|
We become what we worshipLosing sensitivityWE BECOME WHAT WE WORSHIP We Become What We Worship traces one aspect of idolatry in the Bible, namely the idea that ‘people resemble what they revere, either for ruin or restoration’. The contention is that all humans have been created to be reflecting beings, and they will reflect whatever they are ultimately committed to, whether the true God or some other object. When people worship idols they become like them, and this is part of God’s judgment on them. Conversely, when people repent and worship the true God, then they resemble him for their blessing. Beale’s starting point is to argue for a new interpretation of Isaiah 6.9-13, namely that it is a pronouncement of judgment specifically on Israel’s idolatry — that they will be made spiritually insensitive like the idols they worship. The rest of the book seeks to show how this idea of idolatry in Isaiah 6 is developed in later texts of the Bible. The book closes with a final chapter on contemporary relevance, showing how this is played out in the life of the individual and the church. The strength of the biblical-theological method the book adopts is that it focuses on those Old Testament texts which are quoted or alluded to in later Scriptures and so allows Scripture itself to determine which themes are central. The weakness of this ‘intertextuality’ approach is that its claims about links between texts are far from conclusive. Beale readily admits that his thesis has to rely on ‘the overall weight of cumulative arguments’ which point only to ‘the plausibility or probability of the main idea or literary connection being contended for’. He acknowledges that some of his readers may not agree. More accessible?The problem with this is that I suspect few Christian readers outside the academy will have the patience to work through over 300 pages of very detailed intertextual argument which teases out subtle implications for the sake of possible conclusions. As a heavy-weight contribution to this field of research the book is to be commended as a thoughtful, important and impressive piece of work. I suspect that most of us would welcome a reworking of the material at some point which made this challenging thesis about idolatry more accessible to a wider Christian readership. Marcus Nodder, © Evangelicals Now - May 2009 |