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RBL 03/2012
Goldingay, John
Old Testament Theology: Volume 3: Israel’s Life
Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2009. Pp. 912.
Hardcover. $50.00. ISBN 9780830825639.
Ovidiu Creangă
Wesley Theological Seminary
Washington, D.C.
The third volume of John Goldingay’s much-acclaimed Old Testament Theology saw the
light of day in 2009. This final volume of Goldingay’s trilogy, comprising Israel’s Gospel
(vol. 1), Israel’s Faith (vol. 2) and, finally, Israel’s Life (vol. 3), brings this impressive work,
seen by some as his magnum opus, to a practical end.
Goldingay states from the outset that the present volume is not about “the life Israel
actually lived (which is … often critiqued) but the life the First Testament reckons Israel
could/should live or should/could have lived” (13). The portrait of Israel’s life found in
the biblical text is, as Goldingay notes, a “compilation” expressed in a variety of
perspectives and over a period of centuries during the Persian and Greek periods (13, 31–
37). Unlike volume 1, Goldingay chooses to structure this volume in a way closer to
works of systematic theologians and church dogmatists than the biblical flow of Israel’s
story. Goldingay thus proposes a threefold framework through which the life of Israel will
be ordered: life in relation to God, life in community, and life as a self; or, put differently,
a life that involves living with God, living with other people, and living with oneself (16).
Structurally, Goldingay’s volume sticks to this framework in its organization.
This review was published by RBL ©2012 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
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Thus, after an introduction meant to quickly familiarize the reader with the overarching
themes of this Old Testament Theology and the issues postmodernity brings to a
theologian (13–50), part 1 of this volume (“Living with God,” 51–322) treats vertical
aspects of how Israel ought to live before God. This should be, chiefly, a life defined by
“submission and celebration,” punctuated by obedience, reverence, trust, servitude,
giving, as well as sojourning with and the praising of God (53–190). Equally, it also
should be a life of “prayer and thanksgiving” in which communication, protest, and plea
mix with confidence, intercession, penitence, and thanksgiving (191–322).
Part 2 (“Living with One Another,” 323–582) engages horizontal relations of a social and
political nature. Goldingay begins with the nucleus of all social life, “family and
community,” in which he considers important topics of marriage, family, community
(understood as a series of broader human relations beyond immediate kin and
household), and servanthood (350–476). He then moves on to wider human
organizations, such as “city and nation” (477), where the focus is on the village, city,
nation, and kingdom (477–582). Before tackling potentially sensitive topics of the
postmodern life, such as debates about what constitutes marriage or how gender roles
should be envisioned by a modern family, Goldingay is careful to write down the
principles that guide him when discerning “what the First Testament has to say to the life
of the third millennium world” (326–50). This is the closest Goldingay gets to laying
down “ethical” principles in this volume (which some reviewers wrongly claim to
comprise Goldingay’s “ethics”; he actually dislikes the rigidity the term implies).
Part 3 (“Living with Oneself,” 583–831), the largest of the book’s parts, narrows in on the
self—not as an isolated entity but as one person living among and for others and before
God. In the first section of part 3 Goldingay nuances how various texts speak about
“spirituality and character” in virtues such as godliness, holiness, and purity, as well as in
cultivating a healthy relationship with life and death and with time and material
possessions. In addition, he examines how one acquires wisdom or insight, how one is to
use the mouth (words) when speaking, and how one is to suffer “well” (i.e., cope with,
and retain most benefits from, suffering, 585–707), so that God’s people exhibit what God
“looks for” (699–707). The final section in part 3 concerns “leaders and servants.” This
gives Goldingay an opportune occasion for a discussion of governing and government
with its inherent institutions in the First Testament, but with a critical eye to its
limitations and propensity for abusing power (708–831).
After filling up over 800 pages, Goldingay offers a rather short conclusion meant to
briefly recapture the vision tying all three volumes together (832–39). Further, it invites
the reader to practice, not just retain in the mind, the principles that God intended for
This review was published by RBL ©2012 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.

