The Significance of the Synoptic Miracles: Taking the Worldview of Jesus Seriously

This book was written as a protest against the demythologizing tendencies which characterize so much contemporary theology: it questions the assumption that the New Testament can be understood in terms other than its own. In particular the author is dissatisfied with the interpretation of the miracles that such theology can give. In his submission, a theology which acknowledges, and then fails to take account of, or strips away altogether, the demonological thought-world into which the miracle stories are woven, results in only a partial estimate of their significance. Here the miracles are restored to their context, seen in perspective as historical happenings, and considered in relation to Jesus’ central theme of the Kingdom.

In this book, written a half century ago, Kallas flew full force into the face of the prevailing way of interpreting the New Testament. While scholarship as a whole was convinced that the New Testament had to be modernized, stripped of its archaic and medieval language or the church would lose it audience, Kallas argued in the opposite direction, insisting that while a rewrite of the New Testament would salvage our audience, we would have nothing to tell them for the gospel would have been emasculated. Fifty years of flaccid flawed pap has proven him right and has demanded a reprint of this his first book.

James Kallas has had an extraordinary life. A veteran of the U.S. Navy at age 14, later one of St. Olaf College’s greatest athletes, A Phi Beta Kappa key winner, a Fulbright and Rockefeller Scholar, a private pilot; and a former pro football player with the Chicago Bears. He was on the founding faculty of California Lutheran College (now University), and went on to be President of Dana College in Blair NE. It was for his work at Dana that he was knighted by the Queen of Denmark. In this book, written a half century ago, Kallas flew full force into the face of the prevailing way of interpreting the New Testament. While scholarship as a whole was convinced that the New Testament had to be modernized, stripped of its archaic and medieval language or the church would lose it audience, Kallas argued in the opposite direction, insisting that while a rewrite of the New Testament would salvage our audience, we would have nothing to tell them for the gospel would have been emasculated. Fifty years of flaccid flawed pap has proven him right and has demanded a reprint of this his first book. James Kallas has had an extraordinary life. A veteran of the U.S. Navy at age 14, later one of St. Olaf College's greatest athletes, A Phi Beta Kappa key winner, a Fulbright and Rockefeller Scholar, a private pilot; and a former pro football player with the Chicago Bears. He was on the founding faculty of California Lutheran College (now University), and went on to be President of Dana College in Blair NE. It was for his work at Dana that he was knighted by the Queen of Denmark.