Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 84:1 (Spring 2022)
Article: Reviews Of Books
Author: Anonymous

WTJ 84:1 (Spring 2022) p. 121

Reviews Of Books

Rebekah Eklund, Beatitudes through the Ages. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021. Pp. xxi + 346. $35.00, cloth.

Rebekah Eklund classifies her Beatitudes through the Ages as a selective history of the reception of the Beatitudes (Matt 5:3–12; Luke 6:20–26, which includes the “woes”). Central to Eklund’s moderate reader-response approach is the distinction between the text in its original context and the text in later contexts. On the one hand, the original context limits the boundaries of plausible interpretation and provides criteria for evaluating interpretations. On the other hand, interpreting the Bible in a community of other interpreters, past and present, guards against unfruitful idiosyncratic interpretations and enriches each interpreter with new perspectives. Another aspect of her method is something akin to the principle that Scripture interprets Scripture. She views Scripture, both OT and NT together, as a “unified and harmonious witness to the triune God,” as “the primary way that God has spoken,” and as “the foremost of God’s gifts to God’s people” (p. 7). These convictions enable her to track with those interpreters who draw from other parts of Scripture to find richer meaning in each beatitude.

In chapters 1 and 2, Eklund explores big-picture questions that have arisen in the history of the beatitudes’ reception. She asks about the relation between Matthew’s and Luke’s versions; the addressees to whom the beatitudes apply; whether the beatitudes are counter-cultural and which cultures they counter; whether the beatitudes are commands, or descriptions of the faithful in this life, or descriptions of Jesus; whether the second clause of each beatitude is a reward for obedience or a promised eschatological reversal; how many beatitudes there are—four, seven, eight, nine, or ten; whether the beatitudes are for life in this world or for the one to come; and whether it is divine or human agency that realizes the beatitudes.

Rather than restating the varied and fascinating answers that Eklund finds, I offer a few highlights from these chapters. First, Eklund notes “a visible and widening gap between ecclesial (church-based) and Western academic interpretation,” the former of which tends to resemble “premodern” interpretation (p. 19). Yet the premodernity-modernity and church-academy distinctions are not at war: “the differences between the two versions of the Beatitudes are generative: they’re a gift that prompts exploration and deeper reflection” (p. 20). Second, these chapters fruitfully demonstrate how to integrate very different interpretations. Eklund sometimes sides with on...