Divinity United

The Wycliffe Centre for Scripture and Theology spring colloquium was Friday on the topic of "Proverbs 8 and the Christian Theological Reading of the Scripture." Four papers were given by Michael Kolarcik of Regis College, Christopher Seitz of Wycliffe, Donald Collett of Trinity School for Ministry in Mass, and Ephraim Radner of Wycliffe. Theological interpretation is the main focus of these colloquia and it is the sort of look at these texts (Prov 8 specifically) that make a historical-critical biblical studies person (like myself) slightly squeamish at moments. However, much of the time these discussions provide a challenge to think theologically about the text and a reminder to consider or an introduction to the history of interpretation about the text. In that vein, Kolarcik offered a more comfortable and persuasive (to me) contextual setting for understanding wisdom in Proverbs 8 within the larger context of Prov 1-9 (and more helpfully Wisdom of Solomon 6-10 and Sira...

An additional quote from John Webster's conclusion to his essay "Jesus Christ" in the Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology... "Christology responds to the self-communicative presence of its object in the twofold work of exegesis and dogmatics. Exegesis is not the same as study of the history of biblical literature and religion in their settings. Modern evangelicals have sometimes been bedazzled by the range and sophistication of historical procedures at their disposal, and busied themselves to master them in the hope of outbidding their opponents. But historical studies are the servant of exegesis, not its master. One thing which evangelical doctrines of the sufficiency of Scripture ought to have secured is that the ultimate resource is the text, not what can be reconstructed about what lies behind the text, for the text is an act of God's self-disclosure. The fruits of the immense labors of evangelical New Testament scholars are by no means negligibl...

Continuing through The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology (ed. Timothy Larsen and Daniel J. Treier), John Webster presents a dense and sharp critique of evangelical theology on Christology in his essay "Jesus Christ." Any evangelical theology of Jesus or even NT study of Jesus should take into account Webster's challenges. Here are two such comments: "Contemporary evangelical historians of Jesus and his early followers are certainly more sophisticated then their forbears, and a good deal more relaxed about the need to defend the viability of confessional orthodoxy or the reliability and authority of the apostolic witnesses. What they have in common with earlier work is the fact that their arguments are historical, not theological, and direct themselves primarily to historical reason rather than the judgment of faith. In this sense, they continue the evangelical tradition of Christology "from below" -- not in the sense of proposing a "lo...