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Extreme righteousness

Seeing ourselves in the Pharisees

Too close for comfort

EXTREME RIGHTEOUSNESS
Seeing ourselves in the Pharisees
By Tom Hovestol
Authentic Media. 254 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978-1-85078-761-7

As the title suggests, this book offers a study in the nature and defining characteristics of the people described in the New Testament as ‘Pharisees’. The author’s central thesis is that these people, and the important movement to which they belonged, have been caricatured and misunderstood in a most fundamental way, so that the real challenge they present to distorted forms of Christian theology and devotion are invariably overlooked and ignored.

Hovestol writes at a popular level, using his own biography to illustrate his discovery of the relevance of the Bible’s portrayal of the Pharisees as the instrument of critical reflection on his personal life, and on evangelical religion in general. His broad conclusion is both simple and uncomfortable: we are much more like the Pharisees than we realise and there are grave dangers in apparently orthodox, respectable religion! This case is well made, and appears to be based on serious reading and research concerning the various movements which provide the crucial context within which the ministry of Jesus was undertaken. The book issues a series of needed warnings to evangelicals and it rightly challenges widespread presuppositions about the Pharisees.

There are some problems however: the text is clearly designed for a North American readership, so that many of the illustrations, and the shape of the Christianity discussed, is distinctively American. More serious still, Hovestol appears not to have asked himself whether the cultural lenses through which we read the Bible may have distorted not only our perceptions of the religious movements encountered by Christ, but our understanding of Jesus and his ministry. At one point, for example, Jesus is described as ‘the Master surgeon of souls’ who attended to the ‘needs of spiritually sick people’. The dualism between body/soul and political/spiritual, which has bedevilled modern religion, is evident here, distorting not just the understanding of the Pharisees, but of Christ himself. Thus, while the challenge of this book, to ‘see ourselves’ in the Pharisees, is welcome, perhaps the far greater challenge is to ask whether we have really seen Christ in his context and have grasped the nature of the kingdom to which he bore witness?

David Smith,
lecturer in Urban Mission and World Christianity at International Christian College, Glasgow