In Accordance with the Scriptures: The Shape of Christian Theology

by John Behr

Publisher:

Cascade Books

, 2025

Overview

This book explores the shape of Christian theology when seen by beginning from the proclamation of the gospel “in accordance with the Scriptures,” that is, with the Scriptures (the “Old Testament") unveiled in the light of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, rather than presuming the later framework of "The Bible,” with its distinct two testaments. Drawing upon writings, iconography, and the liturgical life of the church in the early centuries, John Behr shows how the mystery of Christ includes not only the head, the Lord Jesus Christ, but also the whole body of Christ, the church, born in the womb of the Virgin Mother. He also reveals how the scriptural arc from Adam to Christ is recapitulated in our own growth, as human, from passively coming-into-being in mortality to our birth into life through death and deification. The shape that Christian theology takes as it develops in this way presents to us, as Irenaeus puts it, the truth about God and the human being, and how these are united in the one Christ, both head and body.

Praise for In Accordance with the Scriptures

John Behr is quite exceptional among modern Orthodox theologians. His range is enormous—from exacting textual scholarship in editions of great patristic works, a major study of St. John’s Gospel, to short, attractively presented works aimed at the general reader. Now, following the early fathers in drawing from the Scriptures, he presents a vision of Christ on the cross, in death giving birth to Christians—the children of the church as virgin mother.

——Andrew Louth, Professor Emeritus, Durham University

John Behr has wrested Christian readers from habitually reverting to ‘the Bible’ as a linear sequence of discrete dispensational phases, beginning with creation, climaxing in Christ, and ending with the consummation. Behr asks us to read the Scriptures ‘apocalyptically’ through the lens of the cross, with a view to an eschatological mystery still unfolding. Behr helps us to break through to a whole new vision of how the Scriptures form believers.

——Paul M. Blowers, Dean E. Walker Professor of Church History, Milligan University

These lectures, which will not let us see the key terms of the gospel—Adam, Christ, life, death, virgin, church—in any light other than that of the cross, not only indicate a remarkable new depth and clarity in Behr’s thought but also open a port of entry into the very heart of Christian theology, illuminating the wisdom and power of the Scriptures as they are unveiled by the death of Jesus Christ.

——Chris E. W. Green, Professor of Public Theology, Southeastern University

Dietrich Bonhoeffer prefaced his lectures on Genesis with the words ‘The church . . . reads the whole of Holy Scripture as the book of the end, of the new, of Christ.’ With this new book, renowned patristic scholar and theologian John Behr brilliantly demonstrates Bonhoeffer’s classic Christian hermeneutical maxim for theological interpretation. In Accordance with the Scriptures provides a handy, brief, and highly accessible summary of John’s lifelong research into patristic Christ-centered exegesis and thus the very shape of Christian theology.

——Jens Zimmermann, J.I. Packer Chair of Theology, Regent College

Product Details

• Title: In Accordance with the Scriptures: The Shape of Christian Theology
• Author: John Behr
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Print Publication Date: 2025
• Logos Release Date: 2025
• Pages: 164
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9798385230839, 9798385230815, 9798385230822
• Resource ID: LLS:9798385230839
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-23T00:18:54Z

About John Behr

John Behr is a contemporary Eastern Orthodox priest and theologian, and Dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, where he teaches Patristics . He was ordained to the diaconate on September 8, 2001 (the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos) and the priesthood on September 14, 2001 (the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross). Behr was previously the editor of the Popular Patristic Series released by St. Vladimir’s Press.