reluctant to
criticize overtly an action perceived by many U.S. citizens of their generation
as the event that “ended the war.”25
This silence, and the various interpretations that can be imputed to it,
underscores an agenda that runs throughout these narratives. According to
the editors, the published volumes are meant as a “tribute to all the Nisei, and
in particular, the Nisei Christians, and will be of invaluable benefit to all who
read them” because “[e]ach life is a gem which reveals the struggles overcome
and insights gained” (NCJ2, 4-5). Hence it is easy to understand the editors’
23 One can see this tenacity embodied in the internment camp reunions that many
Japanese Americans attend faithfully, as well as in the current fundraising effort to build a
National Japanese American Memorial in Washington, DC, and the oral history projects
currendy under way in several U.S. cities.
24 See Donna K. Nagata, “The Japanese American Internment: Exploring the Transgen-
erational Consequences of Traumatic Stress,” Journal of Traumatic Stress 3 (1990): 47-69.
23 See Freud, “On Repression” (1915), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud , vol. 14, ed. James Strachey et al. (London: Hogarth Press and the
Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1957), 143-58; Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of
Hiroshima (New York: Random House, 1967); Erikson, Childhood and Society, 2nd ed. (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1963), 247-74; Erikson, Joan M. Erikson, and Helen Q. Kivnick,
Vital Involvement in Old Age: The Experience of Old Age in Our Time (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1986), 53-73.
292
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
hesitancy to include anything accusatory from the interviews, and perhaps it
may explain why Hiroshima is unmentioned. For these stories are meant to
convey both the inspiration and the moral agenda of a people, almost as if to
say: “As we have survived in the past, so we will survive in the future.”
Yet the words (and perhaps the silence, too) do illustrate the challenge and
tension of beingjapanese American— with a major dimension of the challenge
involving the discernment of what such an identity means. As Sylvia Yanag-
isako points out, the Nisei are constantly negotiating and compromising
between values, norms, folk models and cultural orders symbolized by the
terms “Japanese” and “American,” especially around issues of marriage and
kinship relations. They live with this cultural dissonance and they strive to
make it creative and vital, defining and structuring their identities and faiths
in ways that enhance their existence as individuals rooted in communities.
Having said all this, what can we learn from the experience of these older
Japanese Americans that can inform our understanding of present-day Asian-
Pacific-American communities?
First, I believe that while the Nisei’s history of internment was and is
distinctive, their experience does bear some parallel to the lives of people in
other minority groups. These Christians’ style of faith connects with other
“religions of the oppressed,26 I would suggest, in that there is a resonance in
the way that oppressed people of faith respond, through a combination of
hopeful endurance and resistance. I believe that oppressed people of religious
conviction, whether they are Asian Pacific American or not, cope by employ-
ing a blend of resistance (either subtle or dramatic) and endurance, and that
both responses are necessary because they balance each other. Endurance
alone can collapse into complacency and despair (“there’s nothing we can do
about it, so we just have to put up with it”), as well as the unconscious
adoption of the oppressor’s prejudices by the oppressed. Resistance alone can
collapse into resentment and its own pseudospeciation: “They’re a bunch of
racists, and we’re better off without them.” Paired together as a rhythm of
action, though, resistance and endurance can foster a religious vision (and a
realistic hope) that the present, unjust circumstances can be survived and that,
further, they can be changed toward the common good. I am therefore
asserting the power of religion not only as a voice that can legitimate current
sociopolitical, economic, and cultural circumstances, but also as a sustaining
influence that can concurrently empower people to work toward transforma-
tion.
26 The phrase is Vittorio Lanternari’s, from his book of the same title (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1963).
FAITH AND IDENTITY IN NISEI SELF-NARRATIVES 293
Second, as Japanese Americans have revealed an often neglected (or, until
recently, repressed?) aspect of mainstream American cultural history— that is,
the vigor of government-sanctioned institutional racism — the question arises:
What can these Nisei teach Asian Pacific Americans (and, indeed, all of us)
about creatively facing the issues of race and ethnicity, not to mention the
perils of a postmodern age in which we wrestle with multiple identities? One
such lesson can be found in the fact that these characteristically reserved
Nisei — “the quiet Americans,” in Bill Hosokawa’s phrase— were willing to
speak out and offer us a public “life review.”2? Their willingness is instructive
of the way in Asian-Pacific-American communities are primarily preserving
their history and culture: through “grassroots” efforts of oral histories, artistic
expression28 (witness the power, for example, of Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan in
describing the situation of Japanese Canadians during the war), and commu-
nity-mobilized initiatives. The academic discipline of Asian-American studies
is quickly growing and assisting in this effort to sustain and understand the
uniquenesses of Asian-Pacific-American ethnic groups, but even so it is the
efforts of those communities themselves that will ensure the survival of their
particular values and cultures. Perhaps this awareness will help us as Ameri-
cans to move away from the image of the “melting pot” and move toward an
image of a “banquet table,” with the diverse flavors of many cultures and
peoples to know and to celebrate, as we each seek to discover and claim the
heritages that help shape our lives, perspectives, and destinies.
27 The concept of “life review” is from Robert N. Butler’s seminal article “The Life
Review: An Interpretation of Reminiscence in the Aged,” Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of
Interpersonal Processes 26 (1963): 65-76.
28 By “artistic expression,” I do not mean to imply only professionally created works. For
example, see Richard Chalfen’s Turning Leaves: The Photograph Collections of Two Japanese
American Fatuities (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991) for an analysis of
two families’ photographic collections and the impact that amateur family photography has
had in preserving Japanese-American cultural history and identity.
BOOK REVIEWS
Charry, Ellen T. By the Renewing of You r Minds: The Pastoral Function of
Christian Doctrine. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp.
264. $45.00.
Ellen Charry’s By the Renewing of Your Minds makes a striking contribution
to contemporary theological discussion. Since the seventeenth century, Prot-
estant theology has tended more and more to take its cues from its cultural
environment, seeking to show that it is an intellectually legitimate and
humanly useful discipline by standards that are not necessarily its own. That
effort can hardly be considered a waste of time, but it has all too often
deflected theology into what might be called second-order discourse, i.e.,
discourse about itself (its methods of inquiry, the functions of its doctrines, its
place in the wider universe of academic and human discourse), and away from
the first-order discourse in which it talks not about itself but about its own
proper subject matter. Charry’s aim is to open a way back into such first-order
theological discourse and, in particular, to recover what she variously calls its
“pastoral function,” its “salutarity,” or its “aretegenic” (i.e., “virtue-
shaping”) character. In her use of all of these terms, what she has in mind is
theology’s root concern to promote human excellence by shaping persons to
God, who is the source and focal point of true human flourishing.
Charry pursues her purpose by means of a series of brief, but penetrating
historical studies that run from the New Testament (Paul and his school, the
Gospel of Matthew) through the patristic period (Athanasius, Basil of Cae-
sarea, Augustine of Hippo) and into the eras of the Middle Ages (Anselm,
Thomas Aquinas, Julian of Norwich) and the Reformation (Calvin). These
studies are gems of careful and sensitive historical analysis designed to show,
in each case, how the theologian in question shapes his or her account of
God’s action on humanity’s behalf— understood as a gentle pedagogy that
counteracts the false pulls and lures of misdirected human culture and teaches
where genuine human fulfillment (true human excellence) is to be found— so
as to conform the human self to God. Even Homer nods, of course; and minor
errors (e.g., on p. 104, the pagan orator Libanius is labelled a Christian
teacher) or points to quibble over (e.g., on p. 143, it was not because they
lacked the name of Christ that Augustine left the Manichees) occasionally
intrude. But the far more important point is that Charry succeeds in showing
how the doctrines elaborated by the theologians she studies fit into a common
pattern: they are “part of a concerted pedagogical strategy to transform our
BOOK REVIEWS
295
thinking by bringing us to enjoy God” (as she says of St. Augustine’s
treatment of creation and Incarnation, p. 139). Here is the “renewing of our
minds” by which we recognize, through God’s own action on our behalf, the
human dignity that we have from God and can only attain in God, a true and
truly human dignity which stands in sharp contrast to the false forms of
“dignity” that human culture, whether then or now, holds out to tempt us
away from the truth about ourselves.
Charry knows full well, of course, that there is no return to the past, and her
aim is by no means merely to transport us momentarily back in time to an
irrecoverable age. Her purpose is rather, as her final chapter shows, to open a
way for what she calls “sapiential theology” in our own time. What she means
by “sapiential theology” might be put this way: it is theology designed to train
Christians to and for wisdom, that is, to direct their desire, to orient their
lives, and to shape their character toward the wisdom that is achieved in
knowing God, and thus to set their lives on the only solid footing that human
life can have. This is the vision of human excellence that Christian theology
has to offer. It is a vision that is obscured or lost when theology becomes so
dominantly a second-order enterprise that it forgets or neglects its specifically
pastoral function, its salutarity, its aretegenic purpose. And it is a vision for
which, in a renewed version, we have a crying need today. By the Renewing of
Your Minds takes a crucial step in the direction of a renewed version of that
vision.
William S. Babcock
Perkins School of Theology
Southern Methodist University
van Huyssteen, J. Wentzel. Essays in Postfoundationalist Theology. Grand Rap-
ids: Eerdmans, 1997. Pp. 285. $35.00.
In this collection of recent essays, Wentzel van Huyssteen presents us with
subtle discussions of some of the contemporary challenges facing theology
from the wider intellectual world. He is the James I. McCord Professor of
Theology and Science at Princeton Theological Seminary, and all the essays
have appeared elsewhere. They are, however, all interrelated and together
make a fascinating introduction to some of the weighty problems facing the
claims by theology to be itself as rational a discipline as any science.
What is “postfoundationalist theology”? Van Huyssteen sees it in the
context of the present wave of postmodernism which at times appears to
threaten every intellectual discipline. At its worst, postmodernism can under-
296
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
mine the so-called “Enlightenment” view of rationality to such an extent that
there seems no scope left for dispassionate, unprejudiced reason, nor any
capacity for the grasping of truth. All belief is seen to have a local and not a
universal validity, to be so embedded in its context that it can have no
application beyond it. Even the physical sciences have been accused of being
mere expressions of cultural beliefs, rather than discoveries of the nature of
reality. All human intellectual activity (theology included) then becomes a
matter of construction rather than discovery.
One powerful motive behind this onslaught of relativism (sometimes hardly
distinguishable from nihilism) is the view, now widely accepted in the
philosophy of science, that our beliefs cannot be derived from solid, self-
evident foundations. Even “raw” sense experience is highly impregnated from
the beginning with interpretation and theory. Van Huyssteen adopts this
position himself, and most interestingly applies it beyond the physical sci-
ences. He treats theology in an analogous way as an interpretation of
experience. He wishes to avoid the absolutist certainties of foundationalism
and the incoherent relativism of most forms of non-foundationalism. Instead,
his postfoundationalist theology acknowledges the crucial importance of
context in shaping our views, but at the same time attempts to embrace a
notion of rationality which enables us to engage in a cross-cultural and
cross-disciplinary conversation. It is with the latter aim that van Huyssteen
tries to produce a postfoundationalist model of rationality which can show
points of contact between religion and science. He also hopes to maintain that
it is possible to make rational choices between different viewpoints and
traditions. He takes seriously the pluralism of contemporary postmodernism,
while not conceding the impossibility of rationality or the inevitable break-
down of intellectual life into compartments totally insulated from each other.
The book examines the ways in which theology and other intellectual
disciplines have to face the same challenges amid our contemporary loss of
certainty and agreement. The attempt to find a middle way between absolut-
ism and relativism is praiseworthy. Most refreshing of all is van Huyssteen’s
determination to relate theology to science, which is often regarded as the
best example of human rationality at work. Yet perhaps he too easily accepts
that there can be no universal standards of rationality. This is doubtless
because he is concentrating on problems of epistemology and not on the
metaphysical underpinning of religion. Yet must not Christianity hold a belief
in a God who is the source of all reason? Indeed, may not the physical sciences
themselves be possible only because they attempt to depict a world that is
already structured and ordered, since it reflects the mind of its Creator? In
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other words, human rationality may not be so much the product of local
circumstances as one way in which we are made in the image of God. It can
reflect a reality, both physical and spiritual, which confronts us all.
