As Far as the Curse is Found
Book Critique on As Far as the Curse is Found
As Far as the Curse is Found, written by Michael D. Williams, is a fantastic book. Throughout the book, the author goes into great detail, unpacking the core message of Christianity and who the Bible is about, namely Jesus Christ.
The author argues that from Genesis to Revelation, one central message outlines God's plan to save sinners from their sins and reunite them with their creator. This, Williams says, is The Covenant Story of Redemption.
In his preface, Williams opens by asking the question: What is Christianity? He says that most Christians struggle to answer this question correctly and concludes by giving his readers a solution to change course.
Christianity is a revelatory religion. This means that God has revealed himself, his ways, and his will most clearly and fully in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Christianity is, therefore, a religion of the book. Thus, if believers do not understand the core issues of the Christian religion, it is because they fail to grasp or appreciate the Bible in some fundamental way.”1
Later in his preface, Williams gives his readers a “basic structure” for understanding the Bible's central themes. This structure has four elements: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation.
Williams says, “Understanding this paradigm will give readers a starting point for understanding the grand narrative of the whole Bible. The Bible begins with the account of creation, but sin is shortly introduced into God’s good world, and now the good is marred by sin and death. This grand narrative “describes a conflict of cosmic proportions.”2
However, the story does not end there. God will not be outdone by evil but will intervene for His undeserving creation by doing for them what they can not do for themselves and offering them what they do not deserve, namely, Redemption.
Williams gives his readers the Bible's resolution to the fall when he states.
In the midst of God's judgment of sin, the Bible presents the resolution to the fall in God's mighty acts that judge sin and bring redemption, deeds which culminate in God's redemptive purpose in Jesus Christ. Finally, the Bible's story ends with a summing up: God brings his creation and humankind to his promised consummation.3
The following chapters expounded on the theme of God’s mighty act of Redemption throughout scripture. For example, in the opening chapter, the author sets the stage for his readers by discussing the Resurrection of Christ, which he says is The Single Best Page of the Story.
It is here in the Resurrection of Christ that Willismas says we get a glimpse of the whole narrative of the bible. Why does Jesus rise from the dead? Because he was killed. Why was Jesus killed? Because our sin was placed on Him. Put succinctly, Williams says, “Beginning as we are with Jesus, we are taking a peek ahead to see what the story is all about.”4
The Resurrection of Christ shows the fullness of all that the writers of scripture were talking about. Jesus is the promised seed that history has longed for since the fall of man in Genesis 3. Williams rightly argues that “Jesus is the key to the story.”5
Again, from the opening preface to the end of the book, the writer's primary goal is to take the stories found in all of scripture and show his readers how God weaves them together to draw us to Christ, the only solution for our sin and restoration. The Covenant Story of Redemption begins with Jesus and is unpacked on every page of scripture. It is the central message of God’s work in history, from creation all the way to the Eschaton. As I read this book, I was blown away by the author's ability to draw out the conventional structure found all throughout scripture.
While reading this book, I tried to find places where I disagreed with the author and genuinely struggled to find statements or takeaways with which I did not, in the end, agree. For example, in chapter eleven, “Life in the Land (2) The Word of the Prophets.” Williams details the prophets' goal: “to call the covenant community back to faithfully obeying the God who had redeemed them by his mighty deeds on their behalf.”6
Later in this chapter, Williams says something I have always struggled to reconcile in my mind, but I think I finally understand now. He says, “The prophets were concerned with the future as the outcome of the present.”7
In other words, when the prophets gave their If-then statements, they expressed God’s heart for His Covental people to be genuinely restored upon their repentance. God’s ongoing warnings to Israel were real offers of repentance. If they repented, God would truly forgive and bless them, but if they did not, God would truly judge them. William’s captures this idea well when he says:
Long before the events transpire, Moses sets down the recurrent pattern that will typify Israel's covenant failure (sin, judgment, restoration). He explicitly refers to Israel's entering the land and possessing it, its apostasy and corruption, its exile to foreign lands, the survival of a remnant, Israel's repentance for its sin, and Yahweh's restoration of his people. This prophetic oracle does not require that Moses possess some secret knowledge of an ironclad future. Indeed, the oracle is delivered as a warning a possible future…Israel was not following a script. Israel followed its own depraved heart.”8
On the surface, the above statement does not seem all that groundbreaking; however, it reinforces this repeated theme throughout the book and, ultimately, in the Bible: God desires to redeem the fallen world and fallen sinners. God truly offers sinners repentance if they humble themselves and turn to their redeemer. What I struggled to grasp in the past, before reading this chapter, was how the sovereignty of God through the preaching of the prophets coincided with the genuine offer of escape from judgment upon repentance. The if-then structure of this section gave me a lot to chew on in understanding the heart of God toward sinners.
The last chapter on the Eschaton gave me much to consider, and I am still processing it in many ways. I liked how the author briefly described future scenarios common throughout church history. He quickly addresses these and gives a more detailed description and explanation of the third scenario, which he would consider the most consistent teaching concerning the Eschaton. In this third scenario, he calls restorational. Williams says that the Bible's teaching on last things is not about God destroying everything at the end of time but restoring all things at the end of time.
This position starkly contrasts with its counterpart often held by proponents of dispensationalism. The annihilationist view says that God is going to destroy everything at the end of time and recreate it new on the last day. Williams did a fantastic job showing the discrepancies with the annihilation view. For example, God regenerates man. He does not annihilate him and recreate him into a new creature.
Instead, God changes our nature, and by giving us new hearts, our affections are changed, and we are, therefore, new creations in Christ. So, in the end, “The goal of redemption is nothing less than the restoration of the entire cosmos.”
When I first read this chapter, I was disappointed that the writer did not detail the various views on the end times. Still, after thinking about his approach more, I liked that he did not tell us whether he was an Amillennialist or a Postmillennialist. Ultimately, the author gave me a far greater gift than simply knowing his views on the millennials. He gave me a conventional framework for understanding the whole Bible.
As someone whose theological background was bred in Dispensationalism, I always struggled to connect the dots of the Bible's overall narrative. I read the scriptures but failed to see how each story connected to the grand narrative of the big picture. The Covential model, as outlined in this book, gave me a greater understanding of the Bible. William's writing helped me understand the true essence of the saying, which is that scripture interprets scripture.
Every chapter blended well with the chapters before and after it. In a fuller sense, I see how the words on a given page in the Bible connect with the surrounding verses, how those verses connect to paragraphs, how those paragraphs connect with books, how those books connect with the Testament as a whole, and how that Testament connects with the others. In short, William's work opened my eyes. This Covenatial framework now helps me see the fullness of the Bible's Grand narrative.
Michael D. Williams, Far As The Curse Is Found: The Covenant Story of Redemption. (P& R Publishing, 2005.), x.
Ibid, xi.
Ibid, xi.
Ibid, 1.
Ibid, 2.
Ibid, 188.
Ibid, 202.
Ibid, 202-203.