Category Archives: Book Reviews

We get letters, we get stacks and stacks of letters

Is it a mixed metaphor to apply Perry Como’s jingle from the fifties to emails? Who is Perry Como you ask? Whatever.

My novel, A Wretched Man, has been out for four months, and I’m beginning to accumulate reader’s comments. One reader even called my cell phone one morning to suggest he had just finished the book at his lake cabin, and he wanted me to know how much he enjoyed it.

Here’s a sampling of email comments:

Anna said,

I am truly enjoying the novel! I think you did an outstanding job telling an interesting story. I am not done, but will keep you posted.

Bob said,

If this story is close to true, Paul surely was a crazy man! You did an excellent job of introducing the characters slowly, and repeated their relationships. I am a history/geography minor so appreciate the references to place names and historical characters. The maps are OK but a scale would have been helpful, especially to novice types. I am enjoying the plot development very much. Thank you for using Aramaic and Greek names interchangeably. It is helpful to me to solidify them in my wee brain.

Mary said,

My husband read your book in three days–he just couldn’t put it down–and enjoyed every minute of it … [a few weeks later she added] At this rate, I don’t know if I am ever going to get to finish reading your book. My husband was talking to his brother last week about the book and his brother said he would like to read it. So this past weekend he gave it to him to read… so now I am either going to have to buy my own copy or wait until my husband gets it back from his brother.

Donna said,

I have just finished the book and found it fascinating. Like many of your other readers, I have decided I need to get back to Paul’s writings in the New Testament. Your book has given me a deeper understanding of how the early Christian church grew – Paul’s role in it and the fierce conflict between Jew and Gentile during this time.
I will recommend this to friends. Thank you, I love historical novels and this was one worth reading.

Mike said,

I can only imagine the amount of time you had to have spent to gather the data not only on the historical, anthropological and archeological levels but on the climate and seasons and the types of farming, food, plants, insects, butterflies and birds at the various locations. Maybe being a farm boy, and more attuned to the weather, drew me into the realness of the story line and paralleling Acts which I have always felt is one of the more compelling books of the new testament made the story of Paul more honest at least to me. I had always thought of Paul as different from the norms of society and if Paul was gay or not doesn’t really change the bible and the good news from my point of view anyway. I found a great peace settle on me as I read and concluded the reading of this novel.

Nancy said,

I’ve finished reading your book and really enjoyed it! I’m going to suggest our weekly Pauline Epistles Bible study read this during the rest of the summer. It provides an interesting “review” of events, particularly the founding of the early churches, plus fills in the blanks with interesting possibilities! I really got a much deeper and clearer sense of the actual tensions within the early Church between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians.

Sylvia said,

I started reading the novel and love the short chapters. It reads so well. I put this book on our church book club for next year.

Yvonne said,

The premise that Paul was gay was extremely interesting, especially with what the church has been dealing in recent time. The story was extraordinarily well written and entertaining. Your development of the characters was remarkable. I loved your book. Thanks for writing it. I’m anxious to pass your book on to friends and get their opinions.

Add your comments here or send me an email obie (dot) holmen (at) gmail (dot) com.

Book Review: The Bible and Homosexual Practice by Robert Gagnon

Author Robert Gagnon has parlayed his best selling 2001 treatise into a role as theological spokesman par excellence on behalf of the conservative camps within the various mainline Christian denominations concerning LGBT issues. With bona fide scholarly credentials behind his conservative argumentation (B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary), he provides the intellectual cover for those who oppose gay clergy and gay marriage within Christian denominations. What is more, due to his popularity, he has become a virtual cottage industry, and his website promotes his videos, audio tapes, articles, books, upcoming speaking engagements and recommended talking points.

He provides the scholarly support for those promoting a sola scriptura, word alone, “Bible trumps science, reason, and experience”, attitude toward ethical discernment of sexuality issues. In this, there is extreme irony because his baseline argument is not biblical at all; instead, his views are based on natural law and science (anatomy)—we’ll consider this in detail below. That’s not to say he doesn’t discuss the oft-quoted biblical passages with great erudition. Indeed, even those who disagree with his conclusions can learn from his discussion of ancient same gender sexual practices and cultural attitudes.