These essays go to the heart of several important intellectual debates raging
at the present time. The relation of religion and science and the problem of
pluralism and truth are only two which are presented in this enormously rich
and deep contribution to contemporary theology. If this volume is any guide,
its author’s next book should be eagerly awaited.
Roger Trigg
University' of Warwick
Gaventa, Beverly Roberts. First and Second Thessalonians. Louisville: Westmin-
ster John Knox, 1998. Pp. 138. $22.00.
These days commentaries are multiplying like rabbits. We have single
volume commentaries of over a thousand pages, two volume commentaries,
and even three volume commentaries. What was once a trickle is now a flood.
And yet, in spite of the profusion and confusion of commentaries, there will
always be a need for a commentary like this one— svelte, direct, substantial,
and up-to-date. By all odds, the task given the author was impossible. The
commentary had to deal with the major historical and theological problems of
the Thessalonian correspondence; it had to point out translation problems
without giving space to a full translation; it had to sketch the social, cultural,
philosophical, and religious context of both Paul and the Thessalonian
church; it had to deal selectively with the history of interpretation from the
second century to the present; it had to offer concrete suggestions for sermon
preparation, teaching strategies, and a discerning reading; it had to face
squarely the conflicting testimony of Acts and the undisputed letters, and it
had to show how all of this relates (and does not relate) to the suggested
readings of the Revised Common Lectionary ; it had to deal with very' complex,
technical matters in simple, non-technical language; and, it had to do all of
this in 138 pages (88 pages for 1 Thessalonians and 45 pages for 2 Thessaloni-
ans)! Yet, Gaventa performed the impossible with balance, refreshing candor,
absolute clarity, and occasional wit.
My first impression of the work as a whole was fortunately not the most
lasting. The binding of her commentaries on two letters in one volume
appears to suggest a presumption of Pauline authorship for both letters
without any examination of the evidence. If I had any such suspicion it was
quickly and decisively put to rest for Gaventa follows no such a priori strategy.
She carefully weighs the evidence which she finds persuasive that 2 Thessalo-
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nians is in fact pseudenonymous and then teases out of the text of 2
Thessalonians hints of continuing Pauline influence in the generation after
his death when persecution continued and faith questions changed somewhat.
At the micro level each section begins with an overview, is followed by a
discussion of issues raised or problems posed in the text, then a summary, and
finally suggestions for preaching and teaching. At the macro level overarching
themes are easily recognizable. Paul’s Jewishness is roundly affirmed even
while his ties to the hellenistic world are recognized. Gaventa lifts up for the
reader the apocalyptic dimension of Paul’s gospel and his aposdeship and the
special difficulty this apocalyptic mythology posed for the readers of the first
as well as the twentieth century, and she correctly stresses the role Paul played
in shaping his apocalyptic idiom and the identity of the community. Given
this rather ambitious agenda, I would tend to agree with her that her
statement that the primary purpose of the letter is consolation and upbuilding
is an oversimplification.
As accessible and suggestive as is this slender volume, there is a price to be
paid for its economy of words. One senses that the issues are more complex
and the scholarly discussion much richer and more contentious than Gaven-
ta’s concise and able summaries allow. On such questions as the authenticity
of 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16, for example, one hungers for a more extended and
considered treatment of Birger Pearson’s interpolation theory which many
have found persuasive. Only here and there in such a compact volume does
one catch a fleeting glimpse of a vast and interesting secondary literature on 1
Thessalonians that flowed out of a seminar of the Society of Biblical Litera-
ture spanning a decade. One might have wished for more on the impact of
persecution on both Paul and his converts and for a more extended discussion
of the importance of the letter as a substitute for presence and as a corporate
instrument. The conversation about boundaries is important for a church that
has largely assimilated to the culture, but more conversation would have been
welcome on the distinction between difference and otherness, and on the
protocol for interaction between the insider and outsider. For while there are
boundaries, there is no such thing as an absolutely secure or absolutely
permanent boundary. All boundaries must have openings, and all communi-
ties must have a protocol for boundary crossing. While the nuances of those
transactions are largely ignored in this volume, the fault is not the author’s but
that of the imposed constrictions of series. Her commentary is highly
recommended for pastors and curious laity.
Calvin J. Roetzel
Macalester College
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Wainwright, Geoffrey. For Our Salvation: Two Approaches to the Work of Christ.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. Pp. 186. $18.00.
Many books on Christology and atonement theology have appeared in the
past two decades, but few as helpful and illuminating as Geoffrey Wain-
wright’s latest book on the work of Christ. The book is comprised of two
distinct parts; each is a set of lectures given in differing contexts to seminary"
students, pastors, and laypersons. Thus, the book has no overarching thesis or
argument. Yet the coherence of the book lies in its continuity with the
tradition of the Nicene Creed and its affirmations on the work of Christ “for
our salvation.”
The first set of lectures is entitled “Senses of the Word.” Here is a
fascinating and creative exposition on the meaning of the Incarnation in the
life of the church. Wainwright emphasizes the “thick texture” of the human
life of Jesus Christ. A full understanding of the Incarnation requires the
affirmation not only that Jesus Christ is fully God but also that he lived the full
range of human experiences and senses. Wainwright means “senses” quite
literally; Jesus saw, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled. From this, he
observes, “Given this utterly corporeal character of the human life lived by
the Word of God for the redemption of the world, it is entirely congruous
that he should choose to keep coming to his church by material means for the
sake of our salvation” (p. 1 1).
Our own senses, then, are a gift of God that must be transformed in order
to respond to God’s gifts of revelation and redemption. Our senses are
transformed when we offer ourselves — body and soul — to God. They are
transformed when we use our senses — our bodies — to mediate goodness to
others, in ministering to the nourishment of others, as we become the “aroma
of Christ” to others, in the memorable phrase of 2 Corinthians 2:14-16. And,
as Wainwright says, “the gradual transformation of our senses prepares us for
the final resurrection when we shall start to enjoy those things which, even
now, our eyes have not seen, our ears heard, not our hearts conceived, but
which God has in store for those who love him” (p. 18).
The rest of this set of lectures considers the senses one by one. Chapter 2,
for example, considers how Jesus heard , how we hear, and how we help others
to hear; Chapter 3 reflects on how smell and touch can become “extended
responses” — liturgically and in acts of Christian service — to God’s gift in
Christ. Always, Wainwright mines the deep vein of the biblical text, ecumeni-
cal sources, and integrated theology and praxis. It is a set of lectures rich in
insight, creativity, and wisdom.
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The second set of lectures is a fresh perspective on an old theological
rubric, the munus triplex, or three-fold office of Christ. Prophet, priest, and
king is a comprehensive formula often used in the Reformed tradition, but it
finds its roots much earlier and is also attested in Lutheran, Methodist, and
Catholic traditions as well. Wainwright’s is not a historical exposition; rather,
he identifies five uses or contexts in which the three-fold office is found. They
are the christological, the baptismal, the soteriological, the ministerial, and
the ecclesiological. Each of these uses is then unpacked for each of the offices.
The result is a full overview of the formula and its wealth of practical
implications. Although for some theologians today, the munus triplex is too
abstract and systematized, Wainwright displays the remarkable flexibility of
the three-fold office as well as its striking ability to give a comprehensive,
complete, and expansive view of the work of Christ in his life, ministry, death,
and resurrection.
This is a book that is of obvious benefit to students. But it is rewarding for
pastors as well — especially preaching pastors. It is a model of biblically rooted,
creatively appropriated, and concretely applied Christian theology.
Leanne Van Dyk
Western Theological Seminary
Ford, Richard Q. The Parables of Jesus: Recovering the Art of Listening. Minne-
apolis: Fortress, 1997. Pp. 183. $18.00.
Few books that I have read over the years have gripped me as this one has.
For starters, it did not take long— no more than three or four pages — to break
through my initial scepticism that a psychotherapist could possibly have the
requisite competence to write a book on Jesus’s parables. My scepticism was
overwhelmed by Ford’s obvious command of the scholarly literature on the
parables, but, even more importantly, the book’s very argument identified the
unacknowledged presuppositions of my scepticism, i.e., that most of us are
habituated to taking sides when we hear or read a parable, and usually this
means siding with those who hold positions of dominance (in this case, bona
fide biblical scholars) even when we more closely identify with the subordi-
nate class (in this case, the psychotherapeutic interloper into biblical matters).
Another basis for my scepticism, however, and one more defensible, was my
assumption, based on the book’s subtitle, that this would be another bland,
even boring exercise in “reader-response criticism.” While this book, like
reader-response theory, “privileges” the reader or listener, it does so in such
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an innovative, unexpected manner that all assumptions about this being a dull
text inviting a perfunctory reading were quickly set aside.
Ford’s basic argument is that the listener to a parable of Jesus is placed in
much the same predicament as a therapist listening to a client. The therapist is
sorely tempted to take sides, whether for the client, for the person the client
currently opposes (who may be the therapist), or for one tendency of the client
against another tendency. By succumbing to this temptation, one resolves the
ambiguity that the client, qua client, poses or represents, but such premature
foreclosure distorts reality and cheats the client of the very internal and
external resources needed to deal effectively with her life situation. We tend
to hear the parables in much the same way, with much the same effect. We
rush to judgment, applauding the generosity of the vineyard owner and
condemning the workers for their obtuseness; celebrating the reconciling
actions of the father toward his long-lost son and praising his kindly overtures
to his hurt but grudging elder son; and throwing verbal brickbats at the slave
who fails to show the same magnanimity toward his fellow slave that the
master had exhibited toward him. We even tell ourselves that such generosity,
such proffered reconciliation, such magnanimity is a reflection of God’s ways
with us.
But such responses are more like those that we elicit from our spouses or a
close friend when we complain about a difficult coworker, or when we relate
an unpleasant incident involving an inattentive waitress or aggressive driver.
For a spouse or good friend not to take our side, not to see the conflict from
our own point of view, would be an act of betrayal: “Whose side are you on,
anyway?” The therapist’s role is different. For the sake of the client, the
therapist resists such rushes to judgment and instead reserves judgment,
asking probing questions, presenting counter-hypotheses, and, above all,
viewing the current episode in light of a long history of interactions, reaching,
in many cases, all the way back to the client’s childhood. Similarly located, the
acts of generosity and magnanimity related in the parable may no longer seem
so beneficent or benign, for they both disguise and rationalize a history of
inequality, of dominance and control, and provoke in the recipient of this
sudden act of generosity a profound sense of confusion or despair, and may
even introduce a new element of danger owing to the destablization it
introduces into an already tense, suspicion-ridden relationship.
Thus, we are cautioned against an uncritical adoption of the perspective of
the magnanimous vineyard owner or the so-called “prodigal father.” But this
does not mean that we should rush to the opposite judgment, that of
applauding or praising the response of the one who has been die victim of a
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longstanding abusive or de-legitimating situation, for this response is most
likely a confused, inarticulate misapprehension of the situation or of the
victim’s real, as opposed to assumed, desires and needs. The solution, if there
is one, and it is always one that will be tentative, proximate and for the time
being, is not in the words or gestures of one or another of the story’s
characters, but becomes the responsibility of the listener to imagine or
discern. Why the listener? Because the listener, unlike the story’s participants,
perceives the gaps in the story, the lacunae that are owing to the participants’
inability to communicate to one another, or even to know themselves well
enough to understand why they do what they do to one another. If the
participants in the story lack such self- and other-awareness, the story seeks to
evoke such self- and other-awareness in the listeners. This places an enor-
mous, but potentially liberating, burden on the listener, for the “change” that
the story relates (e.g., a father rushing to embrace his given-up-for-dead son)
is not really change at all, but more of the same, whereas the parable offers
“the possibility of change only when the listener actively works to create the
outcome” (p. 128).
