Beyond Justification: Campbell and DePue with a lovely new read of Romans

I don’t even remember where I found the recommendation for Douglas Campbell & Jon DePue’s book Beyond Justification, but first it languished for a while on my Amazon wish list, and then it languished for a while on my to-read bookshelf. But now that I’ve finished it, I’m wondering why in the world it took me so long to pick it up. Campbell, a professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School, and DePue, an educator and former student of Campbell’s, team up here to write a very accessible theological work that is a revelation when it comes to justification theory as addressed by Paul.

In Beyond Justification, Campbell and DePue start by outlining their view of the story of salvation: of being “in Christ” (a phrase they say Paul uses nearly 160 times in the NT), of a God who loves humanity and wants to be reconciled. Then, in chapter 4, they recognize what they call the “great conundrum” of justification theory in the sense set out by people like John Piper. (Piper’s position is used as the debating partner throughout the book.) The conundrum, they say, is that for about 90% of what Paul writes, we get from him the view of God and salvation in the loving, reconciliatory vein they describe up front. But in the other 10% of Paul we get language that tempts us toward Piper’s interpretation: God as primarily holy, angry against sin, and salvation through judicial satisfaction via Jesus’ unmerited death. How do we reconcile these?

They spend the rest of the book first by examining different 20th century approaches to this problem, including chapters devoted to E. P. Sanders, J. D. G. Dunn, and N. T. Wright. (What is it with all these theologians going with their initials?) Then, one chapter at a time, they do analysis on each of the first three chapters of Romans and then Romans 10.

Why is this such good news?

There’s way too much to try to sum up in a blog post, but the key interpretive move they make here (which makes a lot of sense to me) is suggesting that Romans 1-3 consists not of one long Pauline excursus, but rather a hypothetical conversation between Paul and a Jewish Christian teacher whose teaching Paul is opposing. This Q&A format was a common Greek discussion pattern, and while it’s not easily discernible in the text, the authors suggest that this conversation between Paul and the Teacher would’ve been performed by the messenger who brought Paul’s letter to its audience and read it to them.

As proposed here, the Teacher’s argument is that salvation must come through the law, and that unbelievers and Gentiles have a natural understanding of their own sin and need for God’s forgiveness, but that they reject God and therefore are deserving of judgment. Paul objects, saying that no one can be saved by the law, but that salvation is by being in Christ at the mercy of a loving God.

The Conversation

Here’s a taste of how it lays out:

Paul: “I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is God’s saving power for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the deliverance of God is revealed through faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The Righteous One through faith will live.’” (Rom 1:16-17)

The Teacher: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and injustice of those who by their injustice suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them… So they are without excuse, for though they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him…” (Rom 1:18ff, they suggest The Teacher’s discourse goes all the way through verse 32)

Paul: “Therefore, oh man, you, along with all who are judging, are without excuse! For in passing judgment on one another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things… For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not the written code. (All of Romans 2)”

Then Paul interrogates The Teacher’s view that salvation comes through following the Jewish law.

Paul: Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision?

Teacher: Much, in every way. For in the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.”

Paul: What if some were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?

Teacher: By no means! Although every human is a liar, let God be proved true, as it is written, “So that you may be justified in your words and you will prevail when you go to trial.”

Paul: But if our injustice services to confirm the justice of God, what should we say? That God is unjust to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.)

Teacher: By no means! For then how could God judge the world?

Paul: But if through my falsehood God’s truthfulness abounds to his glory, why am I still being judged as a sinner? And why not say (as some people slander us by saying that we say), “Let us do evil so that good may come”?

Teacher: Their judgement is deserved!

Paul: What then? Are we any better off?

Teacher: No, not in every respect…

Paul: We charge that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin… Now we know that, whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For no human will be justified before him by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

If you’ve gotten this far in the post, just go read the book.