Israel to live out and live by. A complete bibliography (841–72) is followed by author,
subject, and scripture indices (895–912).
Overall, Israel’s Life is just as worthy of praise as the other two volumes of Goldingay’s
Old Testament Theology. In terms of the themes it examines, this volume constitutes a
critical part of any serious attempt at writing a theology of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Methodologically, it remains in line with the other volumes, in that it approaches each
topic from a literary (received text) point of view and with discerning attention to the
limitations and ambiguities inherent therein. (Readers interested to know more about
how volumes 1 and 2 link up with volume 3 may want to consult the reviews of Daniel
Doleys at http://textcommunitymission.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/review-ofreview-ofold-testament-theology-israels-gospel-by-john-goldingay
and Stephen A. Reed at http://
bookreviews.org/pdf/5616_6201.pdf.
By the same token, the same critiques said about the first two volumes could be applied to
the third. The statement, “Goldingay spends most attention on the final level of the
biblical text and does not base theological reflection on earlier levels of text,” which
Stephen A. Reed makes in connection to volume 2, applies also to volume 3. The same
goes for the usage of terminology, for example, the use of “First Testament” in the body of
the work but “Old Testament” in the title, and the use of “New Testament” throughout
the pages of this volume instead of “Second Testament,” if sensitivity to a particular
readership was intended in the first place. Finally, the sparse incorporation of
deuterocanonical/apocryphal works and the use of the ancient Near Eastern world as a
point of comparison in volumes 1 and 2 (that both Reed’s and Doleys’s reviews touched
on) remain unchanged in the case of volume 3. (Those few citations that exist, including
those one or two Mishnaic references, are not entered in the index of scripture. Is it
because they find no place in Goldingay’s Protestant canon, or is it an editorial error?)
There are, however, additional issues in volume 3 for Jewish and evangelical readers alike.
One of the excerpts on the back cover (by John Barton) asserts, “Christians and Jews alike
will need to ponder this challenging book.” Yet the contents and point of view of this
work are unapologetically Christian (Protestant evangelical, to be precise). At least this
feature (if not a more extensive engagement with the rabbinic sources) will make the
volume somewhat challenging for many Jewish readers. This is not to say that Goldingay
disproportionately allocates time to New Testament views, because he does not, yet he
himself admits this much about this volume: “In Israel’s Life I have woven more
references to the New Testament throughout because the material seemed to point in that
direction” (832). As a Protestant evangelical scholar, Goldingay is perfectly entitled to his
choice, but should we not then be cautious in calling upon Jewish scholars to read it?
Related to his choice of approach, perhaps Goldingay could have done more to locate
This review was published by RBL ©2012 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
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himself within the Christian spectrum and explain how his evangelical beliefs commit
him to seeing the First Testament “pointing” in the direction of the New Testament. It is
clear from his views on marriage, cohabitation, same-sex union, and divorce, to name
only some of the most conspicuous, that he echoes Protestant evangelical ideals, so why
not put that on the table and make a theological point of one’s confessional belief. After
decades of a reflexive turn in academia, is it not valuable to clearly state one’s confessional
background and how this affects one’s approach to the Bible?
Finally, to Goldingay’s credit, the Protestant evangelical stance from which he writes
about geopolitics and the (failing) Western order is not only visionary but also
courageous and counterintuitive to how many Protestant evangelicals think about the
world. He will disappoint many conservative evangelical circles who would like to see
their beliefs legislated when he writes that “[t]he state is not responsible for people’s
obedience to the Torah” (331). Advocating for a bottom-up approach to morality in the
public sphere, and putting more emphasis on local communities as places for the teaching
of morality and religion, is a more biblical approach than a top-down enforcement of any
one morality.
Each of the three volumes of John Goldingay’s Old Testament Theology makes an
excellent resource for teaching and preaching. One can build on a volume’s structure to
construe course curriculum and sermon series with relative ease. In its entirety, this
ample work has won its distinct place among Old Testament theologies and will not be
dethroned any time soon.
This review was published by RBL ©2012 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.