The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom Lee Beach. The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015, pp. 240. $25 (paperback). Reviewed by Kelsey L. Lambright   In The Church in Exile, Lee Beach lifts up a biblical theology of exile as a hopeful way to understand the current state of the Western church. By engaging biblical scholarship and practical theology, Beach explores the similarities between the post-Christendom existence of the Western church and the exilic communities found in the Old and New Testaments. He believes that this motif can not only help explain the present struggles of the Western church, but can also provide a hopeful view of God’s people as a people who thrive in the margins of society. The book begins with a broad assessment of the church in the West. Beach, a professor of Christian ministry...

      Ambition: Essays by Members of The Chrysostom Society Edited by Luci Shaw and Jeanne Murray Walker. Ambition: Essays by Members of The Chrysostom Society. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2015, 142 pp. $16.80. Reviewed by Aaron Morrison   In On the Priesthood, St. John Chrysostom warned ambition corrodes Christian vocation, making it an apt topic for the Chrysostom Society to address in Ambition. Scott Carin’s intro defines ambition as “a powerful and continuing desire to accomplish… or become great things” (ix). He summarizes the main argument of these reflections to regard ambition as “an impulse that can lead either to greatness or ruin” (ix). The authors’ reflections are engaging to an audience of aspiring writers or academics and they speak prophetically to the erosion of the common good through ambition’s partnership with self-fulfillment. In general, these nine essays can be...

      On Biblical Poetry F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp. On Biblical Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 575 pp. $74.00. Reviewed by Aron Tillema     In On Biblical Poetry, F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp seeks to broaden the scope of the current understanding of biblical poetry as first enumerated by Robert Lowth. His book is divided into four “thick” chapters that each touch on a theoretically significant aspect of biblical poetry, followed by a final chapter applying the discussion throughout the book to Psalm 133. Written for both scholars of poetry and students alike, Dobbs-Allsopp succeeds in making accessible a field of scholarly inquiry that has often been reserved for those in the upper echelons of academia. While one may reach for a dictionary on occasion, it is clear that Dobbs-Allsopp’s diction illuminates the nuances of poetry rather than undermining the clarity of the book. Ultimately,...

      Delivered From the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission Peter J. Leithart. Delivered From the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016, 368 pp. $27.00. Reviewed by Andrew Song   In Delivered From the Elements of the World, Peter J. Leithart seeks to answer Anselm’s paradigmatic question: Cur Deus Homo? In answering this question, the underlying assumption Leithart hopes to bring to light is anthropological: “We are social and political creatures” (13). This insight extends the key to understand Leithart’s task of proposing a comprehensive atonement model that casts human beings as first caught up in the nexus of social relations. Leithart’s schema follows a simple problem/solution—sin/salvation—outline, which reaches back into Genesis. Expelled from the presence of God, humanity suffers the fallen...

      Eternal God, Eternal Life: Theological Investigations into the Concept of Immortality Philip G. Ziegler, ed. Eternal God, Eternal Life: Theological Investigations into the Concept of Immortality. New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016, 215 pp. $122.00. Reviewed by Theron Clay Mock III   How do contemporary Christian theologians approach the perturbing concept of immortality and corollary doctrines such as creation, resurrection, and time? Under the auspices of Professor John Martin Fischer’s Immortality Project, ten theologians gathered to address these concerns at the University of Aberdeen during the year 2014– 2015. This collection of essays contains the fruits of their labors. They labor at the conceptual level throughout, thus not providing practical, pastoral, or psychological approaches to immortality. There are traces of ethical insight, yet at a methodological rather...

      Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified Stanley Hauerwas. Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified. New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016, 276 pp. $32.99. Reviewed by Matt Smith   Methodical, cleanly categorized, and systematized. This is often what one imagines when thinking of a person’s theology. This is not so for Stanley Hauerwas, however, whose work has been accused of being insufficiently theological. Rather, it looks like a “strange mixture of theology, ethics, social criticism, sermonic asides and illustrations, and polemics” carrying a signature Hauerwasian brand (3). In Sanctify Them in the Truth, Hauerwas addresses the invitation to do some “real theology” (1). Thus, the book is addressed to those requesting more “real theology” from him and to those who feel that if Hauerwas is pressed, he will provide a more explicitly systematic account of true...