Ford provides penetrating analyses of seven parables, and, in each case,
draws on four vital resources: biblical scholarship on the parable in question,
psychotherapeutic scholarship (with a particular orientation toward the psy-
choanalytic), the insights of colleagues and clients (with appropriate attribu-
tions), and his own probings honed through years of active, psychotherapeutic
listening. In the course of his analysis of a parable, or pair of them, he
frequently “cues” the reader, noting that here, at this juncture of the analysis,
the listener is faced with a decision, one not unlike that posed for its original
hearers, i.e., of yielding oneself to the story’s own power to disorient, or to
find, instead, some safe vantage point from which to gain critical distance.
Ford’s use of psychoanalytic notions of transference for insight into the
parable of the widow and judge is especially germane, as it disabuses one of
any presumption that there is automatic safety via the therapeutic role itself.
The most suggestive feature of the book for further reflection is Ford’s view
that Jesus’s parables express a “powerfully ironic vision” (p. 1 2 2). He suggests,
but does not explore the further implications of the view, that as an ironist,
Jesus invited retaliation and in a sense courted his own eventual death by
violent means. This suggestion put me in mind of Linda Hutcheon’s discus-
sion, in Irony's Edge (Routledge, 1994), of the “risky business” of irony, owing
to its “transideological politics,” and her argument that the “communicative
space” into which irony insinuates itself is “a highly unstable one, sometimes
even a dangerous one” (p. 204). Among die various available texts on the
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parables of Jesus, Ford’s is, in my view, the most effective in explaining (and it
is the goal of psychology to offer explanations) why Jesus could become
politically vulnerable on the basis of his role as storyteller. This raises the
question, which Ford does not explore, of what may have been the personal
circumstances that made Jesus into an ironist? His “Appendix,” a discussion
of the similarities between Jesus’s parable of the two sons and their father and
the book of Genesis, invites us to consider that these ironizing tendencies
derived from an ambivalent relation to his own religious tradition. In addi-
tion, however, this ironic temperament, while politically dangerous, may also
have been a means of personal survival in his family and village of origin. Or
so Ford’s own interpretive method would lead us to conjecture.
Donald Capps
Princeton Theological Seminary
Gerkin, Charles V. An Introduction to Pastoral Care. Nashville: Abingdon,
1997. Pp. 264. $24.95.
This volume marks a new departure in introductory texts in pastoral care.
Charles Gerkin, who retired from the faculty of Candler School of Theology
after a lifetime of teaching pastoral care in both clinical and academic settings,
has brought his wisdom and experience to bear on the important question of
what shall first be taught to and learned by students who may never take
further work. Without abandoning the twentieth-century characteristics of
the field of pastoral care (taken by Gerkin to be gains on the whole), which are
sometimes lumped together as comprising a “therapeutic” model, he seeks to
broaden the field and to place it carefully in its context of the congregation
and the tradition. As the author says, this book is a “tour of an arena of
ministry” (p. 1 1), not a manual for teaching and learning elementary pastoral
care.
Viewing the minister in a primary image of interpretive guide (reminiscent
of the “master role” proposed and studied by Samuel Blizzard nearly a half
century ago), who is “. . . competent in helping people make connections
between their lives of faith within the community and tradition that identifies
us as the people of God, and the day-to-day individual, social, and cultural
realities of our lives” (p. 95), Gerkin wants to broaden the scope of pastoral
care to include priestly and prophetic as well as shepherding and wisdom
imparting functions, as, he says, were the focus earlier in this century. Out of
these broader images of ministry Gerkin brings a quadrilateral schema for
pastoral care comprised of (1) individuals and families, (2) the community of
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Christians, (3) the tradition that shapes Christian identity, and (4) the cultural
context (pp. 34-35). Thus, he broadens both the iconic bases of ministry and
the field of focus to encompass a much wider scope for pastoral care than have
most previous modern writers in the field.
Gerkin’s proposals for pastoral care are approached through the currently
popular narrative hermeneutic model, based in turn on George Lindbeck’s
cultural-linguistic approach to theology, as Gerkin’s use of “story” to speak of
connections between the individual and the stream of history suggests.
Richness of human connectedness is pervasive in the book, presented in many
“stories.” There is no attention to basic steps in learning pastoral care, as we
find in most introductory texts, nor much to questions of diagnosis. There is a
solid grounding in the history of pastoral care, with special nuanced attention
to the twentieth century, in which the author himself played a significant part.
Perhaps the most important contribution of this book to the understanding
of any student/practitioner of pastoral care is its emphasis on the complex
embeddedness of pastoral care in the life of the churches. Too often in the
past we may have given the impression that it was something apart from
congregational life. Gerkin’s introductory text is a powerful antidote for that
error in perception, rightly emphasizing the informal care given by lay
Christians to one another. Ministry is also depicted realistically as an enter-
prise without complete closure that is nonetheless rewarding both for the
caregiver and the care receiver. Even though the quadrilateral structure is, to
cite Gerkin’s own words, “held together only in an exceedingly fragile way”
(p. 233), it draws valid attention to the connectedness of all ministry, from the
most intimate one-on-one relations to the activism of social and political
protest. Further, the historical section alone is quite valuable— perhaps the
best summary in existence — especially of twentieth-century developments.
It is obvious that if a “how to do it” introductory text is needed, this is not
the right one. Vision and not clarity about the details of ministry are what we
have here. I confess, also, to a sense of uneasiness about the sufficiency of the
narrative hermeneutic approach, even while I affirm its usefulness. Something
like it is a necessary, but not sufficient, approach to understanding the human
scene. To quote George Stroup, one of the advocates of narrative in theology:
“What precisely is ‘narrative truth’ and what are the criteria for “truthful-
ness” in narrative theology?” (Musser and Price, eds., A New Handbook of
Christian Theology, p. 327) This question about truth has implications for
pastoral diagnosis. Pastoral care is finally about concrete action, where truth
matters. Being dead wrong has consequences beyond the validity of models.
Thus, were I teaching an introductory course in pastoral care, I would use
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Gerkin’s book for vision, but I would also use others for clarity, such as
Howard ClinebelPs still being revised text, Basic Types of Pastoral Care and
Counseling.
James N. Lapsley
Princeton Theological Seminary
Mercadante, Linda A. Victims and Sinners: Spiritual Roots of Addiction and
Recovery. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996. Pp. 220. $20.00.
Linda Mercadante, Professor of Theology at the Methodist Theological
School in Ohio, has written a compelling critique of the Addiction-Recovery
movement from a theological standpoint. She voices her concern that the
Addiction-Recovery model, with its own distinct understanding of sin and
conversion, has eclipsed the far broader and more inclusive doctrine of sin,
redemption, and grace evidenced in the revelation of Christ Jesus. In an effort
to garner some of the popularity of the Recovery7 movement and translate it
into full pews, pastors may focus too closely on specific problems or addic-
tions and not on the universal brokenness of humanity or God’s all-
encompassing grace.
Behavior that was once spoken of as sinful is now referred to as addictive.
This turns the concept of sin into either a failure of willpower and morality or
into a disease. Indeed, this is a popular categorization. Both Gerald Alay and
Keith Miller, in their widely read recovery materials, use this paradigm.
Addiction has now come to be understood as compulsions or behaviors far
beyond what the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) ever envisioned.
The cultural drive to label a large variety of behaviors as addictive has
stretched the original Recovery model of AA to its limits. It was intended for
life-threatening illness, not vague discontent.
Mercadante points out that sin is first about orientation, not behavior.
Many Recovery models lack the understanding of sin as primarily separation
from God. As the primary metaphor for sin, addiction tends to minimize the
place of the doctrine of sin within the greater doctrine of salvation. Grace
then becomes some elusive factor one hopes to find, rather than the preve-
nient presence of God.
This book is a well-researched starting point to open discussions between
Christian theology and twelve-step programs. Mercadante’s discussion of sin,
salvation, and grace is rich and thought provoking. She has included a
thorough discussion on the antecedents of Alcoholic’s Anonymous in the
Oxford Groups of the 1930s, and how Buchman’s and Shoemaker’s thinking
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
influenced its theological roots. For those unfamiliar with the major text of
AA (the “Big Book” as it is called by members), she reviews it with respect to
its theology. I was pleased to see Mercadante’s familiarity with the Big Book.
It is disconcerting to read so many analyses of the Addiction-Recovery
movement from people who have never read its primary text.
There are some weaknesses in Mercadante’s analysis of AA. Many of her
comments on areas of misplaced AA theology are more criticisms of the
failure of the church to explain its doctrines and broaden the understanding of
God that comes in recovery. One of the founders of AA, Bill Wilson, referred
to AA as a “spiritual kindergarten.” Alcoholics Anonymous was never meant
to be the completion of the spiritual journey, but rather its start. Unfortu-
nately, the Recovery movement has become an end in itself for many people.
This may be because of the church’s unwillingness or inability to expose its
congregations to the full breadth of Christian experience and understanding.
Mercadante does not address the effect that the working of the twelve steps
has on a person’s life. Many of her criticisms come from the misunderstanding
that occurs when one is an outsider to the recovery movement and has not
actually done the work of the steps. Even when there has been tremendous
research and attendance at many meetings, the energy spent outside of
meetings on step work is often overlooked. This outside work, including
prayer and meditation, is the core of many member’s programs. As with
spiritual disciplines, the steps may seem more oppressive in the reading than
in the doing; indeed, often that which seems disciplined is actually freeing.
Victims and Sinners strives for a dialogue between Christian theology and
the Addiction-Recovery movement, not a merger of the two. This is a helpful
attempt to begin the conversation.
Elizabeth Brishcar
Princeton Theological Seminary
Seitz, Christopher R. Word without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theologi-
cal Witness, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998. Pp. 355. $28.00.
Old Testament studies are in turmoil today, and consensus is lacking
almost everywhere. The headlines are grabbed by a few “minimalists,” who
deny the historicity even of large parts of the monarchic period and who
eschew any interest in the theological message of the Bible. Seitz is at the
exact opposite end of the trajectory, with a focus on the canonical or final
shape of the text and with a passionate interest in the theological necessity of
the biblical message. His polemic is against the dominance of historical
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criticism and/or the pursuit of the world behind the text. The twenty-one
essays in this book are divided into three categories: biblical theology,
exegesis, and practice, and they illustrate his approach in exciting ways.
Seitz charges that many biblical scholars believe they have access to the
Bible’s religious point of view only by disassembling its final form and ranging
its texts in proper, that is, developmental, order. He wants to cultivate a
reverence among seminarians for what an honor it is to read this literature at
all and to create an intellectual horizon consisting of a complex network of
intertextuality that binds all texts together. He favors a return to typological
readings of the Old Testament and a reuniting of Old and New Testament
studies. He even hopes for a return to the sensus literalis and the creation of a
standard seminary course in Christian Scripture, where a natural movement
from the Old Testament to the New, and New to Old, is the focus of scholarly
theological attention. The term “Hebrew Bible” fails to comprehend the
Christological center of the Bible or to explain how Israel’s book has become a
word of address for all creation.
The essays devoted to exegesis deal for the most part with Isaiah (see his
commentary on Isaiah 1-39 in the Interpretation series and numerous other
publications on the prophet). He insists that Isaiah 40-66 must be read within
the context of 1-39 and concludes that no new prophet is present in 40-66, but
God here refers Israel to what “Isaiah” had spoken beforehand. The servant
sees himself and his vocation as bringing to completion God’s word spoken to
the prophets of old. Concern with the book of Isaiah in its entirety involves the
expectation that a single perspective — that of God or that of Isaiah as God’s
spokesman — pervades all sixty-six chapters. In the section devoted to exegesis,
Seitz also reexamines Exodus 3 and 6 and pulls the rug from under studies that
base the division into J, E, and P in the Pentateuch on the basis of these
chapters. In his reading, Exodus 3 has Moses learn the name Yahweh for the
first time so that he might speak in the name of this God before those
Israelites who already know the name. Exodus 6 is not a record of the first
revelation of the name Yahweh, but the beginning of the disclosure of the
significance of the name “I will be what I will be.” In the events of the exodus,
culminating in Exodus 14-15, God makes himself known as he truly is.
