Imagining Redemption

by David H. Kelsey

David Kelsey offers a groundbreaking discussion of Christian redemption by exploring the story of a series of horrendous events that befell a young boy and his family. Sam, eight years old, was stricken with a puzzling virus that left him physically and psychologically damaged. His family suffered greatly, as well. In the face of these events, Kelsey asks, what can it possibly mean to say that in Jesus Christ, God "redeems" such situations and events?

Genres: Theology, Christianity

108 pages, Paperback

First published June 20, 2005

About the author

David H. Kelsey is the Luther A. Weigle Professor Emeritus of Theology at Yale Divinity School. Kelsey graduated from Yale with a Bachelor of Divinity in 1958 and with a Ph.D. in 1964. He was on the faculty at YDS from 1965 to 2005, during which time he published several books including Imagining Redemption (Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), Between Athens and Berlin: The Theological Education Debate (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993), and To Understand God Truly: What’s Theological about Theological Education? (Westminster John Knox Press, 1992). Most recently he has published the two-volume title, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology, (Westminster John Knox Press, 2009). In 2011 he gave the Warfield Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary, entitled “Glory, Kingdom, and Power: Stammering about God.” In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Tubingen in Germany, a great honor for an international scholar.

Reviews

[Luke Hillier · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even though I found some of Kelsey's argument really resonant and compelling, the experience of reading this was extremely frustrating. The writing wasn't necessarily dense, but dry, and needlessly circuitous. Kelsey is frequently starting and stopping to interject nuance or defend against imagined counter-arguments and it got to be pretty jarring to read. And for such a short book, there's a fair bit of redundancy and repetitiveness here. Ultimately, though, I just found his answer to the difference that Jesus makes here and now in the midst of human suffering to be unsatisfying, because it feels like he's saying that Jesus offers a new perception to consider our suffering through –– not the ultimate reality, but one that we don't have to be trapped within. While I don't necessarily disagree with that, I was disappointed because Kelsey seems to set it up as a slam dunk, and in particular as a crucial improvement upon Whitehead's notion of God as "the fellow sufferer who understands." Kelsey insists that, in his view, God is the fellow sufferer who sets free...but the onus seems to fall onto sufferers to assent to the theological/existential perspective he's describing in order to find such freedom. And in the end, the greatest strength of the book ––his decision to ground the reflection in a specific story of a family undergoing heartbreaking tragedy, rather than discussing it at the abstract –– seemed to underscore its weaknesses rather than its strengths. Because such an emphasis on particularity does not translate to practicality, and I couldn't help but ask the whole time, "Okay, but how is he communicating these ideas to this family? What does he say to them?" And the answer never came. Lastly, I found the coda to be such a mess! And probably the reason this went from 3 stars to 2, honestly. Because there are certainly some stunning sentences throughout here articulating how God's eschatological promise speaks to and redeems our suffering, sure. But the coda read as if Kelsey realized he hadn't accomplished what he set out to do, so he named concerns readers may have and delegitimated them.

[Trey Phillips]

Dr. Kelsey presents a provocative, yet subtle, explanation of the pastoral function of Christian redemption. Typically, the need for redemption is required in two respective conditions: redemption from sin redemption from suffering some atrocity. Kelsey focuses on the latter and uses a concrete pastoral scenario of a family whose mother past and whose son suffers various social/medical ills, to contextualize redemption of this sort within the divine promise. It is the divine promise which wields the power to break the victim out of their frozen, distorted identity, and genuinely open for them new possibilities, in which their more definitive characteristic and life await out before them. Borrowing from J. L. Austin's analysis of the "performative" nature of words--speech acts--the promise is more than flip words; the promise, if bolstered by a reliable source, is a public, self-involving act, in which the promiser joins themselves to the promised in order to make good on the promise. The Church is the society formed by those who have received these divine promises, and as such functions as a power to enact within the world.

This book proves helpful when reflecting upon my pastoral setting as a chaplain. The distinction between ministry and redemption that Kelsey avers gives a categorical awareness as to the types of questions my patients ask. Usually, I'm confronted with questions of redemption. Kelsey's work persuades me to make room for another agent--notably God and God's promises--in my prescriptions for spiritual care. There are no quick solutions in Kelsey's proposal. It is painfully, yet truthfully, reticent and calculated. Redemption is slow, progressive work. "Its a lifelong process to live into God's new creation, the traditional name for which is sanctification...It is a slow process, nothing dramatic, not very consistent, never a straight line, down as often as up. Nevertheless, by God's grace, it is a process of real change. It had to be by God's gracious working within them because neither is up to it on his own" (81-82).

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

Was reading this to see if I could use it for teaching in the future. It was very hard to follow and I am not sure the author got to his point. Not something I will be using in the future.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read this for a theology class in imagination. I really liked this book. Kelsey calls it systematically unsystematic theology because he doesn't aim for one definition or interpretation of redemption for all people at all times. He examines the different metaphorical uses we have of the word and assesses their usefulness for a particular concrete example, the case of a boy he calls Sam and the terrible events that occur to him and his family.
This book doesn't talk much about the why of such events, but for people starting to address the what now, it's helpful in its sympathetic, individual approach to how the story of Jesus and God's promises can provide hope.
It's a theology book, rather than a cozy lowest-common-denominator Christian book, and the final section has a more philosophical and theological tone, but the rest is quite readable, if a tad complex in places.

[Joseph Sverker]

This was a very interesting and refreshing approach to what redemption is. By trying to answer the question of redemption through a real life situation Kelsey shows, amongst other things, that it seems like the answer to evil and suffering that the God of the Bible has given is a practical rather than theoretical/philosophical. It would be interesting though to hear what Kelsey thinks of those who don't see any redemption in their lives.

[Nindyo Sasongko · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author does not posit that we can take a all-embracing doctrine of redemption. Instead, he reads the doctrine of atonement as God making-promise. He bases the scrutiny with speech-act theory of J. L. Austin.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book if you want to really understand redemption and be able to act on your understanding.