Abstract
Professor Gnuse seeks to reclaim the Bible’s message of liberation both from those who commend its supposedly oppressive recommendations and those who in response to such commendation reject the Bible and its use in the churches. His is an admirable example of constructive theology with expertise centred on ‘the monotheistic evolutionary trajectory as it seeks to affirm the basic equality and dignity of all people’ (p. 17). Eight chapters bring into focus the economic rights of the poor, the rights of slaves and the rights of women. Two more are concerned with Old and New Testament passages used to condemn homosexuality.
His first chapter is crucial in establishing how he evaluates biblical texts, paying most careful attention to the eras in which the biblical texts were produced, arguing that the traditions revealed in them reflect ‘ongoing social progress’ (p. 2). He looks for the ‘spirit’ of biblical texts, and where it may direct our actions in our own times. In subsequent chapters, he draws on comparisons between biblical law codes in comparison with those of their surrounding cultures. ‘Biblical law codes were indeed reformist in their outlook, with an ideal sense of how society should function’, inspiring their society to commit itself to ameliorating the woes of marginalized people (p. 27). Release of debt, release from slavery or at least attempts to lessen its extent led on to the perspective of the New Testament era during which it appeared that slaves were considered ‘to be people worth addressing, thus treating them as human beings’, and rational human beings at that (p. 65). Early Christians simply had no power fundamentally to change the institution of slavery, which is more than could be said for those who did have the power, and worse, prospered from it, in effect as we continue to do today (p. 75).
Professor Gnuse finds ways to remind us of his central contention, which is that rather than ‘judge the value of any religion by the cultural accretions that come from the era of that religion’s origin’, we should evaluate it ‘by the core of its teachings in its sacred texts’ (p. 77), a principle which applies to Christians, as well as to other monotheistic faiths. A cardinal mistake has been to read of ‘the sinful human condition testified to by the narratives’ while failing to see the vision which may inspire our own policies (p. 80). Three chapters on the rights and dignity of women reach the honest conclusion that the official position of Christianity has been that women are to be subordinated to men, while the biblically inspired trajectory which inspired secular movements to speak for the equality and dignity of women has still not dislodged the assumption of such subordination in religious authorities (p. 115).
The last two chapters take a somewhat different tack, looking at just seven texts allegedly condemning male and female homosexual behaviour. Professor Gnuse seeks to demonstrate the irrelevance of these texts to relationships between two consenting, free adults, while unable to argue for an evolution of a biblical perspective given the paucity of the texts. What becomes clear, however, is condemnation of power rape and humiliation whether hetero- or homosexual, cultic prostitution and inhospitality to strangers, abusive sexual relationships and those practices intrinsic to certain idolatrous cults. The book as a whole employs academic scholarship in such a way as to foster appreciation of the Bible as ‘a volume that speaks of human liberation, dignity and equality’ (p. 164). One may but hope that more will read it in much the same way.