The Father's Business and the Spiritual Cross

Enumah (The Innocent Blood and Judas Iscariot, 2002) presents a treatise that focuses on the miracle at the very heart of Christianity: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Like many scholars and theologians before him, Enumah raises essential questions in this book: Why did God allow Jesus to be crucified? What was the higher purpose of the tragedy? What does it mean for Christians today? After initially establishing a clever framing device, echoing the Acts of the Apostles (with comments addressed to “most excellent Theophilus”), the book settles into a close and quite learned exploration of the death and Resurrection of Jesus, as depicted in the four canonical Gospels and the Acts and Epistles. Overall, this fast-paced, extensively researched work aims to clarify God’s “business,” which is ultimately to “create humans as spiritual beings” through the death and Resurrection of his son. Enumah has his version of St. Paul say that this treatise is “for the general public and for people of all religions,” but it’s obviously exclusively for believing Christians. The author asserts that Jesus’ Crucifixion was the completion of God’s “business,” furnishing mankind with a variety of “spiritual tools” that can be found through diligent study of the Gospels. “You must search for these tools yourself,” Enumah tells readers, but he offers a great deal of help, mixing confident textual analysis with personal anecdotes gleaned from his career as a surgeon. He also tells the story of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, and of how Jesus’ provocative, antagonizing acts against the Jewish authorities were designed to prompt them to take action, so that his Father’s “business” could be fulfilled in the Holy City. In this way, Enumah notes, Jesus’ death and Resurrection comprised a “metaphysical drama” that washed humanity clean of sin. The author’s narrative, delivered in clear, emphatic prose, is straightforward enough to be useful to Christians who are new to textual exegesis, but it will also be thought-provoking for those who know their Scripture well.

A careful, well-grounded explication of the Christian Passion narrative.