Richard Bauckham, The Bible in the Contemporary World: Hermeneutical Ventures (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), xiii + 192 Pps., $18.99.
Richard Bauckham is emeritus professor of New Testament at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, as well as senior scholar at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and a fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Among his previous books are Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (2008) and The Bible in Politics: How to Read the Bible Politically (2011). In this particular text, Bauckham says that a highly important responsibility for Christian interpreters of Scripture is to understand our contemporary context and to explore the Bible’s relevance to said context in reflective ways. Bauckham models how this task can be carried out in this book. Indeed, the fourteen essays that comprise this text, although written originally over the span of a decade, form a coherent argument in unison. They demonstrate, for example, a consistent approach to the biblical text and express Bauckham’s conviction that part of the responsibility of the Christian interpreter of Scripture is to explore the bible’s relevance to our contemporary environ. In order to bring the bible into engagement with the contemporary context, for example, an interpreter of it must also be conversant of the milieu in which he finds himself.
By drawing from the bible’s metanarrative – a story about the whole of reality (11) – of God and the world, he brings biblical texts to bear on these contemporary realities, noting that God’s purpose takes effect in the blessing, salvation and fulfillment of the world as his cherished creation. The bible’s metanarrative must be distinguished from modernity’s metanarrative, for modernity’s metanarrative that stressed progressive mastery over the world and emancipation from nature led to the very ecological crisis we have today (27-28). Postmodernism, fortunately, gives us the tools to correct such a destructive metanarrative, although it does not tell the “story” from a single perspective (2-3).
In chapter 3, Bauckham critiques modernity’s consumerism, noting that it is a form of idolatry (42). Instead of modernity’s focus on consumerism, Bauckham suggests we focus instead upon garnering human fulfillment from loving relationships (42), viewing the plight of the poor from their perspective, not our privileged one (43), understanding our lot in life from a perspective of sufficiency, not excess (43), and by rectifying our misguided placement of transcendence in the objectification of money (44).
In chapter 4, he advocates for a reading of Scripture that leads us to greater engagement with the critical issue of globalization in today’s world, because – as he puts it – God is “supra-global” (45). Chapter 5 delineates the contemporary world’s preoccupation with a misguided view of freedom, a characteristic which he also attributes directly to modernity, but which is not being rectified by the onset of postmodernity (70). He stipulates that a so-called freedom loving society, if it does not change its prevailing interest, will become no more than a “jungle of competing interests” unless it values other goods besides freedom (71). Instead of picturing freedom as maximal independence, Bauckham advocates viewing it as necessarily finite in extent, and relational (76).
Within the sixth chapter, Bauckham states that prevailing understandings of the first three chapters of Genesis have errantly placed humanity as the “culmination” of creation, which thereby – in logical extension – leads to a degradation of the value placed on the rest of creation (81-82). However, humans are created in the image of God not to be “Demigods”, as they are “unequivocally creatures” as well, being “land animals who must [in fact] live from the land as all land animals must” (87). So then, this dominion, whatever else it means, is necessarily expressed in a creaturely manner.
Chapter 7 forms a crucial step in Bauckham’s presentation about environmental degradation (see also chapters 8 and 9). Therein, he recounts Paul’s presentation of creation in Romans chapter 8. Paul, as we might remember, notes that all of creation “groans” (vs. 22). So then, in Paul’s mind, it is not merely an account of humans and God in relationship with each other, but also – and here he reflects Hebrew sources, note – all of creation as well. Our history, then, is one of mutual interdependence and “reciprocal interaction between humans, the earth, and other creatures” that comprise the each’s terrain (97). This recognition of humanity, the earth, and all of its creatures being intimately bound up with one another leads quite nicely into chapter 8, wherein Bauckham particularly draws attention to the notion that in our contemporary ecological crisis, we should – as those who have dominion – lead the rest of creation into anticipatory movements of “the first fruits of the Spirit” (Romans 8:23). More specifically, he notes that the new creation will not be replacement of this earth, but its renewal instead, which is a fact perceptible from Christ’s own example of resurrection (wherein he was not fully transformed into an entirely new being, but maintained solidarity with us, at least to a minimal degree, as shown by the recognition of his disciples of his material body; see 104-105).
Chapter 10 discusses God’s embrace of suffering, a characteristic of the godhead heavily advocated, for example, by recent theological movements such as process theology. Specifically, Bauckham brings up the historical advocation of the doctrine of the impassibility of the godhead. Interestingly, and from my perspective entirely appropriately, he notes that if we attribute sincere suffering to Jesus in the incarnation, then it makes it all the more likely that God suffers outside of the incarnation as well (135). He goes on to give a positive answer to the passibility of God because if this were not the case, his interaction with creation would be merely one-sided, which would make the bilateral affections of the incarnation nil. However, he does qualify this passibility in noting that our speech of God is necessarily analogical and that any suffering has to be a voluntary suffering of love, and he does not suffer out of weakness (136-137). I question, then, if this view were true, if God did not have to suffer the crucifixion? I think Bauckham simply wants to have his cake here and eat at the same proverbial time. With that small criticism aside, one will find in this volume a tightly argued thesis regarding our need for engagement with the contemporary world with our beloved biblical texts. As such, I heartily recommend it to those with reading interests in hermeneutics, and the broader field of biblical studies in general.
Bradford McCall
Holy Apostles College and Seminary