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PRESBYTERIAN
FALL 2022
presbyterian.ca
Connection
BOOK REVIEW
A Review of The Parables of Jesus the Galilean
and effectively we are aligning with the kinship that our Creator desires, that are revealed most clearly in the speech acts of Je- sus that are performed by the parables, not only when Jesus spoke to them, but also when we speak/hear them.
The criteria for that ongoing evaluation of our allying with God’s caring for creation in The Presbyterian Church in Canada in particular, as well as in the church universal, is the degree to which we are communities of ambassadors of the message of God’s forgiving and reconciling love in Jesus Christ for the whole world. Our denomination’s sub- ordinate standard, Living Faith: A Statement of Christian Belief (1984) identified this summary (2 Cor 5:19–21) as the “central affirmation of the great truth” of the gospel. We emphasized that, in Jesus, God got “involved in the grim fabric of life” in “a world that to an astonishing extent shared many of the same problems we do now” (3). Van Eck’s care- ful socio-political analysis of the first-century Galilean realities out of which and to which Jesus spoke enriches our understanding immensely in allying with God’s caring for creation in the context of our own realities in twenty-first century Canada.
In this attempt to begin to ap- preciate what van Eck might con- tribute to our theologizing about our allying with God in caring for creation in our Canadian context, I have glossed over the depth of scholarship that fills this book. It is illuminating and construc- tive. The book will be a constant companion for us at Brentwood Presbyterian Church in 2023 as we take another look at Jesus’ parables, spending a month on each parable that the congrega- tion chooses.
I encourage all of you reading this review to find a way of com- panioning with van Eck in reading the parables afresh.
By the Rev. Brian Fraser, Brentwood Presbyterian Church in Burnaby, B.C.
The Parables of Jesus the Gali- lean: Stories of a Social Prophet Written by Ernest van Eck Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016
In June of 2022, the General Assembly of The Presbyterian Church in Canada appointed Er- nest van Eck to the position of principal of Knox College, the denomination’s largest seminary. He comes to Canada from the Faculty of Theology at the Uni- versity of Pretoria in South Africa, where he taught New Testament and administered academic pro- grams. For the first 21 years of his church career, he served as a minister in two congregations.
As an historian of both the college and the denomination, I was curious about his approach to Christian faith and witness, to the church, and to its leadership. I found strong indicators of that in his 2016 book on the parables. As you will find in this review, I think he will bring some provoca- tive inspirations and insights into our matrix of being ambassadors of God’s forgiving and reconciling love.
In a denomination where our
focal point of authority is Jesus Christ as the living Word of God, witnessed to in the scriptures through the continuing illumina- tion of the Holy Spirit, van Eck’s explorations of who Jesus really was in his first-century Jewish Galilean sociopolitical, religious and economic setting is instruc- tive. This is especially true as we reformulate our faith in light of our confession to God and our Indig- enous kin in 1994 that we have misrepresented Jesus badly for far too long. A similar confession was made to our LGBTQI+ kin by the same Assembly that ap- pointed van Eck.
Van Eck is perceptive about the South African context within which he considers that question of who Jesus really is. It is one of “corruption, nepotism, bribery, the fabrication of academic quali- fications to get appointed and the plundering of the treasury for per- sonal gain” (5). Into this matrix of human dynamics, the real Jesus comes as a “social prophet.” Here’s van Eck’s conclusion of this thorough study of 11 key parables:
In first-century Palestine (27– 30 CE) the elite (Roman and Jewish) shaped the social ex- perience of the peasantry, so- cial control was built on fear, and the relationship between
the ruling elite and the ruled was one of power and exploi- tation. Because of this, the peasantry lived at the edge of destitution. In this exploitative situation Jesus spoke in his parables of a new and different world—the kingdom of God. His parables were political sto- ries about God’s kingdom, ‘not earthly stories with heavenly meanings, but earthly stories with heavy meanings,’ explor- ing how human beings could respond to an exploitative and oppressive society created by the power and privilege of the elite. (314)
This political theology, richly informed by his social scien- tific approach to interpreting the scriptures, aligns well with the framework for prophetic social engagement that our denomina- tion has formulated in its Decla- ration of Faith Concerning Church and Nation. The specifics of our concerns about taking away all occasions for tyranny by ensuring full participation that enables full responsibility are different from those in the mid-1950s when the declaration was approved, but the core trajectory of allying with God’s acting for justice, kindness and humility remains.
For van Eck, two themes run through all the parables of Jesus
that are rooted in the prophetic tradition as recorded in the He- brew scriptures, especially in Second Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea and Micah. They are inclu- sivism and social justice. These qualities of living together are happening now, in and for this world, through the telling of the parables as “performative acts.” Through the work of the Holy Spirit, this happened when they were first told and continues to happen in every telling.
It is worth highlighting how van Eck draws on the conversations among literary and biblical schol- ars regarding the power of words to actually generate different re- alities. It fits well with van Eck’s conclusion that we are reading accounts of the reign of God ac- tually being established through the telling of the story. In the tell- ing and hearing of the story, the kinship of the world is being ex- panded as God desires. Kinship is a central theme for van Eck. In a 1994 article on the baptism of Jesus in Mark, he used the word “kin-ify” to point to what God was doing for humanity in the Christ event.
We are heirs of Jesus, the sto- ryteller, and of the ways in which those stories open up providential possibilities for a different world that manifests a kinship of jus- tice and inclusion. The missional question van Eck’s work poses for me is how faithfully, wisely
NOMINATIONS OPEN
for the degree of Doctor of Divinity (honoris causa) as awarded by the Knox College Board of Governors
2022 recipients: the Rev. Drs. George Malcolm, Iona MacLean, and Ronald Wallace
To honour persons exemplifying critical aspects of Knox College’s mission, including through:
• Creative leadership at any level of church life
• Scholarly contribution to the church or academic community • Effective and faithful pastoral leadership
• Outstanding faith-based contribution to public life
• Creative leadership in mission
Submissions due November 15. Details at knox.utoronto.ca/hdd.
KNOX COLLEGE
www.knox.utoronto.ca
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