Divinity United

A great conference with really good biblical and theological speakers has just been brought to my attention. The conference is Pastorum Live and is in Chicago June 5-6. The schedule offers some excellent topics and speakers.

Quintilian in Institutio oratoria II.3: "For my part, I do not consider a man a real teacher if he is unwilling to teach little things. But I argue that the ablest teachers can teach little things best, if they will: first, because it is likely that he who excels others in eloquence, has gained the most accurate knowledge of the means by which men attain eloquence; second, because method, which, with the best qualified instructors, is always plainest, is of great efficacy in teaching; and lastly, because no man rises to such a height in greater things that the lesser fade entirely from his view."

In Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible , Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes: "But it is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. For then we confuse wishes, hopes, sighs, laments, rejoicings--all of which the heart can do by itself--with prayer. And we confuse earth and heaven, man and God. Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one's heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty. No man can do that by himself. For that he needs Jesus Christ" (pp. 9-10).

Reading through a section of John Ashton's Understanding the Fourth Gospel , I ran across a classic Ashton comment that I can't pass up. Ashton sides with the hermeneutic of the original audience/original meaning of the text against postmodernism. "The greatest challenge [to the theory of the Johannine community], according to Kysar, is 'the question of the locus of meaning '. Perhaps it is true that 'a text means differently as it is interpreted by different readers'. Nevertheless, swimming as strongly as I can against the tide of postmodernism, I still believe that it makes sense to look for the meaning that the first readers of a text would have found in it. There is no obvious decline in the study and composition of books on history, and these are still separated from fiction and historical novels in all the bookshops that I know. I trust that the worst of Kysar's fears are ill-founded." -- pp. 23-24.

A great opportunity to do post-doctoral work with an excellent NT scholar has recently been advertised. See below for details.   Post Doc: Durham University: forwarded on behalf of Prof. Francis Watson Post Doctoral Researcher "The Fourfold Gospel and its Rivals" Durham University - Department of Theology and Religion Salary (£) 23811 - 29249 University of Durham AHRC-Funded Project on "The Fourfold Gospel and its Rivals": The Department of Theology and Religion seeks applicants with doctoral- level expertise in New Testament studies and/or Patristics, for a position as Postdoctoral Researcher on a project entitled "The Fourfold Gospel and its Rivals". This will be funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under its Research Grant scheme, and led by Prof. Francis Watson. Applicants should have completed their PhD within the past three years (i.e. since January 2009), or be intending to submit no later than May 2012. The postholder w...