The essays in section 3 are likely to be the most controversial and, to my
mind, the least convincing. Seitz takes a strong stand against homosexuality,
arguing that this stance is the plain sense of scripture and that to link love and
homosexuality is similar to speaking of “blessed greed” or “holy drunken-
ness.” He holds that the church is constrained to proscribe homosexual
behavior among its members. There is much of merit in this discussion,
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although he underestimates, in my judgment, the significance of our igno-
rance of the reason for the biblical critique of homosexuality7 and its ignorance
of sexual orientation (Seitz argues that we are not born gay or straight, only
male or female). He points to the seriousness of the biblical concern by noting
that Leviticus 20 makes homosexual actions a capital crime, but ignores
Leviticus 18 that puts intercourse during a woman’s period, homosexual
actions, and bestiality all on the same level. Today, we do not consider the
first an ethical issue at all, and all of us agree on the wrongness of bestiality.
Are homosexual actions more like the former or the latter?
While affirming the ordination of women, he opposes inclusive language
for God. He insists that the biblical God is neither male nor female, but that
in the language of address to God only masculine language is appropriate and
fitting. He argues that masculine language in the biblical world was the best
vehicle for asserting the nonsexual character of God. Even if that is true, it
clearly no longer conveys that to many people today. Seitz charges that people
have lost their competence to detect such a paradox. I would argue that this
language today can only be seen as patriarchal, regardless of its earlier
intention.
Seitz is clearly indebted to his doctor father and former colleague at Yale,
Brevard Childs. He is also a first rate exegete and theologian, who challenges
the status quo at many levels, even if at times, in my opinion, he is unaware of
how much his experience affects his interpretation of the text.
Ralph W. Klein
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
Palmer, Earl F. The Book that James Wrote. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.
Pp. 90. $10.00.
Earl F. Palmer, pastor of University Presbyterian Church in Seattle,
Washington and the author of numerous commentaries on the New Testa-
ment, has written a helpful, thematic commentary on the book of James. The
author takes a definite stand on the authorship, setting, and intention of the
book and cogently expresses the reasons for that stand. Palmer makes a case
for James, the bishop of Jerusalem and the brother of Jesus, as the Book’s
author, and places it in Jerusalem prior to the Roman destruction of the City
and Temple in A.D. 70.
The pastor’s bookshelf would need to include other commentaries that
allow the reader to explore the background behind Palmer’s interpretive
decisions more fully, as well as the merits of the alternatives. However,
precisely because of its clear commitments, this commentary gives the pastor
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a point of view with which to dialogue in preparation for preaching and
teaching. Clearly written, and with ample connections made to literature and
contemporary life and culture, this study offers fuel for the homiletical
imagination. It is also well suited for small group study, with reflection
questions on each chapter making it accessible to both leader and participant.
Palmer relates James helpfully to the rest of the New Testament canon. He
also deals with the objections of some historical interpreters, most notably,
Martin Luther, to the book’s emphasis on the works of faith. Throughout his
commentary' he makes clear his conviction that “the goodness of God’s grace
is a vital theme in James, along with his strong teaching on faith.” Palmer is
convinced that, while James is brimming with rigorous “plain talk” and sound
advice, it is advice that we can act on only because Jesus is the Lord both of
this book and our lives.
Palmer divides James’ treatment of faith into three categories: faith alive
(2:14-17), the durability of faith (James 5:7-11), and faith in the family of faith
(5:13-20). He divides his discussion of James’ view of the nature of God into
several helpful modules each of which emphasizes an aspect of God’s charac-
ter. Among them are wisdom, generosity, hope, and judgment. Perhaps the
most helpful section of the book concerns James’ understanding of our
day-to-day behavior as Christians. Palmer entitles this chapter “James the
Pastor” and organizes it around twelve pastoral concerns. These are pre-
sented in such a way that their relevance to both pastors and people is clear.
Palmer at the outset tells us this book grows out of his own “discipleship
journey with the practical words of James.” He depicts James as “practical and
specific in the way that he as a pastor portrays to us the meaning of our
discipleship as believers.” The practical, specific, and devotional tone of this
commentary reveal that the author has learned well from his mentor.
Aiyce M. McKenzie
Princeton Theological Seminary
Leith, John H. Crisis in the Church: The Plight of Theological Education.
Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997. Pp. 125. $12.00.
This book is a hard-hitting but thoroughly fair criticism of contemporary'
theological education focused primarily in the Reformed tradition. Phis is the
tradition in which John Leith has lived, ministered, and taught throughout his
life, so its inner structure, history, ethos, upheavals, and heartaches are well
known to him. Thus, his zeal in exposing the many faceted crises in Presbyte-
rian theological education (particularly Columbia, Union [in Richmond], and
Princeton seminaries) is deeply rooted in his wealth of experience and love of
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
the church as well as in his theological scholarship. He carefully documents
the major losses and contradictions which plague seminaries at all levels. In
brief sophisticated discussions of the losses of tradition, gratitude, church
orientation, sense of mission and direction, curriculum focus on the congrega-
tion, ecclesiastical commitment, accountability, academic freedom, and fi-
nally the loss of the ability of seminaries to educate graduates who are
effective pastors, Leith attempts to document the increasing marginalization
and dissipation of theological education. In their failure to teach, practice, and
perpetuate effective leadership for the church in this generation, seminaries
are significandy contributing to the secularization of the gospel. They are
preoccupied with causes, straining at the gnats of political correctness and
swallowing the camels of sound doctrine and of a sine qua non conviction in
the Incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a pointed
and well documented outcry, and it should get heard.
However, more needs to be said. Leith acknowledges at the beginning,
indirectly through A. N. Whitehead, that in our rapidly expanding universe,
the corresponding rapid expansion of consciousness and of culture (especially
through science and technology) is widening the gap between the genera-
tions. Today, no new generation is born and raised in the same culture and
tradition as its forebearers, and this has been the case at least throughout the
last half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, this strengthens Leith’s
point that since we are living in a highly mobile, multicultural, multidisci-
plinary, and multinational world where boundaries familiar to Leith (and to
this reviewer) are collapsing, where sex and violence are common fare for
children as well as adults, and nuclearism hangs like the sword of Damocles
over civilization, the eternal truths of the gospel must be clearly delineated,
taught, and inculcated in the leadership and the life of the church. If not, then
as Yeat’s poetic icon put it long ago, “Turning and turning in widening gyre,
the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
Accommodating to the culture, the seminary and the church fall apart because
they cannot hear the voice of the One who called them into being and sent
them into the world.
On the other hand, this expanding gap between the generations makes
Leith’s referrals to the great theologians of the 40s and 50s, sound sometimes
more nostalgic than convincing. As someone said, nostalgia isn’t what it used
to be. Reinhold Niebuhr, Robert Calhoun, Roland Bainton, Albert Outler
and others, who were the faculty figures Leith remembers with greatest
respect and calls current faculties to emulate, are surely powerful illustrations
of faithful scholarly witnesses, teaching the church and its leaders how to
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understand and to live the Christian life. But they are also examples of a far
more coherent cultural milieu than pertains today, and their theological
instruction was able to draw upon that presumptive cultural coherence in its
disclosure of the ultimate reality revealed in Jesus Christ. However, the
accelerating flow of historical time has changed things dramatically. As Leith
said of himself, he was “evangelical liberal” in those days, but he and his
theological mentors had not reckoned with the truly radical left. “Things fall
apart,” and an evangelical liberal at that time is a present day conservative; not
because Leith has changed, but because now that coherent, presumptive
world is pulling apart and calling itself “postmodern.”
Ironically, and contrary to Yeat’s poetic vision, the center does hold, but not
in the way it used to. It will not work to go back to former greats as a way to
reclaim the center. The center holds because it is eternally and relentlessly
creative. To some extent Leith recognizes this and cites the return of young
parents to the church, the liveliness of congregations where the gospel is
faithfully preached, the widespread belief in “God” in American society, and
other signs that the Creator Spirit is transforming its past and doing new
things. The irony is that the deepest criticism of the seminaries and the most
profound crisis in the church are not based in what has been lost from the past
but in the apparent fact that we (seminaries and churches) cannot seem to
grasp what the Spirit of God is doing in transforming old patterns and raising
up new generations from the grass roots of everyday life all across the world.
Leith’s challenges to get back to fundamentals and jettison cultural inciden-
tals is a good start, if it is not primarily longing for a bygone era and the
emulation of former greats. If it is in recognition that the Creator Spirit is far
more radical than the radical left and far more centered than the staunchest
conservative and that God’s Spirit is even now at work to create new forms of
expression for the same Gospel, emanating from the same center, then Leith’s
work is truly catalytic. However, discernment is desperately needed.
In this new era that is saturated with multiple spiritualities, agog at science
and technology, ideologically hungry but cynical about ultimates, lonely and
longing for nurture but expecting betrayal from all available sources, the
Spirit of God must not get confused with the culture of the present or the past
because this Spirit points to a future that belongs to God and God alone.
Leith’s challenges, engaged in the context of the Spirit (which I assume is how
they are intended), are extremely important, insightful and at times pro-
foundly convicting.
James E. Loder
Princeton Theological Seminary
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
Rediger, G. Lloyd. Clergy Killers: Guidance for Pastors and Congregations under
Attack. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997. Pp. 200. $15.00.
G. Lloyd Rediger is a pastor’s pastor. As a consultant, author, conflict
mediator, and gifted teacher, he has had a wide influence in defining healthy
congregational life, church processes, and pastor-people relationships. His
work on clergy leadership issues, ethical boundary definition, and the pastoral
care of clergy families has won wide respect. This most recent contribution
focuses on a specific kind of church conflict— destructive conflict in a
clergy-focused congregation which becomes intractable, highly personalized,
matricidal, or most often patricidal.
Rediger’s central thesis is controversial: abnormal conflict in congregations
is energized, motivated, and usually led by persons with significant personality
disorders, mental illness, or obsessional spiritual evil. Normal conflict follows
a course of contracting, clarifying, evaluating; but abnormal conflicts create
chaos which requires diagnosis and a treatment model, and spiritual conflict
demands a discernment-intervention and exorcism process. Active use of
tough love models of reconstructive intervention can identify the disordered
personality process (person or persons) empowering the chaos and take firm
steps to surround the troubled person with guidance. A treatment process that
presses toward a remedial solution can defuse the explosive charges awaiting
the unwary and make the community safe for constructive resolution of
remaining issues. When the destructive leadership comes from people of evil
character or demonic purpose, the intervention moves from a therapeutic
methodology to that of exorcism, “of expelling the person doing evil.” Here
Rediger offers careful definition of a spiritual intervention process that steers
away from exotic or specialized ritual toward a pattern of imposing spiritual
disciplines and communal controls on the evil person which may lead toward
expulsion or exclusion of those who “incarnate evil” or work through the
domination by evil powers in a redemptive process appropriate to the
particular congregation’s tradition.
Rediger uses recognizable and all too familiar case studies for each of these
conflict situations which turn the congregational confusion into open pursuit
of the pastor. His book appears to be a conscious development of the direc-
tions set by Scott Peck in People of the Lie and of Kenneth Haugk in Antagonists
in the Church , as he cites both to provide confirming data on his models of
personality and demonic disorders as useful ways of construing and understand-
ing clergy focused on intensely destructive congregational conflict situations.
During the last twenty years, there has been a swing away from the use of
cause-and-effect models of conflict theory and a welcome conversion to
BOOK REVIEWS
3J3
systems theory, allowing a multifactoral approach to understanding, manag-
ing, and transforming conflict situations. Viewing the whole and exploring its
many interrelated dynamics has freed us from much blaming and cyclical
thought patterns in working through failures of community to be constructive
and collaborative. From a systems perspective, books which diagnose person-
alities and credit them for being the disorder which causes the effect of human
conflict are seen as a movement backward to ways of locating blame and
reinforcing the chronic patterns of fingering the offender in the congregation
and practicing the ancient art of expulsion. Conflict transformation has
become a fresh voice in the church that looks to the way the congregation as a
system invites, appoints, rewards, and immediately replaces the roles of critic,
gatekeeper, censor, hit-man, etc. People are drawn into these often destruc-
tive functions by the group’s inability to function healthfully and faithfully.
