Gerald J. Mast In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus teaches that the difference between true and false prophets is shown by the fruit they produce: "every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit" (Matt. 7:17 NIV). In this volume of Anabaptist perspectives on the work of Jesus Christ, the prophetic teaching and writing of J. Denny Weaver bears good fruit. This does not mean that all the essays in the book conform to Denny’s viewpoint. Indeed, many of the authors take issue with positions Denny advances throughout his work. But all of the chapters are concerned with the question which J. Denny Weaver urges his friends, colleagues, and fellow church members to address with seriousness: how can the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ become the indispensable performative script for the practices of God’s people? Denny typically answers this question by highlighting the nonviolent character of God as revealed in Jesus Christ and by critiquing all forms of Heilsgeschichte (salvation history) that feature a violent God who demands bloody sacrifices, whether that be the sacrifice of the enemy in warfare or the sacrifice of God’s child as an atonement for human sin. Denny’s vigorous challenge both to just war doctrines and to substitutionary atonement theology can be understood best from the standpoint of his conviction that the acceptance of the latter was one cause of the church’s pagan accommodation to the former. For Denny, an angry and violent God who demands just recompense for offenses to his honor is the sort of God easily invoked by people who are prepared to kill in the name of ideology, nation, or empire. Furthermore, the willingness of such a God to sacrifice his beloved son as a substitute for the payment/punishment owed by the disobedient human race is simply confirmation of a logic of justice based on reciprocity: eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. For Denny, the good news of the gospel is not that God sent his son Jesus to pay the price for our sin, but rather that God’s son Jesus accomplished a nonviolent victory over sin that makes true freedom possible by breaking the cycles of reciprocity and retaliation in which people are enslaved. The God of Jesus Christ is the God who seeks to "loose the chains of injustice and to untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and to break every yoke" (Isa. 58:6 TNIV). Denny has been tireless in proclaiming the visibility of this nonviolent liberating God in the work of Jesus Christ and in the life of Jesus’ body—the faithful church throughout the ages, whenever and wherever it has proclaimed the gospel of peace through word and deed. Of course, Denny’s insistence precisely on the lordship of the Prince of Peace—the one who came preaching peace—over against any form of Christian allegiance to a vaguer or more general deity has often annoyed and provoked those who wish to reproduce the safe marginality to which Ernst Troeltsch and the brothers Niehbur had consigned those Christians historically known as the peace churches. For if Denny has insisted on anything, it is that the God of peace to which peace churches give their allegiance is the same God of Jesus Christ served by all who claim to be Christian. The first two essays in the book seek to account for this sometimes annoying argumentativeness that characterizes Denny’s theological posture. Alain Epp Weaver offers a biographical sketch of key moments and contexts that have shaped Denny’s perspective on the world. Sue Biesecker and Jason Moyer argue that Denny’s theological rhetoric can best be understood as a practice of truth-telling rooted not in modern epistemological foundations but in the courage of conviction. Together the essays in this first section of the book begin to account for the work of Jesus Christ as discovered in the life and work of J. Denny Weaver. The rest of the book explores the various historical and theological contexts in which the work of Jesus Christ is discerned in Anabaptist theology, contexts with which Denny has been engaged in his work and which remain areas of controversy and contention among Anabaptist scholars. Thus the reader will discover in these chapters lively arguments that witness to the truth of the cross, repeated instances of what Biesecker and Moyer call stewardship rhetoric, words that cultivate "God’s gift of truth." I make no effort here to package for resale the fruit of this stewardship, of this cultivation, by telling a false story about how these chapters are all woven together into an orderly and integrated whole. They are not. Instead, the reader will encounter competing claims about the glorious reconciling work of Jesus Christ, claims that precisely in their difference from each other contribute to a truthful picture of what is accomplished at the cross and through the resurrection. Indeed, the biblical studies section begins with a rather blistering critique of Denny’s use of the Bible for theological purposes. One imagines that Denny will enjoy responding vigorously to Ray Person’s challenge to maintain clear boundaries between historical reconstruction and theological construction. Other essays in this section take a more affirmative approach. Christopher Marshall stresses through a careful reading of Pauline texts how the nonviolence of Jesus, the first born of creation, offers the fullest revelation of God and qualifies the violent images of God found in the Old Testament accounts. Laura Brenneman suggests that a careful reading of the apostle Paul’s identification with the suffering of Jesus can empower believers to resist the death-dealing powers of this world, even at the cost of security and comfort. Loren Johns