Book Reviews 219

rooted in sin (143). Freedom from these patterns of misperception of self and
neighbor can only manifest itself in concrete dependence on the enlivening work
of the Holy Spirit (159).
In the final section of Wondrously Wounded, Brock describes “how the Christian
tradition offers a rival understanding of the roles those called disabled in modern
societies might play in God’s own story” (195). To do this, Brock offers an extend-
ed engagement of 1 Corinthians 12, arguing that “the church only exists as church
as long as the Spirit’s gifts are being sensitively recognized and handed on,” among
both disabled and nondisabled neighbors (208). Christians are called to listen to,
receive, and wonder at the gifts of all the baptized, without co-opting binaries such
as “normal–disabled” as theologically substantial (218). For Brock, in the context
of contemporary liberal societies, the church offers a radical alternative that allows
humans to discover themselves as members of one another (233)—a community
where Jesus’ “assault of grace” (235) invites us into life as grateful neighbors who
together participate in practices of wonder, love, and praise.
In my reading, Brock achieves his goals of offering a theological account of
disability that is both distinctively Christian and constructed “together” with his
son Adam. Brock’s volume is unique in the wider disability theology literature in
that it gives robust attention to strikingly under-investigated themes such as sin,
pneumatology, and bioethics. In this way, Wondrously Wounded opens up a variety
of new conversations in disability theology, complicating and expanding existing
arguments in the field. For the careful reader, Brock’s rich endnotes offer a wealth
of resources and new conversation partners for continued theological reflection.
While I found that Brock’s engagement of a breadth of eclectic methodologies led
to a somewhat disjointed reading experience, his codas helped me to clarify and
integrate his interconnected arguments. Overall, Brock has given us an unabash-
edly christological and pneumatological account of disability and ecclesiology,
calling readers to social action as a distinctive Christian vocation of wonder and
togetherness, made possible only in the Holy Spirit.

Sarah Jean Barton

Duke Divinity School

The Gospel According to Eve: A History of Women’s Interpretation

Amanda W. Benckhuysen
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2019. 262 pp. $25.00

This book is a history of the interpretation of the biblical Eve, beginning with
Tertullian (ca. 160–ca. 225) and ending with a sampling of women’s voices
from the current majority world. Benckhuysen begins by planting the question
whether the Bible is good for women. She locates herself among scholars that
believe that the Bible intends woman’s full emancipation and equality and, when
interpreted correctly, it is women’s greatest advocate. Benckhuysen has collected
220 Theology Today 77(2)

an impressive array of women’s alternative readings of Genesis 1–3 that challenge

