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Contours of Christology in the New Testament

Author:	Richard Longenecker (Editor)
Published By:	William B Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, Michigan /Cambridge UK)
Pages:	359
Price:	$28
ISBN:	0 8028 1014 4

Reviewed by Liz Horwell.

Longenecker sets a demanding challenge for this, the seventh volume in the McMaster New Testament Study series. This symposium aims to provide first class biblical scholarship understandable by intelligent lay people, students and ministers to "instruct and challenge Christians to live more genuine lives as Jesus' followers and to help the Christian Church carry out its God-given mission". >

Contributors explore the Christological perspective of individual New Testament writers from the evangelists (chapters 4-7) through the Pauline letters (chapters 8-10) to Hebrews, the Catholic epistles and the Apocalypse of John (chapters 11-13), while chapters 1-3 provide valuable orientation for the reader.

But why would one choose this over other compilations of New Testament Christology? I suggest three reasons. First, for the intelligent person coming relatively new to this type of material, the contributors demonstrate both subject expertise and narrative skills in their ability to draw the reader into their different contexts, offering lucid, accessible accounts (the notoriously difficult Pauline letters are particularly impressive in this respect), but also giving the reader the opportunity to go behind the scenes to view the contributor's own thought-processes and questions. So, while the book can be read as it stands, the open-ended questions also entice the reader back to the biblical sources to check them out and on to the scholarly sources to delve deeper.

Second, this book is not simply an independent collection of articles. Rather, the dialogue between the various contributors at the draft stage, (papers were presented in conference and contributors exchanged comments and criticisms) is implicit within the interweaving threads that are held in tension through the different Christologies. They encourage one to examine more closely both the connections and contrasts and, despite the 'undulating contours', an integrity is apparent between the different accounts that points to Jesus' own integrity.

Above all, I found the writers immersing me in the scriptures so that I felt I'd engaged more richly and been challenged more profoundly by the Jesus portrayed - not only in my personal life, but in living as part of God's Church in the world today. This book is stimulating, deeply thought-provoking and challenging to twenty-first century ministry. I warmly commend it.