"This work fills a large vacuum in biblical research and exposition. On the one hand it makes a serious, critical, and constructive contribution to the search for an adequate biblical theology on the problem of poverty. On the other hand, coming as it does from an evangelical perspective, it strengthens and at the same time corrects many of the opinions articulated within the various political liberation theologies that have sprung up in Latin America during the last fifteen years."

Orlando E. Costas, Professor of Missiology and Director of the Hispanic Studies Program, Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Philadelphia

"Thomas Hanks's excellent little book is biblically solid, theologically sound, and po-litico-socially perceptive. He keeps his distance from the liberation theologies that I would call ideological and presents a biblically founded path for action which is just as effective as any enthusiastic attachment to a particular movement, but which also re-tains the specificity of Revelation by bringing everything to Jesus, not only the Poor Man, but also the Savior and the Lord." Jacques Ellul, author of The Technological System

"Dr. Hanks lays a sound lexical and exegetical foundation for this study of the biblical view of oppression, with poverty as its inevitable consequence; and he illuminates Jesus' gospel of liberty for the oppressed as his repromulgation of the ancient jubilee law. If more biblical scholars had devoted themselves to work along these lines, some liberation theologians would have been saved from the temptation to graft the alien ideology of Marxism onto the Christian proclamation of glad tidings to the poor."

F. F. Bruce, Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis, University of Manchester

"God So Loved the Third World is a thorough and objective study of the biblical concept of oppression. The applications to modern conditions are based on sound biblical theology. They are taken out of the texts, not read into them, thus differing from much modern theology" Helmer Ringgren, editor (with G. Johannes Botterweck)

of the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament

"It is extraordinarily difficult today for Christians in either of the Americas to be biblical. North Americans find it almost impossible to understand either the massive poverty of the Third World or the surprisingly biblical teaching that the chief cause of poverty is not laziness or underdevelopment, but oppression. Latin Americans are tempted to rely too much on the only current ideology sympathetic to their tragedy-Marxism. Thomas Hanks speaks biblically to Christians of both continents who seek to take the God of the Bible seriously!" Charles Troutman, former director of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship

of the USA and Director of the Ministry to the Student World of the Latin American Mission (1966-78)

"In a startling and compelling combination of candor, subtlety, scholarship, boldness, and balance-not lacking in humor and grace-Hanks moves responsibly and creatively between text and context, Old and New Testament, biblical and systematic theology, tra dition and relevance. Nobody, whether Catholic or Protestant, First or Third World, evan-gelical or liberal, will find total comfort in these pages. But anybody who reads them with open eyes and heart cannot fail to find challenge, illumination, and insight. It is the kind of book that will not cease to speak as we close it but which engages the reader in further thought and search:

José Miguez Bonino, author of Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation THOMAS D. HANKS has been Professor of Old Testament at the Seminario Biblico Latinoamericano in San José, Costa Rica, since 1964. A member of the Latin Amer-ican Mission, he did graduate studies at Wheaton Graduate School of Theology, Prince ton Theological Seminary, Garrett-Northwestern, and Concordia Seminary