I mean, seriously, it’s worth a read. Campbell and DePue carefully explain how they see each part of Paul’s argument working out in Romans 1-3 and Romans 10, and put the pieces together to demonstrate how, in this interpretation, the judgmental “10%” texts in Romans don’t need to cause anyone hesitation; that we can rely fully on the 90% of Paul that tells us of a loving reconciliation through the power of Jesus’ resurrection.

Self-justification is the heavy burden because there is no end to carrying it

Further on in Rowan Williams’ Where God Happens he recounts a saying attributed to the desert father John the Dwarf:

We have put aside the easy burden, which is self-accusation, and weighed ourselves down with the heavy one, self-justification.

That is, as they say, a word. It may seem counterintuitive, he says, but it’s not:

Self-justification is the heavy burden because there is no end to carrying it; there will always be some new situation where we need to establish our position and dig a trench for the ego to defend. But how on earth can you say that self-accusation is a light burden? We have to remember the fundamental principle of letting go of our fear. Self-accusation, honesty about our failings, is a light burden because whatever we have to face in ourselves, however painful is the recognition, however hard it is to feel at times that we have to start all over again, we know that the burden is already known and accepted by God’s mercy. We do not have to create, sustain, and save ourselves; God has done, is doing, and will do all. We have only to be still, as Moses says to the people of Israel on the shore of the Red Sea. [Emphasis mine.]

Williams then takes that individual application and scales it up to the church:

Once again, we can think of what the church would be like if it were indeed a community not only where each saw his or her vocation as primarily to put the neighbor in touch with God but where it was possible to engage each other in this kind of quest for the truth of oneself, without fear, without the expectation of being despised or condemned for not having a standard or acceptable spiritual life. There would need to be some very fearless people around, which is why a church without some quite demanding forms of long-term spiritual discipline—whether in traditional monastic life or not—is going to be a frustrating place to live. [Emphasis mine again]

This put me in mind of a lunch I had with a pastor several years ago. Over chips and salsa I was expressing concern over some area of my life, I don’t remember which, and I despairingly ended up quoting Romans: “should I continue in sin that grace should abound?”

He took a sip of his iced tea, smiled at me and responded “well, that’s generally been my experience, yes.” In generosity of spirit and freedom from fear he encouraged me not with any judgment, but with acknowledgement that he, too, was in need of God’s forgiveness.

This is the fearlessness I aspire to in my own life and interactions with others. Not to diminish the significance of sin, but to acknowledge that no amount of self-justification will suffice to make it right, and that I should put that heavy burden down.

The danger of sharpening the self-will of nations through religion

I’m slowly working through Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society and goodness his observations are timely for today. I don’t know where he’s going with the second half of the book, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

This bit on the relationship of patriotism and religion is particularly relevant right now:

Patriotism is a form of piety which exists partly through the limitation of the imagination, and that limitation may be expressed by savants as well as by saints…

But since the claims of religion are more absolute than those of any secular culture the danger of sharpening the self-will of nations through religion is correspondingly greater.

Even when the religious sense of the absolute expresses itself, not in the sublimation of the will, but in the subjection of the individual will to the divine will, and in the judgment upon the will from the divine perspective, it may still offer perils to the highest social and moral life, even though it will produce some choice fruits of morality. One interesting aspect of the religious yearning after the absolute is that, in the contrast between the divine and the human, all lesser contrasts between good and evil on the human and historic level are obscured. Sin finally becomes disobedience to God and nothing else. Only rebellion against God, and only the impertinence of self-will in the sight of God, are regarded as sinful.

— Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, chapter 3, emphasis mine

This turned the light bulb on for me as to how so many Christians in my evangelical background are willing to turn a blind eye to social ills as long as personal piety is maintained.

Review: The Widening of God's Mercy by Drs. Christopher and Richard Hays

There was no small amount of buzz accompanying the announcement of The Widening of God’s Mercy’s publication. Father and son, both Biblical scholars of some renown, publishing a volume where the elder would reverse his public and well-known position about same-sex relationships is not an event that most anyone had on their Evangelical Christianity 2024 bingo card. I was not immune to the anticipation, immediately pre-ordering the book. My eagerness was tempered only by the depth of my to-read shelf, which means I am only now reading and commenting on this book.