Perhaps the best summarization of this concern for encouraging congrega-
tions to use body models, systems theories, organismic metaphors, and
wholistic approaches to intervention and transformation of conflicts would be
to suggest warning labels for books which support the endemic preference of
churches to name, blame, and expel troubled individuals as the cause of their
group immaturity.
David W. Augsburger
Fuller Theological Seminar)'
Rose, Lucy Atkinson. Sharing the Word: Preaching in the Roundtable Church.
Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997. Pp. 158. $17.00.
The late Lucy Atkinson Rose taught preaching and worship at Columbia
Theological Seminary. Sharing the Word , a project stemming from her
doctoral dissertation, was one of the final works she completed before her
death in the summer of 1997. Built on a penetrating interpretation and
critique of recent homiletical development, the book proposes an understand-
ing of preaching crafted around the idea of “conversation.” As indicated by
the title, Rose suggests that we understand preaching primarily as an act of
sharing, a “proposal offered to the community of faith for their additions,
corrections, or counterproposals.” Seeking to overcome traditional hierarchi-
cal models of preaching, she submits to the ecclesial and, more specifically,
homiletical community what she describes as a communal, non-hierarchical,
personal, inclusive, and scriptural proposal.
The author begins her work with a critical review of three dominant models
of preaching, which she describes as the traditional, kerygmatic, and transfor-
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
3r4
mative (chaps. 1-3). Treating each in order of historical development, Rose
analyzes these approaches in terms of their particular understanding of
sermonic purpose, content, language, and form. While noting the important
roles these approaches have played — and continue to play— in the life of the
church, she remains suspicious of any understanding of preaching which 1)
perpetuates a gap between preacher and hearer; 2) assumes the empirical or
universal character of “truth”; 3) relies on a facile confidence in the clarity, or
value-neutral character, of language; and, 4) assumes that preaching intends
primarily to answer people’s questions.
In response to the current homiletical theories available, Rose offers a
model which complements rather than replaces other current models, and
which may invite more people to sit at the “homiletical table.” Her proposal, a
conversational homiletic, rests on two primary convictions. The first revolves
around the assertion that congregations and pastors are equal partners in
ministry by virtue of their baptism into the community of faith. The second
assumes that all language is limited and therefore must be used cautiously.
These twin convictions lead Rose to rethink the four elements of preaching
she identified earlier.
In terms of sermonic purpose , Rose advocates preaching which seeks to
interpret life experiences in a way that gathers the faithful around the word,
focuses the conversations of the community, and thereby builds up the
community of faith. Her revision of preaching’s content involves augmenting
our understanding of concepts like revelation, Word, and kerygma with more
tentative words such as interpretation, proposal, and wager. Such designations
not only reorient us to the ambiguity of life and language, but they also set a
more modest agenda for preaching and, most importantly, witness to the
human and Christian search for “meaning,” rather than truth, in and through
our life experiences.
One of the most provocative portions of Rose’s work rests in her call to
recognize and produce sermonic language which is both “confessional,”
reflecting the ongoing experiences of the people of God, and “multivalent,”
or able to evoke multiple levels of meaning. Such language, Rose feels,
interjects into preaching a much-needed honesty about human limitation.
Additionally, it also “spotlights the community of faith as opposed to the
preacher” in that it demands the participation of the congregation not simply
as listeners but also as sermon-creators and, as often as possible, as sermon-
givers.
Finally, the author suggests that sermonic form should follow function and
thereby be more conversational. This is not to imply the constant use of
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“dialogue” sermons; rather, it means that preachers should see their sermons
as “open discourses” which invite — and depend upon — the responses of
listeners and which, in fact, then also listen and react to these responses in
dialogical fashion. Most helpful to this type of preaching are two particular
forms; the first is a variation of inductive and narrative preaching, while the
second revolves around story.
All in all, Rose offers a provocative and, at several points, attractive
proposal. Although her criticism of previous traditions is not flawless —
perhaps the most egregious is her omission of Rudolf Bultmann’s influence in
“kerygmatic” theology— her criticisms are often perceptive. Further, she
offers a constructive proposal which not only reinvigorates traditional theo-
logical categories and harvests them for homiletical use (e.g., “the priesthood
of all believers”), but also drives preaching more deeply into the actual
realities — as ambiguous and suspect as ever— of life in this world. Through-
out, her call and challenge to envision preaching as a task of the whole
community and, therefore, the preacher’s role as steward of the office —
responsible for seeing that preaching be done, not necessarily for doing all of
it— is worth pondering.
But while Rose offers an important challenge, she offers surprisingly little
help in imagining what a conversational homiletic might actually look like.
Beyond rejecting the “dialogue sermons” of the 70s, she proffers almost no
insight into how pastors might concretely' share the task of the preaching with
the whole community of saints.
Further, one must wonder whether the gospel is inherently “conversa-
tional.” Certainly it invites, expects, and takes seriously the response of the
listener. But whether the gospel implies the possibility of a “conversation
among equals” is another question altogether. While this criticism need not
necessarily perpetuate the gap between preacher and congregation which
Rose laments, it does imply that Rose may tread perilously close to jeopardiz-
ing the Reformation’s insistence that preaching witnesses to a gospel-reality
which exists independently of the reception and validation of the community
to whom it is proclaimed.
Through Sharing the Word , Rose raises and addresses a number of impor-
tant questions inherent in the contemporary task of proclamation. We will do
well if we can, as she asks, carry her conversation further by response, critique,
and dialogue, and thereby honor her memory and the calling to which she
devoted her life.
David J. Lose
Princeton Theological Seminary
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
Holderness, Ginny Ward, with Robert S. Hay. Teaming Up: Shared Leadership
in Y outh Ministry . Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997. Pp. 215. $16.00.
Until the 1970s, youth ministry in the United States served as a cradle for
future leaders in the church. Christian Endeavor and its denominational
clones, the Student Christian Movement and international ecumenical stu-
dent assemblies, denominational legislative youth gatherings and ad hoc social
justice organizations like the Student National Coordinating Committee all
considered youth leadership central to their purposes. Even adult-led para-
church ministries like Young Life and Youth for Christ made peer ministries
important components of their programs, a move resulting in an influx of
seminary applications in the past twenty years from people with parachurch
backgrounds.
In the 1970s, however, the bottom began to fall out of the churches’ historic
efforts to foster leadership in adolescents. Heeding the World Council of
Churches’ admonishment that churches should integrate youth into their
total mission rather than segregate youth in age-level education programs,
mainline denominations rushed to disband their youth departments for both
symbolic and financial reasons. Unfortunately, without the youth depart-
ments, training and resources no longer existed to help congregations inte-
grate youth into their ministries, and youth ministry became captive to
well-meaning adults and good instincts. As budgetary pressure increased,
mainline denominations increasingly viewed youth ministry as an expendable
line item, causing the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development to call
the 1 990s “an era of massive cuts in funding, resources, and personnel for
religious youth programs.”
Enter Ginny Ward Holderness, whose book Youth Ministry: The New Team
Approach (1981) was less new than simply sane, a voice of common sense
calling the “lone ranger” youth ministry paradigm— which much mainline
Protestant youth ministry had devolved into by this time — into serious
question. Holderness’ premise then, as now, was that youth ministry ought to
involve as many youth as possible in the total life of the church. This vision
required youth ministry to extend beyond a Sunday night program and to
involve a team of intentionally-formed adult leaders rather than a single
good-hearted volunteer.
Now Holderness expands this vision in Teaming Up: Shared Leadership in
Youth Ministiy, an utterly helpful primer on developing ministry teams that
involve youth as well as adult leadership for ministry with adolescents.
Granted, youth ministry has charted this course long before Holderness, and
youth ministries that outlast the personal charisma of their adult leaders tend
BOOK REVIEWS
3i7
to survive because youth have been intentionally integrated into the leader-
ship. But Holderness recognizes American Protestantism’s short historical
memory, and in her new volume (written in partnership with Robert S. Hay)
she implicitly calls us back to our roots by insisting that faithful youth ministry
requires youth to be leaders rather than adults to be leading in their stead.
Holderness’ model is one of partnership, in which adults provide a range of
opportunities for youth leadership and mentor youth into their roles as
“leader” rather than abandon them to it. She calls for a biblical imagination to
enact the youth-adult partnership model, although her curriculum offered
here does little to demonstrate how theology informs the actual practice of
ministry. Still, this kind of leadership-development curriculum is hard to
come by (remember, the denominational youth departments that used to
produce this stuff were disbanded thirty' years ago). Holderness comes to the
rescue with welcome guidance for practitioners earnestly seeking ways to
implement a model of shared ownership in youth ministry and elsewhere.
The “elsewhere” issue, in fact, is my one quibble with this volume: it cuts
short its own potential for influencing ministry beyond what is narrowly
defined as “youth ministry'.” After all, shared ownership is a goal for all
ministry, not youth ministry alone. At its best, youth ministry is not only
about youth; it is about ministry, and what it means to “be church” with all
people whose fundamental humanity is perhaps most acutely rendered, and
certainly most dramatically enacted, on the transitional grounds of adoles-
cence. Holderness’ best chapters are those describing how churches help
youth become leaders and identifying the various roles and responsibilities of
the adults who mentor them. Lurking in between the lines is a more profound
assumption: youth are full members of the body of Christ, called as all
Christians are called to serve others in congregation and community out of
grateful obedience to Christ.
But while I can quibble with Holderness, I can’t disagree with her. Tea?ning
Up is a helpful addition to the church leader’s bookshelf, pastors as well as
youth pastors, lay leader as well as youth leader. To team up with Teaming Up will
strengthen youth ministry, and perhaps the ministry of the church along with it.
Kenda Creasy Dean
Princeton Theological Seminary
Watson, Justin. The Christian Coalition-. Dreams of Restoration, Demands for
Recognition. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997. Pp. 292. $35.00.
When Florida State University’s Justin Watson focused his dissertation
topic on the Christian Coalition, he was fully aware that the advantages of
3i8
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
narrow focus were offset by its volatility. Having scrupulously examined the
distinctive viewpoints of the Christian Coalition’s top leaders, President Pat
Robertson and Executive Director Ralph Reed, his anxieties were suddenly
justified. Pat Robertson moved to chair the board and Ralph Reed resigned to
start his own campaign consulting firm.
One might therefore conclude prematurely that this book was extinct at
publication. But, thanks to the quality of analysis of this conservative political
coalition’s formation and recent history, there is still much insight to be
gained from its balanced perspective. Pat Robertson continues as a dominat-
ing voice; Ralph Reed is retained on the Christian Coalition’s board, although
his pragmatic, moderating voice may be muffled.
Watson uses the umbrella term “evangelicalism” to include such subtypes
as fundamentalism and pentecostalism. He traces the evangelical themes of
restoration and recognition in the thinking of both leaders. Assembling a
critique of these views by quoting many alternative voices, he gives Robertson
and Reed a thoughtful, fair hearing, too. (Because he exclusively examines the
Christian Coalition, he does not provide any counterpoint to their broadsides
against mainline-church liberalism; this sometimes seems, therefore, a bit
unfair to the mainline churches.)
“What does the Christian Coalition want?” Watson asks. It wants the
restoration and renewal of the cultural influence and prestige that evangelical-
ism once enjoyed in American society. Robertson applies his media-honed
rhetoric to American history, placing it within the world struggle between
God and Satan. He can sound reasonably reassuring that Christians in politics
will simply restore a moral strength to reinvigorate the greatness of America.
