This book has been getting quite a lot of attention, I think it even got the Christian Australian Book of the Year award this year. My bishop wrote about this a few months back and then again in his charge he referenced it again. While I was reading this a Facebook friend posted a snippet of this that they found interesting. I replied with:
I'm reading this at the moment too. It's like a systematic theology book written by a French philosopher who critiques both sides of the aisle and then presents Christianity as the solution to every political, social and philosophical issue. I like it so far - I'm only about 20% in.
This book seeks to tell the Biblical story in a way to shows that the consequences of the ideas it presents are the best way forward in life and society. It also seeks to show how different Biblical ideas have been unevenly used on one side or the other resulting in the culture we find ourselves in. Throughout the book, there is this idea of diagonalization. This is crossing over of two positions that seem antithetical to each other. In diagonalization, it takes the best of two options and shows how they can work and are presented in the Bible. This is also called finding the "third way". I've included some of the images showing this idea in this post to give you a flavour.
Throughout history, many thinkers have tried to put together ideas of life, the self, the other, the use of power, the law, reason, the universe and everything else. Are we determined or free? Are people good, bad, selfish, or irrational or are those categories meaningless? Is the particular important or the whole? While thinking through these and other philosophical ideas, it takes you through the Biblical story in a mostly chronological order.
I did think the movements through the Biblical story were a little uneven, most of the air time was given to the start, Jesus and the end. To be fair hitting the main points isn't a bad thing at all, but I am sure some Old Testament guys would have liked some more chapters in that space. The author at the end said he has tried and knows much has been left out, so there is still room for a future NIV diagonalization study Bible, with margin notes on every passage showing the "third way" in each story.
I really appreciated this book. Having a "third way", presents alternate ideas not as polar opposites, but allows you to see some good in all, and then through a Biblical lens how we can hold some ideas in tension. It was helpful to see different currents of thought in our culture and then to see what the Bible says about the best way forward. The Bible of course wasn't written to address these ideas straight up, so there is some interpretation needed, and some picking and choosing of passages that cut across the contemporary tension. It is perhaps more of an art form than a formulaic hermeneutical process. I did like that throughout the book there was this idea that God is "superabundant", in all things to us. In creation, in His grace, in His promises and plans, in everything. This was a great term, that I may start using.
Also, the author can write well. (It was refreshing coming out of
the book I read before this one.) There were nice turns of phases, complicated ideas were made simple so I could understand, and even modern pop references and analogies were used with some light humour along the way. At the end of each chapter were questions and the first one was always about summarising the chapter, but each time it was asked in a slightly different way. I am going to steal these for our Life Groups, as a way of asking to summarise a passage they have just read.
There were lots of ideas in this book, and I really struggled in this review thinking whether to drill down into some of the detailed ideas or not (I opted for not as it would make this super long). I did think some of the topics chosen to be addressed from certain passages may have been reaching a bit and were more used as a springboard to talk about that theme. A friend of mine, who teaches political thought at universities said some of the ideas from key thinkers were a bit shallow, lacked nuance and were perhaps a caricature. That is probably true, but not knowing what I should know, this book did help me, a layman to understand certain competing ideas in our culture. The author does try to balance both left and right politics, which of course if you are wedded to one team may be unhappy with his treatment of one side or another.
Overall I think this is a good book, perhaps a bit ambitious in scope, but nevertheless, a good book that I think I would use as a resource to keep going back to when thinking through some cultural assumptions or to look a fresh at some Biblical passages or topics.
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