traditional interpretations and the gender ideologies they have spawned. Such
readings did not arise with modern-day feminism; women throughout the centuries
have been writing to explain to the church how its interpretation of the Bible and
its ideals of femininity were compromising women’s well-being and that of the
whole church and society.
Chapter 1 begins with a sampling of the writings of early church fathers and
doctors of the church, most of whom see Eve as primarily responsible for plunging
the world into sin. Fourth-century women writers, the first known to write about
Eve, reiterate the dominant misogynistic readings. Not until Hildegard von Bingen
(1098–1179) do women begin to destabilize the traditional interpretations of Eve.
Hildegard saw Eve not as a rebellious sinner, but a victim of the devil. She related
her to Mary, a second Eve, who redeemed what was lost through Eve and who
embodied Eve’s original true nature.
Chapter 2 looks at fifteenth-century writers who appealed to the story of Eve to
defend the worth and dignity of women, paving the way for those who, beginning
in the seventeenth century, would challenge the patriarchal social order as having
no biblical grounding. They also began to challenge the essentializing of Eve and
her moral failures as attributable to all women.
In chapter 3, Benckhuysen surveys other writers from the fifteenth through the
seventeenth centuries who appeal to the story of Eve to advocate for formal edu-
cation for women to enable them to be more fully what God intended for them and
to contribute to the advancement of society by increasing their ability to run good
households. Chapters 4 and 5 explore how women of the seventeenth to the nine-
teenth century reflected on what Eve signified for wives and mothers and how she
justified women preaching and teaching the Gospel.
Chapter 6 focuses on nineteenth-century women who prepared children’s
Bibles, devotionals, and educational material, using Eve to advocate for mutuality
and companionship between men and women. Chapter 7 moves to nineteenth-
century women who use Eve to advocate for women’s rights and social reform.
In chapter 8, Benckhuysen considers the ongoing influence of Eve on gender ide-
ology into the twentieth century. She briefly addresses the rise of feminist biblical
criticism, sketching in broad strokes the work of some of the pioneers and some of
the contemporary voices from the majority world. The final chapter is a summary
of “the legacy of Eve,” where Benckhuysen underscores the importance of context
for biblical interpretation and the ultimate aim to promote greater love for God
and others. At the end of the book are discussion questions, brief biographies of
the 65 women whose writings are discussed in the book, a list of internet sources,
an author index, and Scripture index.
Benckhuysen has compiled an impressive array of texts of women interpreters of
Genesis 1–3, many of which are not well known and are overlooked. While not an
exhaustive compendium, the texts are representative of the thinking of their day.
Benckhuysen’s analysis by themes and time periods is well done. Also important is
the way she begins each chapter with questions arising in contemporary situations,
Book Reviews 221

which she relates to the writings she then explores. For believers who hold to biblical
authority while at the same time advocating for gender equality, this book will be a
great help. Although Benckhuysen states in her introduction that she will look at
women’s writings from the fourth to the twenty-first century, the last work she cites
was published in 1995. There have been enormous strides in feminist biblical inter-
pretation in the past 25 years, especially in the development of methods and herme-
neutical frameworks. While no one book can do everything, it would have been
good for Benckhuysen to note some of the directions that feminist scholars have
taken more recently and whether discussion of Eve continues to be foundational.
Some feminists today would challenge the adequacy of Benckhuysen’s approach that
insists that the Bible is liberating for women so long as it is interpreted properly.
Still, this is a valuable book for its compilation of the voices of women across the
ages that consistently resisted misogynistic readings of the Bible.

Barbara E. Reid
Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, IL

Surprised by Jesus Again: Reading the Bible in Communion with the Saints
Jason Byassee
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019. xvii, 190 pp. $22.00

This book by Jason Byassee is intended as an exercise in the retrieval of premodern

exegetical practices and fits well in the field of theological interpretation of
Scripture. It is a book about how to read the Bible, seeking through its reading
to be “surprised by Jesus again” (xvii, 52, 139, 164). By this phrase, the author
seems to indicate primarily a willingness to read “Israel’s scripture with reference
to Jesus” (128, 133), that is, to read the Old Testament christologically. He offers
chapters on various historical figures (especially Mary, Origen, Augustine, and
Gregory the Great), engaging a few modern authors along the way. Byassee
asks how one is to read the Bible alongside each of these figures. Thus there is
an element of historical insight and critical assessment. In Mary’s case, for
instance, readers are to imitate her virtuous Bible reading by treasuring and pon-
dering (48). With the others, there is considerably more source material for dis-
cussing their biblical exegesis.
Byassee writes as an “amateur,” admittedly “not an expert,” in the fields of
biblical or historical scholarship (xv). (This may help explain such errors as iden-
tifying Jerome as a “contemporary” of Origen [30].) In the role of non-expert, he
adopts a “journalistic approach” (xv). Stylistically, much of the book is autobio-
graphical, colloquial, and chatty, peppered with paragraphs that are two senten-
ces—or even two words—long. As becomes clear only at the end of the second
chapter, and this inductively, the assumed audience for the book is preachers—
“Tell your congregation they are beautiful” (41). Thereafter, the references to
preaching and teaching in the church become more evident (59, 65, 77, 83, 141).