(completed: 249/9394 pages)

Woohoo! I’ve completed Mile One of my Reading Marathon! Only 25 more to go…

Those of you who follow this blog or who know me well may wonder why I picked a faith-promoting work like A Lively Hope: The Suffering, Death, Resurrection, and Exaltation of Jesus Christ to start my marathon (I deliberately set myself up for a difficult first mile!). I’m still kind of puzzled myself, and I want to explore both my choice and my reaction to the book.

First of all, I have to say that I idolize Richard Holzapfel. He was the Director of the LDS Institute at UCI during its most successful years (in the early nineties), and was the first leader within a church context who helped me to expand my horizons a bit and not look at my religion so narrowly. Richard, now a professor at BYU, was an incredible teacher and exemplar. When he taught, he encouraged discussion, but at the same time would build the lesson up to an intellectual and spiritual climax. He’s also one of the most prolific historians I know and we’re no longer able to keep up with all of the books he publishes (the man never sleeps–I can’t imagine him without dark bags under his eyes). I suspect that Brother H. has a lot to do with why Jana and I want to become college professors ourselves.

I’ve often thought that if anyone could convince once again of Mormon gospel truths, it might be Richard, because I respect both his faith and his intellect. And with my daughter’s baptism fast approaching, a temple growing weekly next to my chapel, and a sense of reconciliation with Mormonism due to my experience at the Sunstone conference in August, I’m willing to make the attempt to reach out to Jesus again, and a more personal book on Christ by a beloved author seemed like a good place to begin.

A Lively Hope reads like an engaging reference, or a history-laced meditation, on the suffering (and exaltation) of Christ. Holzapfel tackles each of the four Evangelists’ approach to the passion narratives separately, and highlights the unique perspectives and contributions of each Gospel. Interspersed are historical tidbits (crediting Harper’s magazine for coining the phrase “doubting Thomas” (p.179), for example), details one might find in a gazetteer of Christian Jerusalem, and personal reflections. Almost every paragraph has an endnote, and Holzapfel quotes eminent New Testament scholars (LDS and non-) left and right, making this a great springboard for further historical/contextual study of the Gospels (without fear of straying too far into the more critical scholarship).

I came away from A Lively Hope with mixed feelings. I would heartily recommend this book to any of my LDS friends with a love for history. I feel that the work was rushed, or incomplete, however. I wish that Holzapfel had spent more time on synthesis and wrapping up each section, tying together the myriad lovingly gathered details into pithy reflections that are to me a Holzapfel trademark.

Am I any closer to a conviction of the divinity of Christ as a result of reading Holzapfel’s 200-page witness of his passion and exaltation? No. I’m not willing to enslave history to faith, or at the very least to subordinate it. To me there is a deep tension between history and faith, and I have not made peace between them the way that Holzapfel has done. I’m began reading Mile Two: J. D. Crossan’s controversial The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant today, and so far, it is sweeter to both my spirit and my mind than A Lively Hope was. Even though it is almost three times longer, I feel that this second mile will be much easier. Perhaps Brother H. would be disappointed::