Or he can spew out invective against Marxism, the Illuminati, the Rockefellers
and Rothchilds, the Federal Reserve Board, the Council on Foreign Rela-
tions, the Trilateral Commission, the United Nations, Secular Humanism,
and New Age religion— all conspiratorial agents of Satan to bring about a
godless socialist one-world government. Watson explores Robertson’s premil-
lenialism and his flirtation with, but tentative rejection of, “dominion theol-
ogy” as formulated by Christian reconstructionist Roujas J. Rushdoony.
Reed also seeks a restoration of a moral order in which religious voices have
“a place at the table.” A political pragmatist, Reed is a much more careful
historian, who does not participate in Robertson’s dualization. He sees a
tension between new and old institutions rather than a conspiracy, even
acknowledging evangelicals contributed to their own marginalization through
unwise tactics and acquiescence to secular domination. He criticizes the
BOOK REVIEWS
3:9
legacy of racism that is still evident in the Christian Coalition’s almost
all-white membership.
But the Christian Coalition wants recognition, too. Here Watson describes
the evangelical as victim, seeing some surprising congruences with multicul-
turalism. An invocation of oppression, the pursuit of a usable history, and the
development of a critique of oppression join a demand for public revision of a
demeaning self-image. This demand for recognition takes two contradictory'
forms: a demand to be treated equally and a demand to be given preferential
treatment on the basis of one’s distinctive qualities. To be treated equally, to
have a seat at the table, is to acknowledge the equality and right of others to a
seat also. This admission of the justice of pluralism is in serious tension with
restoration of a “Christian nation.” Furthermore, insistence upon a distinc-
tive, differential recognition when acting in the political arena sounds suspi-
ciously like “interest group” politics, which both leaders disparage.
Watson resists interpreting these inconsistencies as “stealth politics” and
assumes that both restoration and recognition resonate within the Christian
Coalition constituency. These incompatible goals will become increasingly
problematic. If the Christian Coalition attempts to buck the pluralist tide of
American society, it will ultimately fall into political irrelevancy. If it becomes
one more interest lobby (even though staunchly maintaining “we won’t
become like them because we aren’t like them”), it may become more
successful. Then, he concludes, the Christian Coalition will face the decline of
idealism brought about by success — and will wonder one day to what they had
hoped to restore the nation.
Peggy L. Shriver
National Council of Churches
New York, NY
Gripe, Alan G. The Interim Pastor's Manual. Rev. ed. Louisville: Geneva, 1997.
Pp. 150. $15.00.
A quiet revolution has taken place in Presbyterian ecclesiology in the past
two decades. Intentional, trained, and certified interim ministry has devel-
oped into a vocational specialty. No longer “holding things together until a
real pastor is installed,” the interim caretaker image has been replaced with
the image of specialist in grief/confusion, in conflict management, in healing
betrayals of misconduct, and in very specific developmental tasks that signifi-
cantly increase the likelihood of a successful next pastorate.
32°
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
Years of painful experience created the felt need that specialized interim
ministry is now meeting. Every presbytery has stories about its churches with
recurring patterns of destructive pastoral relationships. Long before The Book
of Order included “interim” as a category of ministerial service, short tenures
following long ones were called “unintentional interims.” The time between
installed pastors is now being viewed as the opportunity to correct harmful
congregational habits and to loosen the well packed soil of a long pastoral path
so that God can grow something new there.
To that end, Alan Gripe offers this revised edition of The Interim Pastor's
Manual. In 1987, the Vocation Agency of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
was rightly concerned to explore and validate interim service and wisely gave
to Alan Gripe the challenge of summarizing its dimensions, aspects, and
vision. His revision is even better.
As the vision has grown, so have concepts and theories. “Family systems”
theory now dominates much of interim training and practice. Rabbi Edwin H.
Friedman’s Generation to Generation , published in 1985, has become a guiding
light. Alan Gripe’s ample bibliography has many titles containing references
that detail various roles in successful interim service.
The book describes work for all the cast of characters within interim
experience. There are tasks for the congregation, for the interim, and for the
Committee on Ministry. There are descriptions of personal, social, and
spiritual needs, and even a chapter on the needs of an interim’s spouse! The
conceptual growth of this decade is well summarized in this book and in its
expansion of theories. All currently recognized aspects of interim service are
depicted. For example, the congregation’s traditional five developmental tasks
are specifically supplemented by five process tasks for the interim.
While these roles are helpfully addressed in clear concepts, they also are
couched in terms of strategies and options. The teeter-totter chart with
maintenance on one side and change on the other graphically portrays the
balance in which every thoughtful interim daily analyzes, probes, and suggests
tactics for the church in transition. The appendices contain a remarkable
array of useful options from liturgies for entry and exit to contracts and review
forms.
Alan Gripe repeats the carefully guarded injunction that the interim have
nothing to do with the search for a new installed pastor. This is true for the
selection process but not true for the search process that is sensitive to and
aware of identity issues. The Philadelphia Presbytery uses its interims as
Committee on Ministry representatives to the pastoral search committee. No
one is more aware of change in an interim period.
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Alan Gripe has written a complete summary of developing interim ministra-
tion. It is not a substitute for training. But it is a fine overview for assessing
this calling in our denomination.
Ronald T. Allin
Decatur, IL
Jacobs, Janet Liebman, and Donald Capps, eds. Religion , Society , and Psycho-
analysis: Readings in Contemporary Theory. Boulder: Westview, 1997. Pp. 282.
$65.00/52 1.95.
The editors of the volume are Janet Liebman Jacobs and Donald Capps.
Jacobs teaches Women’s Studies at the University of Colorado. In her
chapter, she proposes that Freud’s own social marginality as a Jew may have
been projected in his unreflective tendency to marginalize women. Capps
teaches pastoral theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and has written
comprehensively on the interaction between the subjects listed in the title of
this book. He describes Erik Erikson’s version of how inner fears of the child
are still operative in adult anxieties, with special attention to the “inner space”
controversy feminists have with Erikson.
In this short review it is not possible to discuss each of the fourteen essays.
To read them all is to take a post-graduate seminar in vital human and
religious questions. These are questions raised by the creative continuance of
reflective thinking in the broadly analytic tradition. One will be challenged to
digest rich interpretations of Karen Horney, Melanie Klein, Heinz Kohut,
Alice Miller, Jacques Lacan, and Julia Kristeva.
It is hard to discover an integrating flow amid the themes in the essays. The
analytic concerns go in disparate directions. Some focus on the father, some
on the mother. Some concentrate on object relations, others still work with
the oedipal. Some turn to the inner, others to the outer. Some build on the
late Freud where abuse and incest are fantasy, others on the early Freud where
it is historical. Some make much of language, others much of play. For some,
narcissism is the key to health, for others, it is a sign of illness.
My hunch is, however, that they all contribute to a dynamic interpretation
of religion in relation to human experience. Capp’s predecessor at Princeton,
Seward Hiltner, likewise paid much attention to a dynamic perspective in his
pioneer dialogue between human science and religion. He saw that Freud and
his tradition led us to dynamic understandings. A dynamic view of the human,
including the religious human, is a “thick,” that is, complex, reading of
experience. It is about “depth,” about unresolved tensions, always only
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
322
partially understood. It is about multiple levels of language and meaning. It is
about various dimensions of context— internal, social, and anthropological. It
is about the flows of process and the emergence of development. It is, at once,
about the real and unreal. Thus, religion and its theology can no longer be
accurate and honest in its reading of experience by endeavoring only to be
literal, or only simple, once the virus of dynamic psychology has infected our
perspective.
Furthermore, in these essays the dynamic has a salvific thrust. The thera-
pists, philosophers, and religious thinkers in these chapters tend to be
concerned with understanding the essential human condition in order that
some kind of improvement for it can be wrought. Of course, Freud began this
tendency by seeking to analyze negatively the religious in order to heal, first
patients and then civilization. Yet, as Freud knew, the “truth” of religion is
not separate from the function of religion.
Those who tackle this challenging book will be refreshed in their therapeu-
tic and theological insight about humanity. Advanced seminary students,
pastors, theological and religion professors, therapists, and all genuinely
concerned about who we are will be interested in it.
Leland E. Elhard
Trinity Lutheran Seminary
Moran, Gabriel. Showing How: The Act of Teaching. Valley Forge: Trinity
Press International, 1997. Pp. 250. $20.00.
Gabriel Moran, a teacher with thirty-nine consecutive years in the class-
room and author of many books on education, has, in Showing How, written a
provocative and, to this teacher of forty-four years, an absorbing book.
It is provocative because Moran has written of teaching from an alternative
assumption about learning: Human beings learn because they are taught by
other human beings, by the religious tradition, by the marvels of creation,
and, ultimately, by the divine teacher. Teaching, in this understanding, is not
confined to the classroom but is seen as a mysterious activity in human life.
The fundamental correlation of “show how” is “to live.” Showing someone
how to live must eventually include how to die. To teach is to do just that: to
show someone how to live and how to die.
The book is absorbing because Moran is so well-versed in the classics in
education and in the philosophers’ attempts to describe what teaching and
learning are all about; moreover, he presents what he knows in a lucid,
readable manner.
BOOK REVIEWS
323
When he presents the goal of teaching— to teach by design — he speaks of
the teacher’s task as working with the student and the environment to
improve the present design. Although it is a step in the right direction, it is no
longer enough to know that people have multiple intelligences, that not all of
us are “smart” in the same way. Each of us has established a pattern or design
by which we approach, enter, and usually reconstruct knowledge and experi-
ence. The teacher intentionally studies the design of the students and of the
shaping factors in the environment and sets about changing the design.
Moran uncovers something that many who have taught “know” at some level,
but that not enough have put into action. Further, his insistent and persuasive
argument that we learn with our bodies as much as with our minds speaks a
significant word to our culture that sees without experiencing, that values a
separation of mind and heart and a compartmentalizing of how we learn in
different contexts. Moran points out that animals teach without language and
that we learn to swim when We begin to know what the water has to teach us.
Moran identifies “families of language” used in teaching, components of
each family linked by particular qualities. For teaching with an end in view , he
discusses story-telling, delivering a lecture, preaching a sermon. For teaching
to reviove obstacles, he mentions praise and condemnation (with the assumption
that praise is given to the natural environment and human accomplishment,
and condemnation to anything that destroys that), welcome and thanks,
confession and forgiveness, mourning and comfort. In this family of languages
the teacher and the learner have interchangeable roles. For teaching the
conversation (which presupposes the previous mo language families because, in
the first two, speech directs bodily language and is contiguous with bodily-
ness and in this third set we find speech about speech), he lifts up dramatic
performances, dialectical discussion, and academic criticism.
Moran’s book is a gift to the imagination and to the knowledge of teachers
in the pulpit, the classroom, the committee meeting, the counseling session,
and wherever there is awareness and intent to show people of any age how to
live and how to die. A willingness to play with his ideas and convictions will
persuade the reader that Moran the teacher knows something of the designs
by which we teach and learn and is intent upon offering us a richer design that
will activate our minds and imaginations, our feelings and our purposes. T he
book is analogous to the water’s way of teaching someone to swim; to be with
Moran and in his thought is to know our bodies, minds, and spirits to be both
challenged and supported as we try to be faithful to the holy calling of teaching.
Freda A. Gardner
Princeton rheological Seminary
324
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
Graham, Billy. Just As 1 Anv. The Autobiography of Billy Graham. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1997. Pp. 760. $28.50.
This is one of the most ambitious autobiographies of a Christian leader in
almost any generation. It reads like a travelogue, and a holy one at that! To
supply an accounting of every fact and detail of one person’s lifetime of
Christian ministry and evangelism requires a diarist of unusual care and
wonderfully retentive memory; such is Billy Graham. Moreover, despite the
variety and breadth of the activities of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Associa-
tion and its witness before the world throughout the latter half of this century,
in all these 760 pages one does not lose sight of the principal evangelist and his
inner capacity to sustain enthusiasm during his exhaustive trek across the
globe, nor of the steady adherence and devotion of a faithful staff of workers
and planners, nor of that sense of urgency to present a simple gospel message
to millions of hearers in practically every time zone of our planet.