[Note: I found out only hours before writing this post that Dr. Richard Hays passed away less than two weeks ago at the age of 76, as the result of pancreatic cancer. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.]

The Widening of God’s Mercy, written by Dr. Richard B. Hays and his son Dr. Christopher B. Hayes, describes a stunning change of position on Christian acceptance of same-sex relationships. Richard had, in his 1996 book The Moral Vision of the New Testament, argued against their acceptance. His book has been used as a primary authority by many evangelicals over the past three decades, interpreting a handful of New Testament verses seemingly opposed to homosexuality as conclusive. And so this book comes as a genuine surprise. The book is concise, clear, easily readable, generous, and contrite. And yet for the life of me I can’t understand why this was their chosen approach to the question.

Widening makes the case that a careful reading of the Bible will show, contrary to traditional theological assertion, that God frequently changes his mind, being influenced by humans who appeal to God. The book is structured in three parts. The first part deals with Old Testament texts; the second with the New Testament, and the brief third part drawing conclusions.

Old Testament

The OT section is the most convincing in that respect, discussing texts from Genesis through the Prophets where the text blatantly describes God changing his mind. Traditional interpreters might argue instead that since God is, per theological agreement, unchangeable, that these texts must mean something more like humans came to a new understanding that looked like God changing God’s mind. Drs. Hays choose instead to take the text at face value: God changes his mind, and almost always in favor of more mercy and more inclusion. Good enough so far.

New Testament

The New Testament doesn’t include (at least to my recollection) any passages that explicitly describe God “changing his mind”. The second section of this book instead reviews a multitude of cases in the Gospels where Jesus brings a new, more expansive, more merciful interpretation of the OT law. Healing is appropriate on the Sabbath. Women are treated as fully equal to men. Prostitutes and sinners are embraced, not rejected.

It then spends its most significant time in Acts, examining Peter’s vision and experience with Cornelius, resulting in the church’s acceptance of Gentiles. This is the key interpretive text for the Hays’ as they argue for LGBTQ inclusion. They suggest three steps discerned from the Acts account of the subsequent Jerusalem Council that could be used for the church today in similar re-evaluations of understanding:

  1. The community’s discernment depends on imaginative reinterpretation of scripture.
  2. The community’s discernment depends on paying attention to stories about where God was currently at work.
  3. The discernment is made in and by the community.

This, too, is good as far as it goes. The church community should work together with the Spirit to discern God at work and how our understanding of God’s work needs to change over time.

And yet…

But this is where the book’s argument struggles. The section on the NT never argues that the NT accounts represent God changing his mind. It argues for the church’s “creative reinterpretation” of Scripture based on the leading of the Spirit, but the authors don’t try to argue that this represents a change of God’s mind. One could just as reasonably argue (as I think is more common) that God’s mind has always been for mercy and inclusion, but that humans have progressively had a clearer understanding of God’s mind over time.

If God’s change of mind is how we understand these interpretive evolutions, I am also left wishing for more insight into how we know that God’s mind has changed. What’s the trigger? The authors point to a series of interpretive changes of the past — they mention the acceptance of slavery as an example — but leave the how to the reader’s imagination. (They also ignore the many historic voices who spoke out against slavery even when the official voice of the church accepted it. Had God’s mind already changed and the church was just slow to catch up?)

Let me explain. No, it’s too much, let me sum up.

Am I happy where the authors have landed in their views of sexuality? Yes. Is it very heartening to see men admit their change of heart in public? For sure. But is their argument compelling? In my opinion, no, it’s not. I am sympathetic to arguments that God can change. It’s certainly the easiest way to deal with all the texts that say God changes his mind, and also the easiest way to think, say, about the efficacy of prayer. But the book fails to tie that idea to believers’ renewed understandings in the New Testament, and progressive revelation seems to me a much more reasonable interpretation given the textual evidence.

