106 - Paul's Apocarptic Gospel, The Coming Triumph of God

Paul's Apocarptic Gospel, The Coming Triumph of God
By J. Christiaan Beker
Philadelphia, Fortress, 1982. 127 pp. $6.95.

In this book, Beker frees apocalypticism (God's re - creation of the cosmos) from the tracts and sandwich boards, and opens the hope of Paul's Gospel for Christians hunched under tomorrow's mushroom clouds. He deciphers Paul's core - that the death and resurrection of Christ are the first fruits of that approaching cosmic harvest when God defeats the forces of evil now gripping creation - and fixes its contemporary meaning for preachers who want to challenge resignation. He criticizes the sects and established churches for neutering the Gospel's apocalyptic power, and points those who love the Bible to a cruciform life style that travels toward the time of graceful victory. I was particularly helped by an ethic that neither shouldered the world nor gazed at self-fulfillment but found its source in the cross, its wholeness in living with those who suffer, and its joy in the expectation of God's ultimate triumph. One hard question begs for more attention in the context of discipleship - - "How long, O Lord?" Yet, in an age of quiet terror, this small volume offers concentrated protein for the muscle of discipleship and preaching.

H. Dana Fearon, III
Presbyterian Church
Lawrenceville, N.J.