The variety of information Amazon makes available for each book title grows each month. The Amazon ‘See Inside’ function takes you to the Amazon Online Reader (their equivalent to Google Book Search).
The ‘See Inside’ function now works for The Eschatological Economy : it opens the Amazon Online Reader, which allows you to select ‘Excerpt’ which shows you the beginning of Chapter One.
I now realise that The Eschatological Economy starts with a very steep climb, because the opening of Chapter One is quite dense. I wish the Online Reader showed the Introduction instead, where I set out as simply as I could what this book is about, and briefly what each chapter contains.
But the ‘Search’ function of the Amazon Online Reader is a wonder.
So far I have used it on The Eschatological Economy to search on ‘death of Christ’, and ‘resurrection of Christ’ (and have realised that the ‘of’ complicates matters) and ‘atonement’. Best of all, ‘Holy Spirit’, referred to on 35 pages of The Eschatological Economy. Not bad, eh?
Then you get a list of three-line excerpts in which the search word appears, just enough context to know which references are worth pursuing. Then a click brings up the relevant page.
Though The Eschatological Economy is all about the atonement, I don’t use that word all that much. Nonetheless ‘atonement’, ‘reconciliation’ and ‘salvation’ all take you to the relevant discussions in the book. Here are some search results for ‘Atonement’ as they appear in the Amazon Online reader:
6. on Page 142: “… tradition, Karl Barth decided against employing sacrifice as a model for his discussion of the work of Christ. Though the atonement could be presented in sacrificial and priestly terms, Barth believes that these are now antiquated and so presents his account …”
8. on Page 82: “… God has broken through to sweep all sins finally away. Whether hilasterion means the event or the site of atonement, the sins of Israel were all dealt with together on that one day in the year. The atonement of the …”
9. on Page 84: “… talk of representation and substitution is alien to Israelite sacrifice, I suggest that we should see Old Testament talk of atonement of place as a solution, not a problem. If we make a hard distinction between individuals and persons defined by …”
10. on Page 119: “… Israel and the character of Israel’s God.” Comprehension and appropriation of these practices are not secondary to the rituals of atonement themselves, for the rituals are responsible for the formation of Israel’s new mind. According to Milgrom, all Israel’s sacrifice is …”
28. on Page 237: “… itself. The economy of modernity, and all the human and social sciences that support it, is a massive effort of atonement that constitutes this secular so- ciety. It is led by the discipline of economics, itself an ethic masquerading as a …”
29. on Page 244: “… will be justice, both for us and for those who have been denied justice by us. Critics of the forensic atonement ask by what right God brings us to court to try us as sinners. We exercise this right against each …”
‘Modernity’ brings up 70 pages. ‘God’ brings up ten pages of results, because the word appears on 261 pages of the book, ‘man’ on 63 pages. At least we know what The Eschatological Economy is about now.