City Called Heaven

I just received news that Walter Wink, one of our greatest theologians and scholars, died peacefully last Thursday at his beloved home in the Berkshire Mountains. My thoughts and prayers go out to June, his wife and partner. Walter Wink had an immense influence on me personally, and on those who study and/or follow Jesus in this age. We justly laud him as a scholar. His declaration of the bankruptcy of historical criticism was timely and correct - especially in his formulation which did not reject the method, but the way it had become disconnected from the living life of faith. He helped pioneer the formal use of psychological criticism as a legitimate way of reading Biblical texts. And his work on the Powers not only helped make Biblical language and worldviews more available to the modern reader, but sounded a clarion call for the Bible's role in confronting and redeeming the systemic powers which dominate and oppress. If his books were all he gave us, it would be a rich fe...