Bernhard Ott - Gods Shalom Project: An Engaging Look At The Bibles Sweeping Store

Gods Shalom Project is published in cooperation with Mennonite World Conference (MWC) and has been selected for its Global Anabaptist-Mennonite shelf of Literature. MWC chooses one book each year and urges its member churches to translate and study the book, in an effort to develop a common body of literature.

Mennonite World Conference is an international fellowship of Christian churches who trace their beginning to the 16th-century Radical Reformation in Europe, particularly to the Anabaptist movement. Today, more than 1,200,000 believers belong to this faith family; at least 55 percent are African, Asian, or Latin American.

MWC represents 87 Mennonite and Brethren in Christ national churches from 48 countries on five continents.

Creating a space is a primary ministry of MWCwhere member churches experience communion, interdependence, solidarity, and mutual accountability. MWC provides occasions and networks, publications and exchanges where Mennonites and Brethren in Christ can experience fellowship and be encouraged to live and act more faithfully.

MWC intends to serve as a global congregation, believing that the church is a worldwide body where people of different cultures and nations are no longer strangers but members of Gods household (Ephesians 2:19).

MWCs headquarters are in Strasbourg, France. For more information, visit its website at www.mwc-cmm.org.

Noah and the dove. Early Christian fresco.

Location :Catacomb of SS. Marcellino e Pietro, Rome, Italy

Photo Credit : Scala / Art Resource, NY

Image Reference : ART128987

Design by Dawn J. Ranck

GODS SHALOM PROJECT

Copyright 2004 by Good Books, Intercourse, PA 17534

International Standard Book Number: 1-56148-462-8

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004020665

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner, except for

brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, without permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ott, Bernhard.

[Schalom. English]

God's shalom project / Bernhard Ott ; translated by Timothy J. Geddert.

p. cm.

Published in cooperation with Mennonite World Conference. Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-56148-462-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Bible--Theology. I. Title.

BS543.O88 2004

231.7'6--dc22

2004020665

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

This book could not have been written without the inspiration of many people.

First of all, I owe thanks to my teachers who opened my eyes and my heart to the Bible, especially to biblical theology. Special thanks goes to Elmer Martens who taught me Old Testament theology in Gods Design (North Richland Hills, TX: D&F Scott Publishing, Inc., 1998).

Gerd Theissens book, The Shadow of the Galilean (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1987), gave me inspiration for the format of the dialogue section at the end of each chapter.

The definition of the concept of Shalom as I introduce it in was generated by an article by the German Old Testament scholar Otto Betz, Der Friede Gottes in einer friedlosen Welt, in Theologische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Denken unserer Zeit , Vol. 2 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1984, 57).

I thank Mennonite World Conference for choosing this book as its 2004 selection for its Global Anabaptist/Mennonite Shelf of Literature. It is an honor, and I hope the book serves well in that capacity.

Special thanks to Timothy J. Geddert for providing such a lucid and readable English translation of my original German text.

Thank you, too, to Phyllis Pellman Good and to Merle Good of Good Books for editing and publishing Gods Shalom Project in English.

Bernhard Ott
Liestal, Switzerland, July, 2004

Preface

Traditional churches lament that members are leaving in droves. Yet at the same time, mysticism, meditation, and charismatic church services are booming. People are experiencing a growing fascination with spiritual experiences. They spend vacation time in monasteries; they take pilgrimages; they practice various forms of meditative prayerall postmodern forms of piety. People cook up their own forms of post-Christian private religion, fabricating individual religious systems out of building materials lying around in abundance. Theres a veritable cafeteria of choices out there, and we can select the ideas we like to assemble theological ideas to suit our fancy; the choices are endless.

That is precisely why this book, Gods Shalom Project, is so timely. It is not a cheap guide to the religious supermarket of theological ideas. I have searched long and hard for books that faithfully present the biblical story and at the same time speak a clear message to our present situation. This is the book I have been looking for! Here the heart of the Bibles message is opened up for the reader. And yet ideas are not over-simplified. Portraying the central message of the Scriptures can often be a challenge; there are texts that dont slide easily into place, and we are not well-served by theological systems that ignore or distort unruly texts. Bernhard Ott writes as a faithful biblical theologian, resisting the temptation to make everything conform to a completely harmonized system.

Gods Shalom Project is a helpful resource for home fellowship groups, Bible study groups, Sunday school classes, and personal Bible study. During the past few years I have often found myself in conversation with people who have no religious background whatsoever. Over and over again I discover that such people consider the Bible to be a strange and confusing book, with no relevance for day-to-day life. Thanks to this book by Bernhard Ott, this situation has changed for some of them. Ott has managed to take the biblical story of Gods dealings with humankind and make it connect with the secular reader. Biblical concepts and illustrations come alive and are made to seem familiar. Gods good purposes become transparent and comprehensible. Even readers already familiar with the Bible will gain a deeper appreciation for the words and deeds of God. We find in this book a rich treasure house of biblical details and help in seeing the interconnectedness of those ideas.

While working through Gods Shalom Project, I was reminded again that my few years on this earth are only a small segment of a much larger and longer story that stretches in both directions far beyond the borders of my birth and death. I have been intentionally placed in time for a specific purpose, and the journey is short. Yet at the end of it, there is a loving Father waiting for my return. I am no longer threatened by the prospect of death. And it is possible to understand things this way only when my life is seen as a journey toward the One who placed me here and who loves me without measure.

Ruedi Josuran, radio journalist

Stfa, Switzerland

When your children ask you

Welcome!

God has a project. God invites us to be co-workers in this project. That is why I am a Christian and an enthusiastic one at that! How regrettable when being a Christian is portrayed as something boring, something disengaged from the real world, or mere theory. If the God of the Bible has invited humans to participate in Gods great plan for the universe, then God is certainly not interested in merely teaching humans boring theology.

Unfortunately there are lots of people who call themselves Christian, who speak of a personal relationship with Jesus, but have only a vague idea of what Gods plans and goals are. Many have come to Christ because they have been concerned about the salvation of their souls. They have experienced conversion, and thats enough to give them security about their eternal destiny. And yet many of them have almost no clue about what Gods great project is, nor how, since the creation of the earth, humans have been drawn into the fulfillment of Gods plan. Nor do they understand how God deals with humans as they are drawn into the project of fulfilling this plan.