From reading this volume, how does one characterize the Graham phenom-
enon that is unparalleled in the annals of Christian evangelism? It is no
simplification to say that the secret lies in the man and his gospel or, more
clearly, what the gospel has made of the man. In his very nature lies an
impelling constraint to reach people within the context of their national and
social environments and to use every respectable pretext to get a hearing for
the gospel— whether it be in Europe, Russia, Asia, the Americas, Africa, or
down under in New Zealand and Australia. Some of the more exciting
chapters of this saga have to do with excursions taken where expectations were
not very high, for example in China, North Korea, and lands then behind the
barriers of the Iron Curtain.
Graham never compromised in his worldview of evangelism and that vision
shaped his over fifty crusades at home and abroad. To read his account leads
one to cite the words of Shakespeare (in an entirely different context): he doth
bestride the narrow world like a Colossus (Julius Caesar , I, ii, 27). Moreover,
his popular appeal drew a response not from any restrictive set but from the
many levels of social, cultural, and administrative responsibilities. Rudyard
Kipling would have likened him a la these lines from his poem If. “If you can
walk with crowds and keep your virtue/ or walk with kings — nor lose the
common touch.” Such sets Graham apart from many of the modern pseudo-
evangelists, especially in the matter of the man and his message being
inseparable.
We, who have lived during Graham’s remarkable career, who have listened
to him in many of his crusades, are simply being natural when we ask, “What
is his legacy to our generation of ‘church people’?” There are religious
BOOK REVIEWS
325
pundits who dismiss any long-term benefits front crusades marked by one-
sided dialogue, quick encounters that lack serious exchanges of mind with
mind, and emotional decisions precipitated by mere crowd psychology. As
one of Graham’s own advisers once said to him: “Billy, if you just puddle jump
from crusade to crusade all over the world, you’ll never accomplish what you
could and should.” That had some sense in it. However, although he had only
slim encounters with labor, industry, and theological giants, yet his counsel
was sought by leaders in positions of authority both high and low. He never
presumed to be a coach regarding public policy (political, industrial, or
cultural). His was a concern for human attitudes that shape strategy through a
goodly blend of prayer and listening to a voice and will above and beyond his
own. He was a person talking to persons, and he did so with courage and a full
measure of integrity that marked his beliefs and carried his crusades flawlessly
through a whole generation. As this reviewer has spoken in hundreds of
American churches, it has not been unusual for a woman or man to say to me:
“I was converted from unbelief to this church at a local Billy Graham crusade
years ago.” Such event-statistics cannot count, but they attest to what the
Apostle John said long ago: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear
the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So
it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (Jn. 3:8).
Donald Macleod
Princeton Theological Seminary
Tate, Stan. Jumping Skyward. Heron, Montana: Cabinet Crest, 1995. Pp. 185.
$1 1.95.
Stan Tate has an unusual view of his parachuting experience as an Idaho
“smoke jumper.” He believes that the act of jumping out of airplanes down
into forest fires actually “elevated” him. He was “jumping skyward.”
Tate is a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary (class of ’58) and has
served for many years as an Episcopal priest, mostly outside of the traditional
parish setting. He composed this slightly fictionalized autobiography over the
last several years while serving as a bioethicist in Moscow, Idaho. In it he has
distilled insights drawn from years of daredevil fire fighting into seven
chapters, each focusing on a different blaze.
This is a hook about smoke jumping, but is is also about discovering the
fingerprint of the Creator and the universal spirituality that transcends
religious differences. Tate has been able to fashion seemingly incompatible
326
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
worlds into a sensitive and engaging narrative. Rugged wilderness fire fight-
ing is joined with placid spirituality.
As one proceeds through the narrative, one gains a heightened sense of
gratitude for God’s natural cathedral. Among the vignettes included are
unique meditative experiences in the Idaho wilderness. Francis of Assisi’s
prayers drew wild birds, but here prayers draw wild moose and bobcats!
Ultimately the hero of the story, Ken Shuler, or “Hawk,” makes a stunning
sacrifice, somewhat reminiscent of the One who loved the lakes and moun-
tains of the Holy Land.
Of particular interest to some will be the extensive theological and scrip-
tural reference notes located in the back of the book. These could be helpful
for a small discussion group.
Jumping Skyward is a profound and highly readable book. In recognition of
this, it recently won the Gem State Award at the Northwest Christian
Writers’ Conference as their best book of the year. It should be of great
interest to a wide range of readers, front wildlife and nature enthusiasts to
those concerned with spirituality.
William O. Harris
Princeton Theological Seminary
Metzger, Bruce Manning, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian. Peabody: Hendrik-
son, 1997. Pp. 242. $24.95.
All octogenarians have reminiscences but few find publishers. Octogenar-
ian Bruce Manning Metzger belongs among the exceptions because he is in
extraordinary measure “a learned man, powerful in the scriptures” (Acts
18:24). His lasting contributions to general Bible readers and specialized
biblical scholars alike lie not in the significant but derivative labors of New
Testament commentator or theologian, but in the foundational and judicious
task of determining the actual words of the New Testament text, both in the
Greek original and in English translation.
This remarkable achievement will attract a broad readership to three core
chapters of his reminiscences: chapter 6 (“The Bible Societies’ Greek New
Testament”), chapter 7 (“Translating the Bible: The Revised Standard
Version”), and chapter 8 (“Translating the Bible: The New Revised Standard
Version”). The “inside story” of these projects is meticulously recorded by
this leading participant in each. Where else could one find personal and
authoritative accounts of their life, from inception to completion, coupled
with humanizing anecdotes? The latter range from the North Carolina pastor
BOOK REVIEWS
327
who publicly burned with a blowtorch a copy of the RSV (“A heretical,
communist-inspired Bible,” he called it), and sent the ashes to the convener of
the translators, to the evening when the New Testament section preparing
the NRSV lost track of time, found themselves locked in the Princeton
Seminar)7 library for the night, and had to climb out of a workroom window,
one-by-one!
Rounding out this core are two related chapters of more than passing
interest. The first (chapter io) deals with the sensitive issue of condensing the
Bible. As the general editor of The Reader's Digest Bible, it was Metzger’s
responsibility not only to prepare brief, non-technical introductions to the
Old and New Testaments and to each individual book, but also to advise the
editors which block cuts could be made in biblical books! With customary
candor, Metzger shares a sampling of both vitriolic and appreciative responses
to this endeavor. The other (chapter 15) recounts the story of The Oxford
Companion to the Bible. The task of editing this comprehensive Bible dictionary
stretched over nine years, and in England, its actual launching took place at a
party held in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey.
Having met this famous American New Testament scholar via his participa-
tion in these Bible projects, many readers may wish to know something of his
personal side. Metzger obliges with four chapters devoted to his formative
years. Born to Maurice R. Metzger and Anna Manning Metzger on February7
9, 1914, he writes appreciatively of his Pennsylvania-Dutch heritage. Follow-
ing graduation from Middletown High School (with four years of Fatin) he
chose his father’s alma mater, Febanon Valley College. There “for some
reason” he elected to meet the college’s foreign language requirement by
enrolling in the elementary course in classical Greek grammar. Whatever the
reason, that decision became the door through which he entered the world of
Greek grammars and lexica, New Testament textual criticism, the synoptic
problem, and the Apostolic Fathers, together with the mastery of Fatin,
German, and French.
After college, Metzger continued his studies at Princeton Theological
Seminary, whose George F. Collord Professsor of New Testament Emeritus
he remains today, after a distinguished teaching career there of forty-six years
(1938-1984). His personal life was blessed by marriage to Isobel Elizabeth
Mackay, and his professional life was shaped by postgraduate studies at
Princeton University and the University of Chicago, and ordination as an
evangelist by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Resident in Princeton, he
traveled the nation and the world to become an internationally recognized
biblical authority.
328
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
The book’s remaining chapters are a smorgasbord of offerings. The reader
uninterested in The International Greek New Testament Project or the saga
of the Yonan Codex may enjoy Metzger’s experience with literary forgeries,
his reflections on sabbaticals, or some of his vexations as an author.
Reminiscences of an Octogenarian is part autobiography, part historical record,
and part sourcebook. It is the engaging story of an outstanding teacher,
lecturer, scholar, author, editor, translator, churchman, and Christian gentle-
men, the days of whose years form a fascinating and informative introduction
to the notable projects and persons of twentieth-century biblical studies.
James I. Cook
Western Theological Seminary
INDEX TO VOLUME 19
!998
Articles and Sermons
Adam, A.K.M. “Crossing Over, Pressing On” 236
Carter, William G. “Singing a New Song” 40
Charlesworth, James H. “The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years of Discovery and
Controversy” 116
Clark, Peter Yuichi. “Faith and Identity in Nisei Self-Narratives” 279
Faculty Publications 190
Gillespie, Thomas W. “And, Then, There’s Jesus” 233
. “Theological Friendships” 1
LaRue, Jr., CleoJ. “Exceptional Ambition” 9
Migliore, Daniel L. “The Missionary God and the Missionary Church” 14
Mouw, Richard J. “Some Reflections on Sphere Sovereignty” 160
Rorem, Paul. “Empathy and Evaluation in Medieval Church History and
Pastoral Ministry: A Lutheran Reading of Pseudo-Dionysius” 99
Springsted, Eric O. “Theology and Spirituality: Or, Why Religion Is Not
Critical Reflection on Religious Experience” 143
Stendahl, Krister. “Qumran and Supersessionism— And the Road Not Taken” 134
Tel, Martin. “Truthfulness in Church Music” 26
Thompson, Marianne Meye. “Reflections on Worship in the Gospel of John” 259
Ulanov, Ann Belford. “The Gift of Consciousness” 242
Weathers, Janet L. “The Protection of God’s Darkness” 183
Book Reviews
Allegretti, Joseph. The Lawyer's Calling: Christian Faith and Legal Practice (Kelly
D. Reese) 227
Anderson, Herbert, and Freda A. Gardner. Living Alone (Cynthia M. Camp-
bell) 65
Appleby, R. Scott, ed. Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the
Middle East (Benjamin M. Weir) 225
Augsberger, David W. Helping People Forgive (James N. Lapsley) 66
Bloesch, Donald G. Jesus Christ: Savior and Lord (Gabriel Fackre) 222
Bondi, Roberta C. In Ordinary Time: Healing the Wounds of the Heart (Mary
Forman) 75
Boyd, Stephen B., W. Merle Longwood, and Mark W. Muesse, eds. Redeeming
Men: Religion and Masculinities (Robert C. Dykstra) 69
Brueggemann, Walter. Theology of the Old Testa?nent: Testimony, Dispute,
Advocacy (Michael S. Moore) 2 1 2
33°
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
Capps, Donald. Men, Religion, and Melancholia: James, Otto, Jung, and Erikson
(Richard A. Hutch) 52
Carl, William J., Jr., ed. Graying Gracefully: Preaching to Older Adults (James N.
Lapsley) 8 1
Carr, Anne, and Mary Stewart van Leeuwen, eds. Religion, Feminism, and the
Family (Christie Cozad Neuger) 203
Charry, Ellen T. By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of
Christian Doctrine (William S. Babcock) 294
Chesebrough, David B. Clergy Dissent in the Old South, 1830-1865 (James H.
