My review of God’s Relational Presence: The Cohesive Center of Biblical Theology co-written by J. Scott Duval and J. Richard Hays.

What does this book offer the Church?
One of the most elusive aspects of conducting a survey of Biblical Theology is finding a core concept that runs throughout the entire Bible, cohesively bringing together the Old and New Testament as a single, Christian document, with continuity from the start to the finish. You might be familiar with some of these concepts, or some works, such as the concepts of God’s glory or God’s love, maybe the kingdom, or excellent Biblical Theologies like Schreiner’s The King in His Beauty. Hays and Duvall offer a different, but persuasive concept instead: that of God’s presence with his people.

Starting from Genesis and moving to the end of Revelation, Hays and Duvall show that the theme of God’s presence with his people runs throughout the entire Bible. They do show by bringing out individual passages, each of which are carefully chosen as showing how God’s presence doesn’t just show up in every book, but showing how they inform and impact the book.

How successfully does this Church meet its goals?
At first, I was curious how this book would go. I am very familiar with Hays’ works, and I feel like I quote him or allude to his work in almost any theology piece that I wrote for seminary, and I reference him in almost every theological conversation I have. It was more Duvall that I was curious about, as I was not helped by Grasping God’s Word as much as some people were. It was a bit confusing and less than helpful at crucial moments, so I was curious to see how he would make the jump to a more serious, scholarly work.

I am happy to report there were no problems with the two co-writing the book, as each helpfully brought their insights and scholarly work to bear on the most crucial passages here, writing an extremely helpful and elucidating biblical theology, one that should join the shelves of any student or pastor interested in doing the work of biblical theology.

The book is a weighty tome – and unfortunately, the price does reflect this on most sites – but each page is used extremely well. I never felt overloaded with information, but rarely was a point made without referencing a verse or a scholar. I never felt like the page count loomed, as I have with certain books: for example, I LOVE NT Wright, but I felt the length of Paul and the Faithfulness of God more than I would like to admit. Not so, here, as the book remains engaging and helpful almost the entire way through.

I don’t see this book becoming *the* prime biblical theology book, as I don’t think the field is looking for *one* book to stand in the center of all of them. But I do think this book should become a standard in the biblical theology canon, one that should grace the shelves of anyone doing biblical theology as a supplement to the other books within the field.

If you would like to learn more about the book, you can check Baker’s website; you can also purchase the book through a local bookstore or Amazon.