argues that the images of the slain lamb found in the book of Revelation are less a reproduction of traditions of sacrificial expiation and more an exposure of the scapegoating violence that the work of Jesus Christ has overcome. The next section of essays deals with christological themes in historic Anabaptist texts and practices. Tom Finger finds that Anabaptist writers like Balthasar Hubmaier and Peter Riedemann stress the dynamic power of the atonement to transform the lives of believers, without neglecting the political powers confronted by Jesus. Gerald Mast discovers in Menno Simons’ conviction that Jesus received his flesh from heaven a powerful affirmation of the capacity for human flesh, joined together in Christ’s earthly body, to become God’s new creation. Ray Gingerich applies convictions about the incarnation to a definition of Anabaptism ordered by a canonical commitment to those peaceful communal practices that make the resurrection power of Jesus visible in the world. While Gingerich’s vision of incarnational community rejects the sacralization of the church’s practices, the theological section of the book begins with an essay by Harry Huebner that challenges much of Denny’s work by recuperating sacramental experiences by which believers participate in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ through God’s remembrance of us rather than through our own efforts. Also challenging many of the assumptions found in Gingerich’s essay, and aligning well with Huebner’s theological vision, Alex Sider reconsiders the theology of powers that has shaped much contemporary Anabaptist theologizing, including Denny’s. Sider rejects the idea that God is engaged in a conflict with his own creation, arguing instead for a "non-competitive" doctrine of God that highlights human participation in God’s powerful actions. By contrast, from a perspective shaped by contemporary womanist and feminist writers, as well as by the writings of Julian of Norwich, Malinda Berry aligns herself with Denny Weaver’s critique of substitutionary atonement, emphasizing the creative potential in the experience of being satisfied by God, rather than of needing to satisfy God. Jane Roeschley, meanwhile, argues for an inclusive vision of God’s eternal salvation, one in which all creatures and persons are reconciled and restored and in which hell is forever vanquished. Such a vision of universal restoration is a profound resource for congregations who seek to be agents for God’s repair of the world, Roeschley suggests, because it provides a horizon of ultimate resurrection power that can sustain the ministries of the church. Turning to the ongoing and future life of Christ’s earthly body—the church—the next section of essays considers matters of ecclesiology. Drawing on his experience as a church worker in Palestine/Israel, Alain Epp Weaver advances a nonviolent missiological perspective that recognizes the present limits of risky discipleship, while proclaiming the good news of ultimate reconciliation heralded by the imperfect and constrained witness of the present moment. Randy Keeler offers a model for youth ministry based on the story of Jesus shaped by the Christus Victor motif rather than by the propositional theology of the four spiritual laws. Keeler urges churches to invite young people into communities that “embody the story of Jesus” rather than into individualistic relationships with Jesus. Janeen Bertsche Johnson draws on biblical images from the Jewish exile and the apocalypse of John to sketch a theology of worship and praise for a church that in today’s cultural captivity witnesses to Jesus’ defeat of death and evil. The final section of the book explores the blessed and fallen creation being restored through the work of Jesus Christ. Trevor Bechtel explores the relationship between the body of God found in creation and the body of Scripture said to be God’s Word. Working both with contemporary theological writers and sixteenth-century Anabaptist texts, Bechtel assures us that our bodies and God’s body are crucial dimensions of the hermeneutical work involved in reading God’s Word together as members of Christ’s body. Bringing a poet’s consciousness to the details of everyday life amid the world and its creatures, Jeff Gundy revisits ancient Gnostic texts rejected as heretical and draws on numerous poets and spiritual writers to rehabilitate a delight in the surrounding gifts of the world, a delight that shapes both inner life and outer journeys. Fittingly, this book of essays concludes with a chapter by Kathleen Kern which shows how the Christus Victor atonement narrative provides a persuasive account of the work of Christian Peacemaker Teams, an organization Denny enthusiastically supports. All of this creative and challenging writing has been thoroughly and competently indexed by Anna Yoder, a Bluffton University student who serves as a research assistant in the Communication and Theatre Department. Running through many of these essays are issues and questions familiar to readers of J. Denny Weaver’s theological work: the role of language and narrative in the work of salvation, the power of the resurrection over the forces of sin and death, interconnections between Christology and ecclesiology, and the relationship between the body of Christ and the body of the world. The book will no doubt be responsible for many contentious conversations, since it embodies the conflicted and controversial theological terrain J. Denny Weaver takes great delight in exploring together with his interlocutors. May the church discover in such vigorous conversations the presence of the Holy Spirit and the peace of Jesus Christ. |
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