Redemptive Reversals and the Ironic Overturning of Human Wisdom

What irony is being played out in your life? Regardless of who we are, whether believers in Christ or unbelievers, an irony is being played out in our life. If we are unbelievers, then in one way or another and at some point in our life, we will suffer retributive irony; that is, we will be punished by means of our own sin. On the other hand, if we are Christians, in one way or another, and at some point in our lives, we will experience restorative irony.

Being a reader of novels and in God's word, irony appeals to me. It helps clarify a point, a character, a plot and discover something about myself. This study is loaded of the different ironies played out in God's word to bring Himself to his creation. Seeing the ironies of the word and God's redemptive plan, makes the word relevant to each of us. However, the irony is not for God's word to be relevant to us but for us to be relevant to God's word. See what I did there.

The Six chapters of irony begin with God judges people by their own sin, which leads to People resembled the idols they worship, which leads to the hope seeing the irony of salvation. With salvation: The Christian Life- Power is perfected in the powerless. And as our faith grows, Chapter 5: Faith in the Unseen Realities contradicts trust in superficial appearances which leads to the irony of the end times.

With irony you can see much more and begin for yourself to the ironies of the Christian life today. Who God uses to the circumstances he brings each of us too. It is all to grow our faith and seeing the irony in that helps our faith grow that we may not stumble and not grow weary but stand and be heaven minded that all things will pass away. Highly Recommend.

A Special Thank you to Crossway Books and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review.

This is an amazing book. It is something you can read multiple times because it draws on a beautiful theme in scripture, which is that God works things out so that what you deal out ends up being dealt to you. It gets practical as well.

Redemptive Reversals marvels at the ironic overturning of human wisdom in seven short chapters that touch on sin, idolatry, salvation, the Christian life, faith, and eschatology. This book is very a very deep read, teaching that Gods ways are not our ways! I recommend this book to anyone looking to dig deeper in theology.

Do you appreciate irony? I love ironies and if there’s one literature that really got me interested in this literary device it was the Bible. In this book New Testament scholar G. K. Beale look at the various irony found throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. This is an excellent work on Biblical Theology and certainly I want to read more of Beale’s books.
I thought it was helpful that in the introduction the book defined what is irony. Irony is one of those things in life that you know it when you see it but it can be hard to put into words. Here Beale defined irony as saying something or doing something that implies its opposite. Beale also noted there are two kinds of irony: Retributive in which God punishes people using the very means of their own sins and there’s also redemptive irony where those who believed might appeared to be curse but are really blessed. This is no abstract literary criticism of the Bible; believers need to know about the ironies in the Bible in order that we be not discouraged during difficult times. In fact the author did a good job of drawing out a lot of practical applications throughout the book and applied it to the readers’ lives. It was spiritually edifying for the soul and not just for the Christian intellect!
Besides an introduction and a conclusion the book consists of six chapters. Chapter one looks at the irony of how God judges people by their own sin. Chapter two ten looks at how people resemble the idols they worship. This is followed by a chapter on the irony of salvation and then a chapter on ironies in the Christian life. Chapter five looks at Hebrews 11 of faith in unseen realities in contrast to trusting in superficial appearances. The last chapter looks at ironies in the topic of eschatology. While the chapter is arranged in a manner that resemble systematic theology nevertheless the meat of the chapter is more biblical theology of going from Old Testament to New Testament.
This is the seventh book I read from the “Short Studies in Biblical Theology” series published by Crossway. I have immensely enjoyed the other six volumes that I read from this series and this work is no different. It was though one of the longer books in this series, coming in at over two hundred pages.
Compared to the some of the other titles I felt this particular title I learn a lot more new knowledge than the other books in series. I took a lot of notes over four months. I read it at a much slower pace than most of my reading since it was that rich with insight. The discussion of hardening hearts in its Egyptian context and also the discussion about becoming like what we worship whether for good or bad was some of the gold in this book.
There are though constructive criticism I would have for the book. In chapter one Beale writes “I hope that no Christian is reading this and thinking that he or she is exmpt from God’s ironic forms of judgment. Although Christians will not suffer eternal judgment, they are not exempt from other temporal kinds of punishments.” It is important to make a distinction between punishment and discipline and while believers are disciplined by God I do think God has taken our punishment already on the Cross. Later in the same paragraph Beale does write that “The Lord may use such sin as the very thing that disciplines the sinner” showing he uses discipline language but to avoid confusion I think its helpful Beale rephrase it as “discipline” instead of punishment in the earlier sentence. I also thought the chapter on eschatology wasn’t as strong as the other chapters in the book but I admit that might be because of different eschatological disagreements I have with the author.
Overall a wonderful book that I highly recommend.
NOTE: This book was provided to me free by Crossway and Net Galley without any obligation for a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.