Author: Brad Harper

Brad Harper reviews Jon Coutts’ analysis of True Grit. Harper appreciates Coutts asking about what happens when men and women submit to one another in Christ. This is a crucial question, especially for the time we live in, that Coutts explores through this classic western. While Harper is intrigued by the movie’s placement of “grit” in both men and women, he is more intrigued by the Christological implications of grit when it is redefined by one of the character’s redemption. Harper then pushes Coutts to go further in his answer to the original question both biblically and theologically.

The influences shaping American Evangelical’s relationship with Israel over the years are varied and complex. Brad Harper offers a helpful introduction to the history of this relationship by way of a number of key figures, events, and movements. The emergence and growing popularity of Dispensationalism in America during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries meant, for many, cause for reexamination of the present-day Israel’s place in redemptive history.  Many saw contemporary events, particularly the reestablishment of the state of Israel in 1948, as literal fulfillment of biblical prophecies, pointing toward the imminent great tribulation and the second coming of Christ. Harper then examines recent statements made by some of today’s Evangelical leaders who have adopted a dispensational premillenial view of biblical eschatology in order to illustrate how myopic support of Israel’s claims to the Holy Land can be problematic, if not completely contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Harper urges for a more comprehensive biblicism, one that recognizes God’s love, will, and plan for all peoples, and applies the implications of such a recognition to all involved in the conflict in the Middle East: Arab and Israeli, Christian and Muslim.

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The culture wars did not begin in 2004. In many respects, the warfare can be traced back to the hostilities between liberal and conservative Christianity culminating in the Scopes Trial in 1925, which pitted the traditional understanding of the Bible against Darwinism. Historian George Marsden has claimed that one can hardly overestimate the significance of the Scopes Trial for understanding the emerging Fundamentalist psyche. Harper seeks to show how the trial’s legacy continues to shape Fundamentalist and Evangelical sub-cultures, impacting their engagement of the broader culture to this day. The essay also explores ways in which both Left and Right might move beyond isolationist and polarizing practices and attitudes, working together to find common ground to pursue shared values and build “beloved community.”

Integrated into every theological investigation ought to be a culture question like, “What characteristics of my culture may be shaping my perspective on this particular theological issue?” Moreover, theologians ought always to be posing this question most circumspectly when working on a theological issue considered an essential of historic Christian orthodoxy. Of particular note should be any time when an essential area of theology experiences attempts at significant revision. All too often, conservative Evangelical Christians have viewed Christ’s atoning work exclusively through the lens of penal substitution. The thesis of this article is that postmodern culture has created an environment amenable to the reconsideration of the Christus Victor model; a model which has its roots in the ancient church and connects well with the postmodern sensibilities of many today. Wary of the tenuousness of making historical causal connections, the point is not to prove that postmodernism has resurrected Christus Victor but simply to demonstrate how some of the key categories of postmodern culture make it an attractive option. Finally, this article argues that evangelicals can embrace the long-discarded theology of Christus Victor without capsizing the boat of evangelical orthodoxy.