Recognition for Covenant and Community

I don’t want to imply by yesterday’s post that the Covenant and Community has not received any recognition at all. In fact it has gotten very nice comments from some scholars.

David Dilling, a philosopher and biblical scholar from Grace Theological Seminary and Purdue University praised it very highly as a beautiful book. Below is an excerpt of a letter from him.

". . . your book was to me a most magnificent combination of superb exegesis and devotional challenge. I not only found your exegesis of the original texts accurate and compelling, I was also moved to praise the Lord for this magnificent work which caused me to repent of my sinful past, to rejoice in the grace of our Lord in my life, and to well up with thanksgiving and praise for the glorious culmination of the Image of God in my own life that will be consummated in Christ's coming Kingdom.

Your combination of exegetical scholarship and devotional challenge are a rare blend in a work such as this. I have been thrilled with your theological insights, and that is all well and good; but as I have studied your work, I have been challenged to a life of greater holiness before the Lord of whom you write. That God made us in his image, as you have so successfully defined, is glorious. That we can participate in that glorious adventure here and now, and then have the prospect of participating in this glorious adventure forever is beyond comprehension!

Praise be to the Lord for what you have been teaching me!"

Charles Taber, the great linguist and co-author with Eugene Nida of “Theory and Practice of Translation,” which has been used for decades training Bible translators, praised in particular the book’s work on the prepositions in Genesis 1:26. They have generally been translated “in our image and according to our likeness,” which I think to be the wrong prepositions for the passage.

Tite Tienou, dean of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, speaking at Yale to a seminar of missions leaders from around the world, recommended that they all read Covenant and Community because it informs the discussion of intercultural communications. He said that had he gotten the book earlier he would have used it in preparing his lecture on “Ethnicity as Gift and Barrier.”

Robert Duncan Culver, a Brethren theologian and scholar who has written very many books, said that “It is well written and quite persuasive.”

Add to these Tim Tennnent, John Armstrong, Patrick Kuhlman, and Dennis Fisher, all scholars with very different denominational allegiances, who have praised it in manuscript form before it was published.

So, the silence is not from the world at large but only from my own home church.