Gagnon recognizes the difficulty in promoting the oft used and misused “clobber passages” as warrant for conservative Christian policies vis a vis committed same gender partners. Yet, he is not willing to let go of the traditional arguments either, often expressing a “yes, but” response to consensus scholarship that would dismiss or diminish the relevance of such clobber passages for the current debate over committed partners. Yes, the Sodom story of Genesis is about hospitality and not homosexuality Gagnon acknowledges, but

what makes this instance of inhospitality so dastardly, what make the name “Sodom” a byword for inhumanity to visiting outsiders in later Jewish and Christian circles, is the specific form in which the inhospitality manifests itself: homosexual rape. p 76

So, while acknowledging that the Sodom story “is not an ‘ideal’ text to guide contemporary sexual ethics” (p 71), Gagnon doesn’t quite surrender it either. In this manner, he doesn’t directly abandon current scholarship, yet he retains enough wriggle room for his conservative followers to continue to misuse the biblical “clobber passages.”

As mentioned above, Gagnon’s own thesis does not rely on the traditional clobber passages of the Sodom story, or on the Levitical holiness code, or on the Pauline writings of Romans 1 or the vice lists of 1 Cor 6 and 1 Timothy. Gagnon acknowledges the weaknesses of each of these with “yes, but” argumentation.

Instead, Gagnon proposes a theory of “complementarity”, which is little more than a warmed-over restatement of ancient procreation arguments. Hear Gagnon’s words, which he couches as the “contrary to nature” arguments of the ancients:

Procreation is God’s clue, given in nature, that the male penis and female vagina/womb are complementary organs. No other sexuality results in new life. Therefore the only acceptable form of sexual intercourse is between a man and a woman … sexual passion for its own sake [is] little more than unbridled lust void of societal responsibility. p 164

The second main reason why same-sex intercourse was rejected as “contrary to nature” extends from reproductive capability to the anatomical fittedness of the male penis and the female vagina. p 169

Listen now to Gagnon’s “yes, but” argument:

[Yes] Each of the two main arguments contains elements that contemporary assessments of sexuality would find unacceptable … [but] Nevertheless, the core of both arguments remain persuasive in a contemporary context, containing as they do a recognition of the fundamental biological complementarity of men and women, a divine and natural stamp of maleness and femaleness that is blurred by same-sex intercourse. Apart from Scripture [emphasis mine], the clearest indications of God’s design for human sexuality come from the anatomical fit and functional capacity of male and female sex organs.

Because male genitalia “fits’ female genitalia, we can infer that this reflects God’s creative design. And since Genesis 1 & 2 are about creation, we can read this theory of complementarity into the text. Voila! A biblical argument against same gender sexual activity of any and all kinds! With a scholarly slight of hand, Gagnon has transformed anatomy into biblical doctrine. In the end, the erudite Biblical scholar and exegete is reduced to gussying up the simplistic anatomical notions of the ancients in modern garb and by a series of inferences passing them off as biblical truth.

Book Review: The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

Published in 1979, The Gnostic Gospels has received the National Book Award and has become the leading work regarding the Nag Hammadi texts discovered in 1945, and Pagels is recognized as a preeminent authority on these Coptic language, gnostic flavored texts.

Although discovered in 1945, the texts remained outside public purview for many years due to scholarly and governmental squabbling over access. When western scholars finally obtained access to the discoveries, Pagels was entering graduate school at Harvard. Listen to her story:

I first learned of the Nag Hammadi discoveries in 1965, when I entered the graduate program at Harvard University … I was fascinated to hear of the find, and delighted in 1968 when [a Harvard professor] received mimeographed transcriptions … because the official publications had not yet appeared … Convinced that the discovery would revolutionize the traditional understanding of the origins of Christianity, I wrote my dissertation at Harvard and Oxford on the controversy between gnostic and orthodox Christianity.

After receiving her Harvard PhD, Pagels accepted a faculty position at Barnard College, Columbia University, and she continued her research into early Christian Gnosticism, publishing a couple of technical books in the process. In 1975, she traveled to Cairo and received access to the original documents, she delivered a paper to the First International Conference of the Nag Hammadi scholars, and “having joined the team of scholars, I participated in preparing the first complete edition in English, published in the United States in 1977.”

The story of finding the buried vase that contained the ancient texts is filled with blood revenge murder and sufficient intrigue for an Indiana Jones movie, but the speculation regarding the burying of the vase millennia ago is equally compelling. Nag Hammadi is a small city on the banks of the Nile River several hundred miles upstream from the Nile Delta. Based on dating the codices found in the jar, it is commonly believed that the vase was buried between 350 and 400 CE.

Who buried the vase? Why? Pagels borrows this explanation:

The scholar Frederik Wisse has suggested that the monks who lived at the monastery of St. Pachomius, within sight of the cliff where the texts were found, may have included the Nag Hammadi texts within their devotional library. But in 367, when Athanasius, the powerful Archbishop of Alexandria, sent an order to purge all “apocryphal books” with “heretical” tendencies, one (or several) of the monks may have hidden the precious manuscripts in the jar.

