MISSING LENSES:
How reading Scripture with the first-century
church can help us find our lost identity.
By Tom Holland with Ann Weaver
Apiary Publishing. 484 Pages. £24
ISBN 978 1 912 445 172
Missing Lenses is the result of a collaboration between a former lecturer and a former student at what is now Union School of Theology.
Tom Holland published Contours of Pauline Theology in 2004, a scholarly and acclaimed work that helped reorient thinking on Paul the apostle, and indeed the New Testament as a whole, to a more Biblical basis.
Not long afterwards Ann Weaver read the book while studying for her MTh at what is now Union School of Theology, where the author was on the staff. As she testifies, she found it to be a profound blessing personally, but she also longed that its radical, refreshing and Biblical message could inform the churches back home in America. The rest is history. Ann used her skills as a writer to carefully explain theological terms and concepts in a way that the intelligent ‘person in the pew’ could understand. This was an arduous and sacrificial task, but the result is this gem: Missing Lenses.
Highest view of Scripture
Such bold claims! But aren’t they dangerous? Some would say that surely, nearly 2,000 years on, there is nothing new we can learn that is not heretical. But Tom Holland has the highest view of Scripture. Early on in his study he was perplexed when evangelical scholars were content with the use of ‘set free’ in Romans 6:7, when the Greek word used is translated as ‘justified’ every other time it appears in the New Testament.
Tom Holland was one of the first of a growing number of scholars to see that we in the West have been reading the New Testament as a Greek rather than a Jewish text. Though the language was Greek, the thinking behind it was Hebraic and solidly rooted in the Old Testament.
Church first, then individual
So what characterises a Greek mindset? It is individualistic and influenced by philosophers like Plato. The New Testament was written by Jews, except for Luke. Jewish thought is communal. The epistles were largely written to churches. The first hearers would have listened in their congregations and the lessons learned would have firstly been heard as affecting the gathered church, and only then the individual. We today have our own Bibles and often read them by ourselves and our default setting is to put ourselves in the text and forget about the church. We also assume terms such as ‘temple of the Holy Spirit’, ‘old and new man’ refer to us individually, when they refer to the church, and to communities of the unredeemed and redeemed respectively.
Clearing our lenses
What Tom Holland (with the help of Ann Weaver) is doing is removing the Greek overlay on our ‘lenses’. It wasn’t there originally but once the Christian church became largely Gentile from the second and third centuries, Greco-Roman concepts started to obscure the message. Today, we are used to redemption being explained by reference to the Roman slave market. But the original hearers instinctively would have gone to the Exodus event in the Old Testament. Justification would not have been illustrated by reference to a Roman law court but by entry into God’s covenant.
The authors thrillingly show the unity of the whole of Scripture within the ‘Paschal New Exodus’ motif. The Egyptian and Babylonian exoduses are used by Isaiah and others to point forward to the Messiah and the New Covenant community. The Passover is key in understanding the work of Christ, dying as the firstborn for His people. At the Transfiguration, Jesus referred to His coming exodus: His death, resurrection and ascension. Ezekiel 45 prophesied the merging of the Day of Atonement and the Passover and they are fulfilled at Calvary. Throughout the Old and New Testament marital imagery underscores God’s relationship with Israel/the church.
I am convinced that Missing Lenses can be a real blessing to the church in the West. It may well help remove harmful introspection and promote a humble, confident and thankful spirit among the churches.
