Book Reviews
251
engaging presentation of information that could
not be considered dry. Campbell has communi-
cated these ideas in a readily comprehensible and
easily digestible manner. This is an excellent book.
PAUL FOSTER
School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh
Filling up What is lacking in
Christ’s Afflictions
Bruce T. Clark, Completing Christ’s Afflictions,
WUNT 2.383 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015.
€64,00. pp. xi + 190. ISBN: 978-3-16-153334-1).
This carefully researched and fascinating study is
a revision of a PhD thesis written at the University
of Cambridge under the supervision of Simon
Gathercole. The book provides a fresh read-
ing of one of the most theologically contested
verses in the entire New Testament. The author of
Colossians portrays Paul as stating, ‘Now I rejoice
in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I
complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for
the sake of his body, that is, the church’ (Col. 1:24,
RSV). Clark probes what the author means when
referring to something lacking ‘in Christ’s afflic-
tions’, and also the way in which Paul might be
understood to fill up that apparent deficit.
The study is arranged in seven chapters. In
the first Clark discusses a number of preliminary
issues and presents his methodology. The approach
is a careful lexical and grammatical study of the
verse. The second chapter devotes considerable
attention to determining the meaning of the key
Greek term, ἀνταναπληρόω, ‘I fill up’. The initial
lexical analysis suggests that ‘the action of ἀντανα
πληρόω in Col. 1.24 is an addition similar/identi-
cal to the former contribution, “fullness” is readily
in view’ (p. 49). In this sense Paul is envisaged
‘as the alternative source of a second θλίψεις con-
tribution of’ (p. 50). Chapter Three examines the
other elements of the verse (pp. 51–71). Chapter
Four then undertakes a vital contextual reading of
Col. 1:24 in relation to understanding how Christ
is portrayed. That contextual reading presents
Christ as ‘the cosmically pre-eminent one’ whose
death serves the divine purpose ‘to reconcile all
things’ (p. 99). The next chapter considers Paul’s
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role, and argues that the primary characterization
is of Paul as ‘servant’. Thus Clark states, ‘Paul in
Col. 1:24 suffers as a unique, redemptive histori-
cal Weltapostel, or Weltdiener’ (p. 126). The final
two chapters explore the way this reading fits
within the wider Pauline corpus, and then draws
some overall conclusions.
Clark’s proposal shows that the reading that
understanding the afflictions as an apocalyptic
scheme referring to ‘messianic woes’ is not con-
vincing within the context of the train of thought
developed in Colossians. His proposal has the
advantage of offering a reading that makes better
sense contextually, even if it causes theological
disquiet for some.
PAUL FOSTER
School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh
A Book Worthy of Lament
Rebekah Eklund, Jesus Wept: The Significance of
Jesus’ Laments in the New Testament (London:
Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015. £65.00. pp. xi +
207. ISBN: 978-0-567-65654-4).
The product of her doctoral dissertation at Duke
Divinity School (Durham, NC, USA), Eklund’s
book sets out to ask ‘if there were significant
laments in the New Testament—or, if any New
Testament texts could provide resources for the
theological recovery of lament as a practice for
the church’ (p. 1). She answers both questions in
the affirmative, arguing that the gospels provide
resources for lament in the life, death, and resur-
rection of Jesus. Although less frequent than the
laments in the Old Testament, Eklund argues that,
although altered, lament has not been diminished
in the New Testament.
The book includes chapters on the nature of
lament in the Old and New Testaments (ch. 1),
lament in the Gospel passion narratives (ch. 2),
Jesus’s laments through his identity as a human
(ch. 3), messianic king, priest and prophet (ch. 4),
and divine Son of God (ch. 5). Finally, the last sub-
stantive chapter (ch. 6) argues that New Testament
lament occurs within a framework of inaugurated
eschatology. At each stage of the argument Eklund
displays impressive command of relevant primary
252 The Expository Times 127(5)
literature as well as a pastoral sense of the significance
of her conclusions (esp. ch. 7, ‘Conclusion’). These
include: (a) the recovery of lament by Christians
that takes place in the company of Israel, Jesus,
and the church; (b) the role of the Spirit in ena-
bling Christian lament; and (c) the place of lament
in the ‘now’ while anticipating the ‘not yet’.
This is a well-conceived project that will
be useful to anyone interested in how the New
Testament uses lament and how the church today
might as well.
SETH M. EHORN
Wheaton College, Chicago
Thinking Theologically With
Stanley Hauerwas
Stanley Hauerwas, The Work of Theology, (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015. £18.99. pp. viii +
293. ISBN: 978-0-8028-7190-9).
Stanley Hauerwas has written a lot of books. Most
of them are collections of essays. A few of them
read more like research monographs and those
which do are particularly helpful for the reader
who is trying to work out whether or not Hauerwas
has a system and not only a story. This latest book
from his keyboard is I think the best monograph
yet in that direction, albeit that the chapters are also
stand alone essays developed, for the most part, for
particular speaking and writing engagements. He
sets out through thirteen typically engaging and
entertaining chapters to answer the question ‘how
I think I learned to think theologically’, the title of
the first. In the course of book Hauerwas takes the
reader on an enlightening and engaging tour of the
principal philosophical and theological influences
on his work. And he unfolds more fully than he has
before his distinctive way of doing and conceiving
theology as practical reason which engages secular
as well as theological authors, and contemporary
cultural and ethical concerns. Among the topics he
addresses in ways that clarify and deepen his earlier
work are the Holy Spirit, moral agency, time, politi-
cal theology, poverty, and theological grammar.
The essay on the Holy Spirit is especially insight-
ful since it sheds light on the doctrinal basis of his
work, explaining both the way the Spirit makes
Christ present to the Church and to the believer,
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and the way in which God works in God’s world.
Hauerwas concludes with an essay on what it might
mean for a theologian (not) to retire, and indeed
this book displays a heightened precision in clarify-
ing the intellectual positions he has sustained and
defended across his rich career, and brings to mind
the remark of a guest at the Wedding at Cana, ‘but
you have saved the best wine until now.’
MICHAEL NORTHCOTT
School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh
Essays On Paul’S Thought
Leander Keck, Christ’s First Theologian: The
Shape of Paul’s Thought (Waco, TX: Baylor
University Press, 2015. $49.95. pp. x + 360.
ISBN: 978-1-4813-0300-2).
This volume collects together 21 of Keck’s essays,
which relate to the thought and theological ideas of
Paul. The volume is arranged in four parts. The first
is entitled ‘Encountering the Apostle’, and the five
essays it contains deal primarily with understanding
and locating Paul in his Jewish context. However,
this is not a unidimensional understanding of Paul’s
interaction with his Jewish heritage. The final essay
in this section unpacks several of the tensions that
arise for Paul personally and within his thought as
he held together his heritage of Jewishness with
his sense of call as apostle to the Gentiles. Thus
Keck observes that Paul’s ‘Pharisaism probably
had a strong element of apocalyptic thought, some
of which was modified by the impact of his newly
adopted view of Christ and so continued to provide
much of the framework as well as the substance of
his gospel and its theological undergirding’ (p. 71).
Hence for Keck, the dialectic between Jewish herit-
age and mission to Gentiles provides the creative
tension from which Paul’s rich apocalyptic theol-
ogy emerges.
The next section of the book offers seven
essays under the heading ‘Engaging the Apostle’s
Thought.’ A number of topics are covered here
including Paul’s apocalyptic theology, his epis-
temology, his soteriology, his anthropology, his
understanding of the divine, and his concept of
justification. There is much to be learnt from these
discussions, although each tackles various aspects
of their respective topic rather than offering a fully