All this is merely background to the primary thrust of The Gnostic Gospels, which is to interpret and compare these gnostic texts with orthodox Christianity. Here are Pagel’s main theses:

Hierarchy threatened:

Because gnostic Christians stressed a direct relationship with God attained through self knowledge (gnosis) as revealed by Jesus, the authority of the deacons and bishops was threatened, and the hierarchy attacked the gnostics with a vigor befitting a life-death struggle. Even though the gnostics were fellow Christians, albeit with different views, the concepts of orthodoxy and heresy developed to smash the gnostics. Chief among the heresy hunters was Bishop Irenaeus whose monumental “Against Heresies”, c 180 CE, provides the greatest insight into the early battle over orthodoxy. He wrote:

Such persons are, to outward appearances, sheep, for they seem to be like us, from what they say in public, repeating the same words [of confession] that we do; but inwardly they are wolves.

[Gnostic teaching destroys them in] an abyss of madness and blasphemy.

[S]uch a person becomes so puffed up that … he walks with a strutting gait and a supercilious countenance, possessing all the pompous airs of a cock.

One must obey the priests who are in the church—that is … those who possess the succession from the apostles. For they receive simultaneously with the episcopal succession the sure gift of truth.

Significance of the Resurrection:

Since gnostics stressed interior knowledge initiated by the revelatory character of Jesus and under the guidance of the spirit, individual theological views varied–dogma was not important—interior enlightenment mattered, and this varied from one to another. Thus, gnostics held varying views on the resurrection of Jesus, but they tended to spiritualize the resurrection accounts and understand the resurrection symbolically while their opponents stressed the literal historicity of the resurrection, at least in part as self-serving claims for authority for the witnesses to the resurrection (Peter and the disciples) and their heirs (priests, bishops, and pope).

Pagels describes the resurrection view of the gnostics as follows:

Ordinary human existence is spiritual death, but the resurrection is the moment of enlightenment. “It is … the revealing of what truly exists … and a migration into newness.” Whoever grasps this is spiritually alive. This means that one can be “resurrected from the dead’ right now: “Are you—the real you—mere corruption? Why do you not examine your own self and see that you have arisen?”

The role of women:

Again, gnostic views are diverse and varied, but clearly the gnostics held a higher view of the role of women than did their orthodox opponents. Since the gnostics had no priests, anyone, including a woman, was free to speak at gnostic gatherings. Some gnostic sects had women in leadership roles.

Gnostic imagery also offered a heightened view of women. Pagels sketches three common motifs: the divine mother as part of an original couple, divine mother as holy spirit—the trinity becomes father, mother, and son, and divine mother as Wisdom.

Why did the orthodox church move to exclude women? Pagels speculates that part of the reason was because the gnostics did not; thus, excluding women became a mode of differentiation from the heretics.

We can see, then, two very different patterns of sexual attitudes emerging in orthodox and gnostic circles. In simplest form, many gnostic Christians correlate their description of God in both masculine and feminine terms with a complementary description of human nature … Gnostic Christians often take the principle of equality between men and women into the social and political structures of their communities. The orthodox pattern is strikingly different: it describes God in exclusively masculine terms [which] translates into social practice: by the late second century, the orthodox community came to accept the domination of men over women as the divinely ordained order, not only for social and family life, but also for the Christian churches.

Persecution of Christians:

While some gnostic Christians would have been victims of first and second century Roman persecutions, Pagels generalizes that it was mostly orthodox Christians who faced, and embraced death, while the gnostics mostly did not.

The examples of Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Perpetua and Felicity are illustrative. Each of these willingly and gladly accepted their deaths, repeatedly refusing the offer for leniency in exchange for demonstrating sacrificial allegiance to the emperor.

The True Church:

The gnostics and the orthodox drew differing boundaries that defined the true church in ways that excluded the other. For the orthodox, the church consisted of those who held fast to the creed, participated in the sacraments and worship, and obeyed the clergy—“Outside the church there is no salvation.” For the anti-authoritarian gnostics, the church consisted of seekers after esoteric wisdom–“the light within”–even if their search led them away from the established church. Truth was to be found in individual enlightenment rather than blind obeisance to the dogma of the bishops. The charge that gnostics claimed to be spiritual elites has merit.

