Political Church: The Local Assembly as Embassy of Christ's Rule (Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture)

I haven't read it ter, but I'm glad I purchase it.

This book is excellent. While it certainly gets technical in parts (which are not for the faint of heart), it is excellently written, researched, and historically informed.

It's said that there are two things that should never be talked about and that's politics and religion. If so, then Jonathan Leeman has stepped into dangerous waters by writing this book. Churches can often have their own share of squabbles and religion can have a bad reputation today with new atheist soundbites running throughout our culture. Now you tie that in with politics, which comes from the word poly, meaning many, and ticks, referring to blood-sucking organisms.Leeman points out that politics is unavoidable and we all come into the arena of debate with gods. The difference is the Christian comes with a big one and the secularist comes with several little gods that aren't metaphysical claims and thus pass the muster. It could be then that when we argue on the grounds of appeal to conscience, we're setting ourselves up for trouble. Whose conscience will win the day? If we say our conscience is tied to our God, then our opinion will be cast aside in the end and the more "objective" person will be the ones whose gods aren't so readily apparent.Leeman wants us to see what the making of covenants means for us today and that politics has been with us from the beginning. As soon as you have relationships going on, you have politics. People have to learn to live orderly in a society somehow. Unfortunately, we've often gone with a more pragmatic approach instead of an approach rooted in truth.Leeman also brings this to how it affects our Christian relationships and I think this is the most important part of the book. This gets to the doctrine of forgiveness. What does it mean to forgive and how does that relate to politics? Forgiveness is in fact all about our relationships with one another and much of the material here can be quite convicting, especially if you have a hard time forgiving someone.The book also comes from an approach that I think is gently Calvinistic and presuppositional, but the good part is if you don't agree with that perspective, you can still accept the conclusion which is where many of us will end up about God being necessary for the good society. I found myself disagreeing with how Leeman reached some conclusions, but I agreed with the conclusions. I suspect many readers would be in the same boat.Also, I thought criticisms of the New Perspective on Paul were not that strong. I don't think they offer anything that would go against justification in the sense that we usually see it. The difference is more about what it means to be justified. I myself lean towards the New Perspective and I did not see the problems that I think Leeman thinks he sees.Still, this is a good book to read and certainly thorough. It's difficult to think about how a book could be more thorough on the topic. The experiential aspects are also quite helpful as you can learn to see forgiveness in a whole new light and really think about how you relate to your fellow man.In Christ,Nick PetersDeeper Waters Christian Ministries

As soon as I received Political Church, I knew two things. First, with endorsements as diverse as Hauerwas and Albert Moeller, I knew that this was a book full of diverse ideas.Second, after beginning to read through this book, I realized that it was rightly classified in the academic line of IVP. This book is dense, thought-provoking, and intellectually weighty.Many people want to separate the church from the public sphere of life, or to define it "organically", and in doing so, they seek redefine the church as apolitical. Jonathan Leeman confronts this view of the church. As much as the church tries to get away from being an "institution", it is by nature institutional. And, because it has a role in the public life of society and communities, it is by definition political.Leeman puts it this way: The church is to "represent the king's name before the nations and their governors as an ambassador" of Christ and his kingdom. This may call the church to be separate from the political concerns of the day in that it is not beholden to a national political party. However, because we are an outpost of the kingdom of God, our actions, positions, and beliefs should have a political impact in whatever nation or culture we are a part of.There is much more to read, be debated, and discuss with Leeman's wonderfully well-considered work. Today, it is sufficed to say that I am challenged as a person that waivers between Anabaptist and Reformed sentiments and convictions.(a copy of this book was provided by the publisher in order to provide an unbiased review)