Making Wise the Simple: The Torah in Christian Faith and Practice

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dec 2006 by Evearitt, Daniel J

Making Wise the Simple: The Torah in Christian Faith and Practice. By Johanna W. H. van Wijk-Bos. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005, 329 pp., $20.00 paper.

The place of the Hebrew Scriptures in the history of Christianity has gone from common knowledge among early Jewish believers to a decidedly secondary role in Protestantism today. Johanna W. H. van Wijk-Bos attempts to revive interest in the Christian OT by seeking out its shared message with the NT. This shared message may surprise those who would expect it to revolve around redemptive history. Her conclusion finds the shared message to be clearly social in nature.

The bookends for van Wijk-Bos's study are extreme. One end finds those who hold "the biblical text to be free of error and literally true ... all of Scripture is equally authoritative as the word of God," overlooking the "historical circumstances of the text" (p. xv). Far at the other side is her other bookend: those that hold that "large parts of Scripture, mostly belonging to the Old' Testament, are irrelevant to modern concerns and issues of faith." She charges that this approach "practices a persistent neglect in regard to the wisdom of the text and its capacity to respond to predicaments of every age-in short, its power to connect the listener to God" (p. xvi).

The OT, when placed in a subsidiary role, van Wijk-Bos notes, causes us to interpret the Torah as "directives, stories, and myths" (p. 13). She wants us to draw closer to the text to improve our understanding of its message then and now. Seeking to open a dialogue between the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, the foundation upon which van Wijk-Bos will build her final conclusion, she compares texts. Arguing for equality she firmly declares, "Old Testament texts do not stand in need of a text from the New Testament for their interpretation. The Torah does not depend on the New Testament for an exploration of its theological importance and relevance for the Christian life today" (p. 69).

The author finds evidence for a covenant relationship when quoting 1 Pet 2:9-10, "a chosen race, a royal realm of priests, a holy nation" (van Wijk-Jos uses her own translations throughout her book), and thus sees the emerging Christians as a chosen, covenant community (p. 20). Exodus 19:3-6 clearly identifies Israel as "God's own people," as many Scripture texts verify (p. 16). Comparing the two passages, van WijkBos rejects the concept that "all the privileges which once belonged to Israel now belong to the Christian Church." Rather, the emphasis is now on the "continuity of the church with the covenant people of the Old Testament" (pp. 21-22).

Much of Making Wise the Simple is spent discussing who one's neighbor is, what care should be taken of widows, orphans, and the poor, and how to treat the alien and strangers in the land. In van Wijk-Bos's mind, the Bible teaches in both Testaments that "outsiders in their societies are the very ones who are 'God's people' " (p. 25). The Torah describes God as "consistently on the side of the poor, the weak, the vulnerable" (p. 68).

The author spends three quarters of her book with a mostly helpful overview of the religious development of the children of Israel's faith into Judaism. Concluding that the themes of the stranger and the needy are prominently mentioned, van Wijk-Bos reduces Judaism to a religion that cares for strangers. She then shows the connection between responsibility to the stranger, found dominant in her reading the message of the Torah, with Christ's core message.

Since more than three quarters of Making Wise the Simple is spent in OT texts, only in the last forty pages of the text does the author arrive at "Christ and the Torah." Here van Wijk-Bos states, "The question is whether Jesus' concept of total dedication to God as depicted in the Gospels is on a continuum with understandings we gleaned from our overview of the Torah, or whether his orientation and teaching take us in a different direction" (p. 264). This is the crucial question of the book. Was Jesus a follower of the commandment of God to love one's neighbor? Jesus did, according to van Wijk-Bos, teach a gospel consistent with the core message of the Torah.

Examining the Good Samaritan account (Luke 10:25-37), van Wijk-Bos notes, "In line with the Torah, Jesus applied his teaching specifically to those in need. The sick, the disabled, the outcast, those without social or religious privilege were those who drew his attention" (p. 268). The central question, "Who is my neighbor?" becomes the central question of Christianity.

Paul's teachings carry on the message of the Torah; from Rom 12:9-13 and Gal 5:1, van Wijk-Bos highlights only the phrase "love your neighbor" (pp. 282-84). Before concluding the book, she discusses Paul's views on gender relations and finds them substandard to those of the Torah, with substandard being a relative term (284-91). Paul is accused of detaching Christianity from a covenant relationship with God, leaving it adrift from the commandments. Judaism was seen as dead under the weight of the law. Christianity, on the other hand, was free in Christ (p. 293). As van Wijk-Bos puts it, "Setting Christ and the law in opposition creates a false dichotomy that has kept Christianity alienated from a crucial part of its heritage. Jesus' teaching shows that his application of the law of neighbor love is on a direct continuum with Torah teaching" (p. 294).