Fowl's work on idolatry is unusual. Rather than beginning with idolatry as a universal human condition or a problem endemic to those outside Israel or the church, he addresses the perplexing question what would lead Israel and the church to idolatry given all that God has done for them. He provides a fresh reading of Scripture that brings together a profound ethical analysis of dispositions, habits and practices that lead to, and away from, idolatry. After an introductory chapter, each subsequent chapter presents a disposition that contributes to idolatry or faithfulness. Scripture guides the reader by manifesting how believers’ dispositions can become vices or virtues. The unique contribution Fowl makes is his breadth of knowledge and its interdisciplinary character. He moves from careful, text-based exegesis to engagement with theologians such as Jean Luc Marion and Willie Jennings and political philosophers like Michael Budde. The result is a splendid work that could equally be used by Scripture scholars, theologians, or ethicists.
The first chapter sets a conceptual context for idolatry; he tells us as much what that context is not as what it is. In doing so, Fowl diverts the readers’ gaze from too easy analyses of idolatry such as Romans 1 and its relationship to Wisdom 12–15. These standard texts for addressing idolatry do not accomplish the purpose he seeks of discovering the idolatry of believers. Nor does he make facile appeals to the prophets. He reminds us of the troubling lack of ‘success’ they had in preventing idolatry once it had set in. Believers’ idolatry is more troubling than taking a piece of creation, mistaking it for the Creator, and refusing to heed the prophets’ warnings. It is a gradual process that takes what is good, creaturely dispositions, and distracts them from God's intended purpose. Better insight into believers’ idolatry is found in Deut. 6:6–14. At first blush, this passage might not be seen as promising as Romans or Wisdom, but Fowl makes a persuasive case throughout the work that failing to ‘take care’ after ‘eating one's fill’ leads to forgetting God. Avoiding idolatry is about how we go about satisfying basic desires consistent with the goodness of creation.
The first disposition taken up in chapter two is attentiveness. Properly embodied, attentiveness leads to remembering. Idolatrously embodied, it leads to forgetfulness. Remembering is necessary to fulfill the command of the Shema to love God. Fowl offers a brief, substantive interpretation of Deut. 6:4 and a defense of commanded love when love is understood as a virtue (pp. 34–35). Love as a virtue attended by remembrance requires catechetical practices that lead to ‘delighting in the goodness of God’ (p. 47). Wealth assumed to be generated through one's own power leads to inattentiveness and forgetting God.
Each of the following chapters moves similarly from dispositions giving rise to habits and virtues through practices that direct to the love of God and God's creatures or misdirect. ‘Bounded and Unbounded Desire’ examines greed and its counter in thanksgiving through Ephesians, Colossians, and Genesis 1–3. Creation out of nothing prompts thanksgiving because existence is ungrounded and thus ‘strictly speaking due nothing’ (p. 65). The disposition of fear can give rise to insecurity or love and mission. 1 and 2 Kings, Isaiah 30–31, and Luke 12 show how ‘fear and accumulation’ can lead to idolatry. A vision of ‘beautiful Zion’, embodied in the community of the faithful, counters such fear as it attracts the wealth of nations as gift rather than as accumulated possession that tempts to violence through protection. The final chapter breaks with the movement of the previous three because the disposition it examines, curiosity, is not easily named. Deut. 12–13 manifests how a disintegrated knowledge that desires novelty for its own sake and seeks to possess it as one's own contributes to idolatry. This vice of curiosity is countered by the ‘single eye’ of Luke 11.
Throughout his work, Fowl argues idolatry is a process that once set in is not easily remedied. He concludes by looking at ‘whiteness’ in US Christianity as an exemplification of believers’ idolatry. Whiteness is a form of forgetfulness that gets habituated in vicious practices like monuments to white supremacists and ‘stand your ground’ laws that arise from insecurity and fear. Given how seldom believers turn from idolatry once vicious practices inhibit faithfulness, it would be inaccurate to say that the book ends on an optimistic note, but optimism is not hope. There is always the hope that we too might be ‘captured by Christ’ and carried from Babylon. Fowl's readable, accessible work is a profound theological treatise that deserves to be well read in the church and academy.