My 2024 Reading In Review

Another year full of books! (Previous summaries: 2023,2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007…

I read 63 books for the year, a few less than last year. I keep saying I’m going to stop logging to Goodreads, but it’s so easy and I’ve kept track there for so long that I still do it. I also keep my Bookshelf site over on my own website which I prefer to link you to instead.

The list is almost exactly a 50/50 split between fiction and non-fiction.

Here’s the full list of reading, with particular standouts noted in bold:

Theology / Ministry

  • Varieties of Christian Universalism by David W. Congdon
  • The Lost World of the Prophets by John H. Walton
  • Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
  • From The Maccabees to The Mishnah by Shaye J. D. Cohen
  • A Window to the Divine by Zachary Hayes
  • Wounded Pastors by Carol Howard Merritt
  • Lamb of the Free by Andrew Remington Rillera
  • Making All Things New by Ilia Delio
  • Reaching Out by Henri J. M. Nouwen
  • The Experience of God by David Bentley Hart
  • The Hours of the Universe by Ilia Delio
  • A Private and Public Faith by William Stringfellow

I wrote about the Zachary Hayes book this summer. It’s small and delightful. And I’m looking forward to revisiting Andrew Remington Rillera’s Lamb of the Free as a part of a book club starting next week.

Science and History

  • The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory by Tim Alberta
  • Finding Zero by Amir D. Aczel
  • The Murder of Professor Schlick by David Edmonds
  • Ringmaster by Abraham Riesman
  • The Grand Contraption by David Park
  • Neurotribes by Steve Silberman (RIP)
  • 3 Shades of Blue by James Kaplan
  • A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis
  • Space Oddities by Harry Cliff
  • The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms
  • Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman
  • Black AF History by Michael Harriot
  • Debt by David Graeber

Ringmaster is a biography/history of Vince McMahon and his WWE empire. It’s a must-read as we enter four more years of a Trump presidency that will be about image and story line rather than truth.

Graeber’s book was fantastic as social science but prompted me to think theologically.

Memoir and Biography

  • This American Ex-Wife by Lyz Lenz
  • The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon
  • An Autobiography, or, The Story of My Experiments With Truth by Mahatma Gandhi

Other Miscellaneous Non-Fiction

  • Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
  • All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld
  • Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
  • How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren

Fiction

  • The Downloaded by Robert J. Sawyer
  • Hell Is a World Without You by Jason Kirk
  • In Universes by Emet North
  • Exordia by Seth Dickinson
  • Through a Forest of Stars by David Jeffrey
  • Sun Wolf by David Jeffrey
  • The Practice, The Horizon, and The Chain by Sofia Samatar
  • The Light Within Darkness by David Jeffrey
  • The Future by Naomi Alderman
  • Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
  • The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes
  • Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
  • The Revisionaries by A. R. Moxon
  • Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
  • I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger
  • The Midnight Line by Lee Child
  • Blue Moon by Lee Child
  • Do We Not Bleed? by Daniel Taylor
  • Heavenbreaker by Sara Wolf
  • Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde
  • Airframe by Michael Crichton
  • Extinction by Douglas Preston
  • Killing Floor by Lee Child
  • Die Trying by Lee Child
  • Moonbound by Robin Sloan
  • Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
  • Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
  • 2054 by Elliot Ackerman
  • Shadow of Doubt by Brad Thor
  • Tripwire by Lee Child
  • Spark by John Twelve Hawks (unintentional re-read)

Summary

I didn’t realize until I typed up the list for this post that I had run through so much fiction. Guess it was a year I needed some lighter reading. I did a quick count on the books on my to-read shelf and if I constrained myself to just those books, I might have it cleaned off by this time next year. (I mean, that’s unlikely, but it’s a decent goal.)

On Killing First and Loving Your Enemies

Last night I finished up reading Rise and Kill First, Ronen Bergman’s extensive history of Israel’s secret services. My friend Matt Burdette pointed me to the book and then gave me his copy to read. (Thanks, Matt!) It was enlightening for me, providing some adult perspective on events that linger vaguely in my childhood memories.