Conclusion: Pagels offers a benign view of the gnostics, suggesting their suppression resulted in the impoverishment of Christian tradition, but she does not advocate or “side with” Gnosticism. Yet, the historical record reminds us that orthodoxy always belittles those on the fringes, those who dare wonder, those “restless, inquiring people who marked out a solitary path of self-discovery.” And, she suggests that current Christians again dare ask questions that orthodoxy would claim are settled:

How is one to understand the resurrection? What about women’s participation in priestly and episcopal office? Who was Christ, and how does he relate to the believer? What are the similarities between Christianity and other world religions? … What is the relation between the authority of one’s own experience and that claimed for the Scriptures, the ritual, and the clergy?

According to Pagels, if the ancient monks had not buried their library, those gnostic texts would surely have been burned and Christianity would have lost a great treasure.

Today we read them with different eyes, not merely as “madness and blasphemy” but as Christians in the first centuries experienced them—a powerful alternative to what we know as orthodox Christian tradition. Only now are we beginning to consider the questions with which they confront us.

Book Review: Paul, a novel by Walter Wangerin, Jr.

Walter Wangerin, Jr. is a prolific religious author: thirty books for young and old– both fiction and non-fiction—essays, articles, and commentaries. Educated as a Lutheran Pastor, he was the well known radio voice of Lutheran Vespers for many years. He holds a professorial chair at Valparaiso University.

Three of his novels are Biblical fiction—well known stories from Scripture retold by a master storyteller. He is not shy in his choice of subjects: The Book of God; Paul, a novel; and Jesus, a novel. The second of the three, Paul, a novel, was published in 2001, and is the account of Paul the apostle to the Gentiles.

As a consummate storyteller, Wangerin evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of the first century Roman Empire. Paul and his supporting cast are lifted from the pages of the New Testament to become short and tall, bold and shy, bald or hairy. Wangerin’s novel humanizes Christian icons.

Yet, for all the picture-painting performed by Wangerin, the characterization is thin. While we may visualize the characters, I’m not sure that we come to know their inner conflicts, motivations, fears and desires. There is little depth beyond three dimensions. Perhaps Wangerin’s shifting use of first person point of view contributes to flatness of character. He has chosen to write, not in the voice of Paul, but from the perspective of no less than nine supporting characters as narrators. We see Paul through their eyes, which do not penetrate far beneath the skin. Wangerin’s method attempts to create a composite view of Paul the apostle, but the effect of multiple narrators, each taking their turn before moving offstage only to return again and again, is often bumpy.

Paul the apostle encountered Prisca and Aquila, her husband, in Corinth, and they continued on with him to Ephesus as important members of his growing entourage. Already followers of the Christ from Rome, where they had come under the scrutiny of the Emperor, the husband and wife team of tentmakers had been exiled to Corinth. Prisca is one the major narrators in Wangerin’s novel.

A second is James, the brother of Jesus, who ascended to leadership of the Jerusalem based followers of Jesus after the crucifixion. Wangerin’s instincts are solid in assigning an important role to James in his novel, but he misses the opportunity to probe conflict in the early church. Like the book of Acts, which Wangerin follows without challenge, the novel glosses over the evidence of harsh disagreement between James and Paul the apostle, between the Jewish Jesus movement in Jerusalem and Paul’s Gentile mission. Not that Wangerin avoids it, but it is conflict without rancor or consequence. He drops delicious hints that beg for more.

A third recurring narrator is Seneca, the Roman philosopher and dramatist who served as tutor and advisor to Nero when he became a teenaged Emperor. Seneca’s purpose as narrator is to provide setting in the first century Roman Empire.

Barnabas was Paul the apostle’s compatriot for many years in Antioch and companion on an early missionary journey through the island of Cyprus and the province of Phrygia on the Anatolian mainland (modern day Turkey). He is the fourth recurring narrator.

The fifth is Timothy, the son of a Roman soldier and a Jewish mother, who joined Paul’s missionary band in his home city of Lystra and remained a primary aide de camp and secretary thereafter.

The sixth is Luke, the author of the gospel by the same name and also of Acts. Wangerin accepts the traditional view that he was a travel companion of Paul the apostle. Wangerin’s Lucan voice emulates that of the gospel.

The final recurring narrator is Titus, the uncircumcised Gentile who accompanied Paul the apostle and Barnabas to Jerusalem for a face to face meeting with the “pillars” to resolve the issue of Torah observance and especially circumcision. He later joined Paul in Ephesus.

Two other lesser characters make one time appearances as narrator for a total of nine.

Paul also appears as narrator in several chapters–not as speaker but as writer. In these chapters, Wangerin paraphrases Paul’s Corinthian and Galatian correspondence.

