From Dante to Tina Fey, a romp through history with Jesus’ Beatitudes

When I was a graduate student at Duke, my professors David Steinmetz and Roland Murphy were blazing a new trail into the history of the interpretation of scripture, hacking away at the conceit that today’s scholars have finally cornered things, and discovering the riches and depth of what the titans of history have had to say. Who wouldn’t pay any sum to open a text at a festive banquet table, shoulder to shoulder with luminaries and saints?

Rebekah Eklund has favored us with an engaging and profound journey through Jesus’ Beatitudes that gives us a seat at that table. Her range of learning, which she employs with a light touch, is downright impressive, although “grateful” more accurately describes my feeling. She not only touches down on Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther, we’re treated to her descriptions of obscure paintings, novels, biographies, and sculpture.

Eklund can pair Dante and Tina Fey in a single sentence. Origen and Billy Graham agree on a few things. Her clari­fication of how the Beatitudes are utterly countercultural, after deep insights from Chrysostom and Bonhoeffer, is clinched by cheeky words from Kurt Vonnegut. She shows how the Ghent Altarpiece depicts “the merciful” as, of all things, crusading knights. The mercy they are credited with is their conversion of the heathen by force—a humbling reminder of how we often naively value what isn’t of God.