Moorhead) 88
Cowdell, Scott. Is Jesus Unique? A Study of Recent Christology (Roch Kereszty) 58
Cross, F.L., and E.A. Livingstone, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian
Church, 3rd ed. (Paul Rorem) 90
DeVries, Dawn. Jesus Christ in the Preaching of Calvin and Schleiermacher (Philip
W. Butin) 59
Doehring, Carrie. Taking Care: Monitoring Power Dynamics and Relational
Boundaries in Pastoral Care and Counseling (Donald Capps) 73
Douglass, Jane Dempsey and James F. Kay, eds. Women, Gender, and Christian
Community (Mary Anona Stoops) 55
English, Donald. An Evangelical Theology of Preaching (Carol M. Noren) 82
Ford, Richard Q. The Parables of Jesus: Recovering the Art of Listening (Donald
Capps) 300
Gaventa, Beverly Roberts. First and Second Thessalonians (Calvin J. Roetzel) 297
Gerkin, Charles V. An Introduction to Pastoral Care 0ames N. Lapsley) 303
Gonzalez, Catherine Gunsalus and Justo L. Gonzalez. Revelation (M. Eugene
Boring) 63
Graham, Larry Kent. Discovering Images of God: Narratives of Care Among
Lesbians and Gays (Peggy Way) 208
Graham, Billy. Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (Donald
Macleod) 324
Gripe, Alan G. The Interim Pastor's Manual, rev ed. (Ronald T. Allin) 319
Hays, Richard B. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New
Creation: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (Robin Scroggs) 2 1 7
Holderness, Ginny Ward, and Robert S. Hay. Teaming Up: Shared Leadership
in Youth Ministry (Kenda Creasy Dean) 3 1 6
Isasi-Diaz, Ada Marfa. Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First
Century (Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi) 224
Jacobs, Janet Liebman, and Donald Capps, eds. Religion, Society, and Psychoanaly-
sis: Readings in Contemporary Theory (Leland E. Elhard) 321
Jenni, Ernst, and Claus Westermann, trans. Mark E. Biddle. Theological Lexicon
of the Old Testament (Brent A. Strawn) 2 1 5
INDEX 331
Krueger, David, with Donald W. Shriver, Jr. and Laura L. Nash. The Business
Corporation and Productive Justice (Gordon K. Douglass) 91
Leith, John H. Crisis in the Church: The Plight of Theological Education (James E.
Loder) 309
Long, Thomas G. Hebrews (Robert L. Brawley) 62
Matthew (A.K.M. Adam) 219
McClendon, James W., Jr. Making Gospel Sense to a Troubled Church (Sally A.
Brown) 229
McKenzie, Alyce M. Preaching Proverbs: Wisdom for the Pulpit (Dave Bland) 84
Mercadante, Linda A. Victims and Sinners: Spiritual Roots of Addiction and
Recovery (Elizabeth Brishcar) 305
Metzger, Bruce Manning. Reminiscences of an Octogenarian (James T. Cook) 326
Moessner, Jeanne Stevenson, ed. Through the Eyes of Women: Insights for
Pastoral Care (Antoinette Goodwin) 7 1
Moltmann, Jurgen. The Cotning of God: Christian Eschatology (Gabriel Fackre) 56
Moran, Gabriel. Showing How: The Act of Teaching (Freda A. Gardner) 322
Neuger, Christie Cozad, and James Newton Poling. The Care of Men (James E.
Dittes) 68
O’Donovan, Oliver. The Desire of Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political
Theology (Charles C. West) 94
Palmer, Earl F. The Book That Jatnes Wrote (Alyce M. McKenzie) 308
Pelikan, Jaroslav. Maty through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture
(Laurel Broughton) 85
Placher, William C. The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking
about God Went Wrong (Gregory S. Cootsona) 220
Rediger, G. Lloyd. Clergy Killers: Guidance for Pastors and Congregations under
Attack (David W. Augsberger) 3 1 2
Richardson, Ronald W. Creating a Healthier Church: Family Systems Theory ,
Leadership , and Congregational Life (J. Randall Nichols) 77
Robert, Dana L. American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought
and Practice (Alan Neely) 87
Rose, Lucy Atkinson. Sharing the Word: Preaching in the Roundtable Church
(David L. Lose) 313
Savage, John S. Listening and Caring Skills in Ministry: A Guide for Pastors ,
Counselors , and Small Group Leaders (Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger) 78
Seitz, Christopher R. Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding
Theological Witness (Ralph Klein) 306
Stackhouse, Max L. Covenant and Commitments: Faith, Family, and Economic
Life (William Johnson Everett) 201
Streete, Gail Corrington. The Strange Woman: Power and Sex in the Bible
(Christine Roy Yoder) 210
332
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
Switzer, David K. Coming Out as Parents: You and Your Homosexual Child
(Joretta L. Marshall) 206
Tate, Stan. Jumping Skyward (William O. Harris) 325
van Huyssteen, J. Wentzel. Essays in Postfoundationalist Theology (Roger Trigg) 295
Wainwright, Geoffrey. For Our Salvation (Leanne Van Dyk) 299
Watson, Justin. The Christian Coalition: Dreams of Restoration , Demands for
Recognition (Peggy L. Shriver) 317
Webb-Mitchell, Brett. Dancing with Disabilities: Opening the Church to All God's
Children (Rolf A. Jacobson) 231
Wilbanks, Dana W. Re-Creating America: The Ethics of U.S. Immigration and
Refiigee Policy in a Christian Perspective (Roger L. Shinn) 92
Witte, John, Jr. From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage , Religion , and Law in the
Western Tradition (Bryan D. Spinks) 204
New in the Interpretation series
First and Second
Thessalonians
Beverly Roberts Gaventa
Cloth $22.00
The two epistles are a study
in contrasts. A brief compari-
son of them reveals consider-
able similarities of structure and language, but
differences as well. The most important concerns of
the first letter all but disappear in the second, and
minor concerns of the first letter increase in volume
and intensity in the second.
How do we account for similarities in the structure
and language of these letters, and the differences in
content and tone?
Writing separately on each book, Gaventa discusses
the issues central to each, identifying what makes
each important for the life of the church today, as
well as for preachers and teachers.
WESTMINSTER
JOHN KNOX PRESS
1-800-227-2872
1 00 Witherspoon Street
Louisville, KY 40202-1 396
Visit us at: www.pcusa.org/ppc
Brian K. Blount
Go Preach!
Mark's Kingdom
Message and the
Black Church Today
" Co Preach! seeks to build bridges
and deftly challenges us to look afresh
at the Gospel of Mark's kingdom messages
Professor Blount wants us to see this
message not merely in terms of what
it meant long ago, but what it can do
for social transformation today!"
— Cain Hope Felder,
Howard University School of Divinity
Connecting the apocalyptic message of
Mark's Gospel to the principles and programs of socio-cultural
transformation in the life of the Black church today, Blount begins >
his study of Mark by examining the social significance of Jesus's
proclamation of the coming Kingdom of God. Through Jesus, God's
future power broke through to the human present. This experience
of the Kingdom empowered the disciples to "Go preach" the Kingdom
message in word and deed, to finish the story
that Mark's narration about Jesus began.
"The first text to lay bare the radical significance
of Mark's message for the contemporary African-
American church, Go Preach! breaks crucial
new ground in biblical studies ... It is sure to
become a touchstone for preachers and biblical
scholars seeking to become Bible-centered agents
of social change."
— Obery M. Hendricks, Jr., Ph.D.,
Payne Theological Seminary
Brian K. Blount
_ Go
PreachT
Mark's Kingdom Message
and the
Black Church Today
280pp. Index
$25.00 Paperback
ISBN 1-57075-171-4
BOOKS
Maryknoll, New York 10545
Available through your bookseller
or direct with MC/VISA (UPS additional)
1-800-258-5838
Spirituality and
Theology
Essays in Honor of
Diogenes Allen
Eric O. Springsted, editor
Paper $17.00
This collection
honors the work of
Diogenes Allen, one
of the leading theologians in
the United States during this century.
Contributors, from the fields of theology,
spirituality, and ethics, are: Stanley Hauerwas,
David B. Burrell, Brian Hebblethwaite, Edward
Henderson, Jeffrey C. Eaton, Gerhard Sauter,
Daniel L. Migliore, Elena Malits, Daniel W. Hardy,
and Springsted. The essays demonstrate how
Allen's work remains fresh, invigorating, and
provocative in the late 1990s. Interdisciplinary by
design, this collection makes an important addition
to graduate and seminary classes.
Eric O. Springsted is a member of the Center of Theological Inquiry
and guest professor at Princeton Theological Seminary this fall.
WESTMINSTER
1-800-227-2872
1 00 Witherspoon Street
uTul JOHN KNOX PRESS Louis*, ky 40202.1 396
Visit US at: www.pcusa.org/ppc
Covenant and
Commitments
Faith, Family, and
Economic Life
Max L. Stackhouse
Paper $18.00
In this recent addition to The
Family, Religion, and Culture
series. Max Stackhouse offers a fresh vision of how
the family may best reconstitute the household. He
challenges libertarian and liberationist arguments
based on economic ideologies and sociobiological
theories that distort the nature and character of
love, sexuality, and commitment. Recognizing the
inadequacy of current "family values" rhetoric, he
seeks to recover a covenantal ethic for the family
that would account for new male-female, parent-
child, production-consumption, and household-
workplace relationships.
ii ii ii ii i
min
WESTMINSTER
JOHN KNOX PRESS
1-800-227-2872
1 00 Witherspoon Street
Louisville, KY 40202-1 396
Visit us at: www.pcusa.org/ppc
Counseling
Troubled Youth
Paper $16.00
Suicide. Homicide.
Eating disorders. Drugs
and alcohol. Promiscuity.
Academic failure. Today's
youths often are
overwhelmed by difficult pasts and find themselves
lacking in hope that the future will be more
meaningful. Many suffer what is described as
disorders of the self. Robert Dykstra uses case
studies of four such young people from varied
backgrounds to teach pastoral caregivers the
theoretical knowledge and practical wisdom to offer
youths effective ministry on the journey to find "self."
Robert C. Dykstra
i ii li ii ii i
mm
WESTMINSTER
JOHN KNOX PRESS
1-800-227-2872
1 00 Witherspoon Street
Louisville, KY 40202-1 396
Visit us at: www.pcusa.org/ppc
PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
THE FACULTY 1998-99
V. K. M. Adam
Diogenes Allen
ames F. Armstrong
Charles L. Bartow
Irian K. Blount
Donald Capps
ames H. Charlesworth
illen T. Charry
Stephen D. Crocco
£enda Creasy Dean
ames C. Deming
MancyJ. Duff
Robert C. Dykstra
Abigail Rian Evans
Lichard K. Fenn
ifasuo Carl Furuya’
Beverly Roberts Gaventa
Ceddes W. Hanson
Scott H. Hendrix
Thomas W. Gillespie, President
Carol Lakey Hess
Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger
G. Robert Jacks
Donald H. Juel
James F. Kay
Jacqueline E. Lapslev
Cleophus J. LaRue
Sang Hyun Lee
James E. Loder
Eugene L. Lowryttt
Ulrich Mauser
John Mbiti*
Bruce L. McCormack
Elsie Anne McKee
Kathleen E. McVey
Daniel L. Migliore
Patrick D. Miller
James H. Moorhead
J. Randall Nichols
EMERITI /AE
Dennis T. Olson
Richard R. Osmer
Peter J. Paris
J. J. M. Roberts
Paul E. Rorem
Charles A. Ryerson III
arine Doob Sakenfeld
loon-Leong Seow
. SpringstedJt
. Stackhouse
John W. Stewart
Mark Taylor
Martin Tel
Leonora Tubbs Tisdale
J. Wentzel van Huyssteen
J. Ross Wagner
Andrew F. Wallst
Janet L. Weathers
Bernhard W. Anderson
Richard S. Armstrong
W. J. Beeners
[. Christiaan Beker
William Brower
fane Dempsey Douglass
Edward A. Dowey, Jr.
Elizabeth G. Edwards
Karlfried Froehlich
Freda A. Gardner
James N. Lapsley, Jr.
Donald Macleod
Conrad H. Massa
Bruce M. Metzger
Paul W. Meyer
Samuel Hugh Moffett
Alan Neely
M. Richard Shaull
Cullen I K Story
Charles C. West
E. David Willis
Gibson Winter
D. Campbell Wyckoff
‘Mackay Professor, first semester
**Mackay Professor, second semester
fGuest, academic year
ftGuest, first semester
ttfGuest, second semester
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PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
Princeton Theological Seminary
012 01467 9585
FOR USE IN LIBRARY ONLY
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