Redeeming Judgment

This book arose from the author's sense of urgency. The Protestant church that we know and love has grown silent about the judgment of God. It seems that our church is bent upon living up to H. Richard Niebuhr's caricature of liberal Protestantism: ""A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."" The book is meant to remedy this silence regarding God's judgment. It demonstrates the pervasiveness of the judgment of God in both Old and New Testaments. Not only do we find the act of judgment in every era, but judgment is a necessary stage in God's saving work. Moreover, the illuminating power of the concept is confirmed by common human experience.

""The heft of this formidable book is to be measured, not by its impressive length, but by its substance. Patrick is a seasoned veteran of text work, a senior member of the discipline. Here he exhibits the maturity of his scholarship with his sensibility to the text in producing an important and exquisite study. His book is a significant contribution to the tasks of biblical theology. Beyond exegesis he displays his uncommon capacity as a theologian. This book addresses a remarkable lacuna in our recent thinking, a redress that is welcome and exceedingly well done.""
--Walter Brueggemann, author of A Pathway of Interpretation

""Patrick makes a significant contribution towards understanding a theme important in both the Old and New Testaments. Comprehensive and thorough, Redeeming Judgment is the product of expert scholarship. It will be a valuable resource for studying and reflecting on biblical theologies about divine judgment.""
--William S. Morrow, author of Protest against God

""Patrick's large volume furnishes a lot of biblical data (especially of the Hebrew Bible) . . . together with a number of very helpful twentieth-century interpretations in regard to the role of 'judgment.' He leaves the final decision about this topic to the reader. This is very useful for anyone who wants to gain an in-depth understanding of the Bible.""
--Martin Buss, author of The Changing Shape of Form Criticism: A Relational Approach.


Dale Patrick taught at the Missouri School of Religion and Drake University, from which he retired in 2009. In retirement he and his wife taught at United Theological College as a volunteer Visiting Scholar for two years. He has the following books to his credit: Arguing with God: The Angry Prayers of Job (1977); The Rendering of God in the Old Testament (1981); Old Testament Law: An Introduction (1984); Rhetoric and Biblical Interpretation (1990), with Allen Scult; and The Rhetoric of Revelation in the Hebrew Bible (1999).