Lee Keck has at last offered us the fruits--or better yet, the distillation--of a lifetime of learning. The long deferral of the book's publication has only deepened its savor and its value, like the aging of fine wine. As at Cana, we readers are guests at the feast, grateful guests who are unexpectedly receiving the best wine last. Reader, drink deeply.
Renewing New Testament Christology
Advocating New Testament Christology as a historically informed theological enterprise readily suggests the book's two-part structure: the treatment of the four Christologies in Part Two is warranted by the arguments in Part One, whose first chapter neither surveys nor summarizes the history of research but instead presents a historically informed argument about the impact of "history" on Christology. The second chapter provides a crisp formal statement of Christology's task as the clue to its nature. Christology's logic--its reasoning--is especially important, for it accounts for the way Jesus's religious significance is grounded in his relation to God.
In Part Two, the approach outlined in the second chapter of Part One is applied to two Gospels (Matthew and John) and two Epistles (Romans and Hebrews). These four chapters can be read in any sequence because their order is not part of the argument. Simply juxtaposing these chapters allows each voice to be heard in its own register. Part Two shuns talking of New Testament Christology's "unity" (sometimes a mischievous word) without thereby doubting that the New Testament's diverse Christologies also share certain ways of thinking, expressed in differing words.
- Publisher Fortress Press
- Format Hardcover
- ISBN 9781506493763
- eBook ISBN 9781506493770
- Dimensions 5.75 x 8.75
- Pages 201
- Publication Date October 10, 2023
Endorsements
Richard B. Hays, Duke Divinity School
Leander Keck's new book commends and illustrates the doing of New Testament Christology. Laden with pithy insights into the methodological moves and commitments that have shaped approaches to New Testament Christology, the book boldly challenges those approaches for failing to do justice to the logic of NT Christology. Keck's work is often provocative, not because he sets out to be an agent provocateur, but because he astutely lays out the Christological logic of various New Testament texts (Matthew, Romans, John, and Hebrews), allowing these texts themselves to provoke the reader to read them afresh.
Marianne Meye Thompson, Fuller Theological Seminary
In pinpointing what makes biblical books tick, Leander Keck is peerless. Here the dean of North American biblical theology distills a lifetime's study in a volume conveying more erudition and incisiveness than most five times its length. For all who care about why Jesus matters in the New Testament, this book is essential: both signpost and stimulus for further investigation.
Clifton Black, Princeton Theological Seminary