Matt’s comment when recommending the book was how careful the Israelis were about collateral damage. Indeed, Bergman’s sources recount many, many times when an attack on a target was either delayed or cancelled because the strike had the potential of killing wives, children, or bystanders. Regardless of where you fall on the morality of extrajudicial killing, this seems like a bare minimum of circumspection. Which makes Israel’s absolute destruction of Palestine this past year all the more striking in its wanton disregard. I’ll come back to that.

Israel’s history as a modern country is short and Bergman shows how intensely personal the mission of national protection and vengeance was to many early leaders of their security services. (One leader of the Mossad had on his office wall a picture of his grandfather, kneeling at gunpoint before Nazi soldiers, about to be shot. Imagine walking in to work every day and having that set the tone. Phew.) That fresh, personal link can make me sympathetic to the motivation for and justification of the long documented string of murders they committed. And yet I have some hesitancy.

To wade at all into the waters of discussion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a cause for trepidation, but let me see if I can (carefully) arrange a few thoughts about this tragic past century.

First, the persecution and expulsion of Jews from many lands where they had lived for generations, finally culminating in the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust. Words fail to describe the horror. If any people could or should be forgiven for acts of vengeance, these people could and should.

Then the cycle of violent retribution begins. The Israelis begin their life as a country with the displacement of millions of Palestinians from their generational homes, sending them as refugees into unwelcoming neighboring countries and packing them into small enclaves. This causes Palestinian terror groups to strike back in truly horrible ways. Which in turn causes the Israelis to attack. And the cycle continues. At times over the past few decades it has seemed like peace had a chance to be established. Last year’s Hamas attack on Israel, though, followed by Israel’s unprecedented destruction of the Gaza Strip, leave even the most hopeful observers doubting that change can come.

I, of course, don’t have any good answers here. Both sides have been the victims of displacement and horrors; both sides have committed unspeakably violent acts. Whether one can try to put them in the balance to justify one side or the other is a question for ethicists and philosophers far wiser than me. Regardless, both sides are both victims and perpetrators. A century of an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth has left far too many toothless and blind. The leaders and fighters on both sides are shaped by generations of unresolved trauma. Things don’t look good.

At the risk of bringing the world’s third major religion into the discussion and making too pat an end to this post: this book and historical reflection make the revolutionary nature of Jesus’ teaching to love your enemies stand out to me in sharp contrast to the natural, justifiable inclinations for revenge. The Christian church throughout history has systemically done a really lousy job of following that teaching. But as individuals of all faiths, it seems to me that the path away from universal toothlessness and blindness starts with being willing to give it a try.

Life’s too short for uninteresting books

Nick Hornby, writing over at Lithub, says something that I am finding increasingly true: as you get older, life is too short to spend time on bad novels.

I try to find works of fiction, I promise, but it’s like pushing a wonky shopping trolley round a supermarket. I constantly veer off toward literary biographies, books about the Replacements, and so on, and only with a concerted effort can I push it toward the best our novelists have to offer. I suspect it’s to do with age and risk. A bad book about, say, the history of Indian railways will inevitably tell you something about railways, India, and history.

Reading a bad novel when you are approaching pensionable age, however, is like taking the time left available to you and setting it on fire.

It’s no secret that I read lots of books. For a long time my reading strategy has been one book at a time, in completionist fashion. Once I’ve put the effort in to give it a try, why not finish it so I can add it to my reading log? But more and more I pick up a book, almost always a novel, get a few chapters in, and decide I just can’t be arsed to finish it. So back it goes to the library. (Or, rarely, it gets resold to the used book store. Though I very rarely buy fiction any more when it can be borrowed instead.)

I’m at the point where my “to read” bookshelf has books that have been sitting there so long that I am no longer interested in the topics that were apparently interesting to me when I bought them. It feels like an entire next level of giving up to just throw those books in the resell pile, but, well, I’m getting older. Life’s too short to spend time in uninteresting books.

