Packed with credible research and deep, mature reflection upon the Gospels’ texts and contexts. I found fresh insights on nearly every page. Jason Porterfield’s work to synthesize so much relevant data here is a gift to the global church, and his presentation of sure-footed exegesis in an easy-to-follow writing style was pitch-perfect.
Several times now, I have had the privilege of teaching a university-level course on the Gospels. This book has given me *lots* of new material that will appear in my lecture notes next time around! It has also shifted the way I think about missions… which is helpful and unexpected, since I’ve been living and working cross-culturally (in West Africa) for most of the past decade. (Esp. helpful to me were the author’s reflections on the unique power that a loving *community* has, to give outsiders an immersive taste of embodied, organic gospel witness.)
A few areas of disagreement / concern with Porterfield’s arguments.
1. A minor issue. In his comments on Holy Saturday, the author seems to either misunderstand or somewhat misrepresent Calvin’s position. I myself found Calvin’s discussion in that portion of the Institutes to be uncharacteristically coy and ripe for misinterpretation, on a disputed topic. (To his credit, Calvin does acknowledge that the early fathers themselves gave varied explanations of Christ’s so-called “descent into hell.”)
2. A potentially major issue. The book repeatedly grapples with the interplay of two alternate perspectives: ‘passion week as a display of how to practice peacemaking’ versus ‘passion week as a display of penal substitutionary atonement (Christ’s bearing God’s wrath in our place).’ To my mind, these two perspectives are fully compatible with one another. I wish that Mr. Porterfield had more consistently presented these two alternate understandings of the passion-week events in a “both-and” way rather than a “not this, but that” way. (I was esp. troubled by his quotations from Brian Zahnd, whose views I am unfamiliar with.) When Mr. Porterfield says, “God was not the one holding the hammer…. [in] the events of Good Friday” (p.149), he could easily be (mis?)understood to say that God was *not* bringing down upon Jesus the holy and righteous wrath that our sins deserve. (Elsewhere Porterfield seems to imply some sympathy for a traditional view of penal substitutionary atonement – that in Jesus’ crucifixion, God *was* in fact bringing down upon Jesus the punishment that our sins deserve.) Like the author, I found the camp speaker’s object lesson cringe-inducing. But in the end, we all must reckon with what God has said in the Bible – not with what people have said and done in the name of God. We should not downplay the Bible’s central claims about the meaning of the cross, even if some people who claim to follow Christ have mis-appropriated those Biblical teachings in various ways. Romans 3:21-26 and Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12 are two of the most important paragraphs in the Bible (myriad cross-references/hyperlinks from elsewhere in the Bible would corroborate this), and they both teach that in the events of Good Friday, God poured upon Christ the righteous wrath and punishment that our sins deserved. We need not minimize that reality in order to embrace the complementary truths that Mr. Porterfield so expertly demonstrates in his book: that Christ, the proactive *receiver* of Divine wrath, was also showing us – throughout his final days – how to proactively *give* Divine mercy and forgiveness and reconciliation: by loving, serving, and forgiving those who mistreat us. We must choose rather to be killed (if necessary) than to kill – so that dying souls may come to know Him Who is Life.
3. A general impression. Occasionally I felt that the author had a stronger commitment to ‘nonviolence, no matter what’ than to understanding the whole Bible (esp. the OT) on its own terms. I have more sympathy toward the Maccabean revolt than the author seems to have, because I regard the holy wars of the [much earlier] OT period [e.g., conquest under Joshua; most of King David’s military campaigns] as exceptional/unusual facets of God’s dealings with humanity, but not as blemishes upon God’s character or aberrations in the doctrinal and ethical value of the Hebrew Bible. I take at face value Moses’ lyric of praise sung on the bank of the Red Sea: “YHWH is a Warrior; YHWH is his name” (Exo. 15:3). Mr. Porterfield and I probably have differently nuanced understandings of the unity and progression between OT and NT (i.e., slightly different governing presuppositions as we approach the Bible). But admittedly, I’m getting beyond the intended scope of his book! (Three top-notch scholars whose reflections on the topic of ‘violence in the OT’ have helped me are Christopher J.H. Wright, Douglas Stuart, and Tremper Longman III.)
I have not come from a background of pacifism; yet I still found many of the arguments in this book helpful and persuasive. I’m grateful for the way this book has opened my eyes to the significance and connectedness of events during Holy Week that are often glossed over on the way to Resurrection Sunday. I will read those passages differently now after encountering this book. I hope many others will also find their understanding of our Savior deepened and enriched by engaging with this book. The content was presented in a way that held my attention much better than many non-fiction works!
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