In the end, that is an apt summary of the novel as a whole: a paraphrase of the traditional, Biblical narrative about Paul the apostle. An elaborate and aesthetic paraphrase to be sure, but a paraphrase nevertheless. And that is clearly Wangerin’s choice, for there is ample evidence throughout that he has done his research well, and he would be aware of the scholarly consensus that the book of Acts is unreliable as history; yet, he chose not to go there.

For those who prefer, or at least are content, to hear again the traditional stories but gussied up by a master storyteller, experienced and adept at his craft, this novel will be much appreciated. For others who prefer a more nuanced interpretation of Paul the apostle and his primary role in Christian origins, the novel may not probe much deeper than an adult Sunday School class.

Lost Christianities by Bart D. Ehrman

Bart D. Ehrman is a popular author and theologian. He chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His expertise is early Christian history, especially the collection, copying, and canonization of early texts. The term “canonization” implies that some texts were chosen but also that others were not, and Lost Christianities, The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew treats those that were rejected.

There is a scene in the movie “Ten Commandments” in which Charlton Heston as Moses watches as God’s heavenly finger scribes on stone tablets. Vestiges of this image persist in Christendom, expressed in adjectives applied to Biblical texts such as “inerrant”, “infallible”, and even the more moderate “inspired”. Even the canonical process of selecting certain texts and rejecting others is seen as guided by the Holy Spirit. Erhman seeks to debunk such notions, and his ideas are unsettling to many.

BEYOND BELIEF The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels

I just finished reading Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels for the second time. I read it a few years ago, but I reread it in preparation for teaching an adult forum at Bethel Lutheran in Northfield about the historical process of canonization of the books of the New Testament.

Book Review: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, by John Shelby Spong

In the early 90’s, I was still practicing law in St Cloud, Mn, but I was also taking graduate classes at the School of Theology of St John’s University in Collegeville. Located in a hardwood forest of the residual “Big Woods” and nestled amongst lakes and hills fifteen miles up the freeway from St Cloud, the campus was invigorating and study with the Benedictines enlightening. It was a time of intellectual awakening for me, a realization that I didn’t need to leave my brain at home when I went to church. My fascination with Scripture, theology, and church history burned hot.

That process took a significant step forward one day as I perused the cluttered bookshelves of the campus book store when I happened upon a paperback entitled, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, a Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture, by John Shelby Spong. Spong was the Episcopal Bishop of Newark who penned his book following a series of televised debates – first with Jerry Falwell (“Jerry [was] not well equipped for such a debate”] and then with other evangelicals. Spong suggested his motivation was “to place the biblical and theological debates that are commonplace among scholars at the disposal of the typical churchgoer.” Spong’s book became a national bestseller.

Book Review: Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri

Last night, I attended a book club meeting at the Monkey See bookstore in downtown Northfield, Mn. Jerry, the bookstore owner, hosted Phil and Barb, Mary, Charlene, and author Tom Swift whose own book, Chief Bender’s Burden, has been getting lots of favorable publicity lately. At the once-a-month get together, we discussed the short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Lahiri

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Heschel and King
Rabbi Heschel is one my favorite authors. The picture above shows the white haired Heschel at Selma with Martin Luther King Jr, John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, and Ralph Bunche (reprinted from Susannah Heschel’s collection on the Dartmouth College website). One of the dozen or so quotes on my favorite quotations page is from the rabbi who was an activist a generation ago although the quote relates to religious ritual, symbol and myth rather than activism … “all conception is symbolization,” sayeth the rabbi.

I mention him here because of a blogpost regarding the Missouri legislature naming a highway after the rabbi in response to a hate group adopting the highway. See the National Democratic Jewish Council’s blog for details.

WAY TO GO MISSOURI!!

Book Review: The First Paul by Borg and Crossan (Part 3)

In part 1, I introduced co-authors Borg and Crossan, and in part 2, I discussed their majority view treatment of authentic Pauline letters vs pseudo-Pauline writings that came later as “correctives” to the radical Paul, in the authors’ view. Today, in part 3, I will discuss their less orthodox view that the Roman Emperor and the Empire were Paul’s veiled enemies in his writings, and this discussion will include links to a number of discussions of this issue.

Borg and Crossan are first and foremost Jesus scholars who offer a low christology that is less divine and more human, less other-worldly than here and now, more about a social reformer than an end-times avenger. Whether one agrees or disagrees is not relevant to this book, but what is important to note is their attempt to have Paul fit the same mold. This is where they part company with their scholarly peers.