David Bentley Hart’s “The Experience of God”

With some of my recent reading getting my mental wheels turning about the nature of who God is, I figured it was a reasonable time to pull The Experience of God off my shelf. Right off the bat in the introduction, Hart promises what I was hoping for: “My intention is simply to offer a definition of the word ‘God’…” Unfortunately, 332 pages later, what David Bentley Hart has written isn’t at all simple, and approaches a definition of “God” only from an oblique angle.

Hart structures the book in three major parts. In the first, he clarifies that the “God” he is describing is the ultimate deity, the prime mover, from which all other creation and being have their source. It is here even in the beginning section that he starts taking aim at what appears to be his actual target with this book: the arguments of the popular atheists of the late 20th and early 21st century. (Richard Dawkins is a regular whipping boy.)

The second section (comprising the bulk of the book) is structured around three characteristics which Hart points to as the core aspects of God: being, consciousness, and bliss. Each of these (long) chapters seems less interested in enlightening the reader on who God is than in disputing with the atheists and materialists. God is the root of being, declares Hart, and anyone who says differently is just stupid. There is no materialist explanation for consciousness, says Hart, and the materialists who argue for an evolutionary reason and dismiss God are illogical and foolish. There is no evolutionary reason for a search for beauty, truth, and goodness, says Hart, and those who would try to argue thus are intellectually dishonest. So it goes.

Hart’s arguments are at his strongest when he’s arguing for something instead of railing against something. The first part of his chapter on bliss was particularly good in that regard. Sadly, most of the book goes the other direction.

It’s very hard to review Hart without taking his blustery style into consideration. He’s never met a big word he didn’t like. He makes huge sweeping assertions without any hint of supporting justification. He seems to think that just by declaring something “obviously” wrong that it’s obvious to everyone and doesn’t need explained. In doing so he dismissively waves away not just the weak sauce of people like Dawkins but also more substantive scientists and thinkers who deserve better. Hart falls almost into self-parody at the beginning of chapter six: “[W]e should not mistake every pronouncement made in an authoritative tone of voice for an established truth.” While aiming this at popular atheists, it’s an argument that is equally valid against Hart himself.

There’s an old joke about a preacher, who at one point in his sermon notes has written: “weak point, pound pulpit”. As a lay theologian and not much of a philosopher at all, my trouble with Hart’s book is that he does so much pulpit pounding it makes me suspect the strength of his points. Even in places where I find myself in agreement with his conclusions I have a hard time feeling like the book was beneficial.

Henri Nouwen: An alert and aware spiritual life

Currently reading Henri Nouwen’s Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. What a wonderful little book! This bit in particular hit home today:

Not too long ago a priest told me that he cancelled his subscription to the New York Times because he felt that the endless stories about war, crime, power games, and political manipulation only disturbed his mind and heart and prevented him from meditation and prayer.

That is a sad story because it suggests that only by denying the world can you live in it, that only by surrounding yourself by an artificial, self-induced quietude can you live a spiritual life. A real spiritual life is exactly the opposite: it makes us so alert and aware of the world around us, that all that is and happens becomes part of our contemplation and meditation and invites us to a free and fearless response.

As timely in 2024 as it was when Nouwen wrote it in 1975. And I both understand the plight of the priest in his story and desire to have, as Nouwen says, a free and fearless response to all that happens around me.

2024 Reads: Making All Things New by Ilia Delio

Making All Things New is the most complete and succinct compilation of Delio’s theology and philosophy that I’ve encountered so far. She’s strongest in her call to bring our theology into alignment with modern cosmology, and in exploring how the human brain works and interacts with others. (Let’s not forget she’s got a PhD in pharmacology, after all, and was doing research on ALS or Parkinson’s or something.)

I still think she’s way too bought into Kurzweil’s singularity and transhumanism, but I’ll forgive her that because I think the rest of it is bang on. Very manageable at 200 pages.