Divinity United

Great quote at the beginning of chapter 15 of Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey novel Gaudy Night . Do but consider what an excellent thing sleep is: it is so inestimable a jewel that, if a tyrant would give his crown for an hour's slumber, it cannot be bought: of so beautiful a shape is it, that though a man lie with an Empress, his heart cannot beat quiet till he leaves her embracements to be at rest with the other: yea, so greatly indebted are we to this kinsman of death, that we owe the better tributary half our life to him: and there is good cause why we should do so: for sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Who complains of want? of wounds? of cares? of great men's oppressions? of captivity? whilst he sleepeth? Beggars in their beds take as much pleasure as kings: can we therefore surfeit on this delicate Ambrosia? Can we drink too much of that whereof to taste too little tumbles us into a churchyard, and to use it but indifferently ...

John Ashton's book The Gospel of John and Christian Origins was published this spring by Fortress Press . I did have the opportunity to read earlier versions of about half the chapters, and it has been enjoyable to read through the finished book. Ashton has continued themes from his previous book on John, Understanding the Fourth Gospel (1st ed. 1991; 2nd ed. 2007). Ashton made significant changes between the two editions of Understanding , but the third section on "Revelation" (pp. 303-528 in the 2nd ed.) was largely left unchanged. (See my comments on that volume here .) Ashton acknowledges he is revising that section in Gospel of John and Christian Origins , but he is also making more explicit his arguments for the history behind the Gospel, its writing, and Johannine Christianity. The primary interlocutors and support for Ashton throughout the book are Wayne Meeks, Rudolf Bultmann, Ernst Käsemann, and J. Louis Martyn. Coupled with the title, it is clear that ...

This past semester I taught a course on the New Testament and Jewish apocalypses. For the required texts, along with reading the Jewish apocalypses themselves, I required John Collins' The Apocalyptic Imagination and the recent award-winning and posthumously published Apocalypticism in the Bible and Its World  by Frederick Murphy. I have a book review of Murphy coming out in next Trinity Journal , but I wanted to make some comments here that I was not able to include in the more traditional book review. My students found Murphy more readable and accessible than Collins. I suspect that this is because Murphy has written in a style that an undergraduate can more easily grasp, and I think the fact that Murphy summarizes more familiar (biblical) material than Collins (Jewish apocalypses) also made Murphy seem more friendly. One challenge with using a book like Murphy is that it is a long textbook that summarizes a lot of primary material, while highlighting specific themes through...

Ran across this post on the value of recreational reading as important and a valuable human activity. There is some wonderful discussion of P.G. Wodehouse, one of my favorite authors, as an example of excellent recreational reading. The post and Wodehouse are worth some time of recreational reading.

Great quote from Arthur F. Holmes from his classic The Idea of a Christian College : "College is for education, the liberal arts college for a liberal education, and the Christian college for a Christian education. These are the basics to which we must get back. To sell college primarily on some other basis is to operate under false pretenses; and to start into college for some other reason is to ask for frustrations. We must therefore come to see education as a Christian calling, we must explore what ‘liberal education’ means and how it is affected by the Christian’s task" (p. 6).

I just had a question from a student about recommended books and authors that I think most believers should read. It got me thinking about summer reading and just the joy of learning for the sake of learning and for the sake of reading. I have plenty of reading that I need to do this summer for course preparation for next year and for research, but I have just been daydreaming about other books I would like to have stashed away on this table or in that corner just to pick up and read in those small instances that I have opportunity. In the course of my response, I was reminded of Christianity Today's list of the top 100 books of the 20th century. Thankfully, they have posted it online because I am not sure where I have placed my copy of that list, especially considering that list came out 13 years ago now! Here is their list. Agree or disagree, it is a great starting point. Happy reading!

George MacDonald's, Lilith  is a great piece of fantasy literature, and after reading the book, it is easy to see how MacDonald inspired Tolkien and especially Lewis. Toward the beginning of the book there is a great exchange between the Raven and the protagonist. The Raven who is also a man (the Man) leads the protagonist into another world. They pass through a mirror in the attic garret of an large, old house out into "the open heath" (in classic MacDonald style). The protagonist then asks: "Oblige me by telling me where I am." And the response of the raven: "That is impossible. You know nothing about whereness. The only way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home." (George MacDonald, Lilith . Merchant Books, 1895. Reprint 2009. Page 12.) Nothing about whereness...a striking comment and a challenge to learn about home.

My colleague Daniel Driver's book Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian: For the Church's One Bible was reviewed in RBL last week. The reviewer made some great comments. Here is the conclusion: "This is a thick book, probably not one would read for sheer enjoyment. Driver has succeeded, however, in presenting a complex process of conceptual development and growth in the mind of an outstanding scholar and thinker to the reader in the form of a story. This must be the most definitive and authoritative source on Brevard Springs Childs. As time progresses, the academic world will be better equipped  to value the contribution of Childs. It is fortunate that we have this book, which was written almost entirely when Childs was still alive."

These quotes are from the Introduction to his excellent book Why Choose the Liberal Arts? "The liberal arts build on one of the oldest ideals of learning which Socrates put into practice in ancient Greece. For Socrates it was clear that we learn more effectively when we pursue questions ourselves and seek the answers ourselves, when we embody what educators call 'active learning.' The student is actively engaged in the learning process, asking questions, being asked questions, pursuing often elusive answers in dialogue with others. Knowledge cannot simply be poured, like water, from one larger container into an emptier one ( Symposium 175d). Socrates also made it clear that learning is most important and most successful when students are engaged in meaningful discussions, asking questions that will determine who they are and what they think about life's most significant issues. For example, what is human excellence? What is friendship? love? courage? How do we lear...

Robert Gundry's fifth edition of his Survey of the New Testament came out in June 2012 (just six months ago). The new edition has some added photos and a different pagination, but one of the biggest benefits is available online through Zondervan's " Textbook Plus ." Students are able to create an account and have access to online quizzes and flash cards that match the "People to Remember," "Places to Remember," "Terms to Remember," and "How much did you learn?" sections at the end of each chapter. The focus of all these materials is clearly on student learning, and now there are multiple ways for students to engage in active learning. Gundry's survey textbook is still one of the best NT surveys, in my opinion, because of the way in which students are encouraged to actually read the text of the NT rather than merely reading about background content. The historical, cultural, social, and biblical context information is not ...

The Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity Conference organized by Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne and hosted by United Theological Seminary and the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio, took place on October 4 and 5. It was a great conference. I am always a fan of smaller conferences where there is more interaction and discussion on a single topic and the related issues. The core of the conference were presentations by the contributors to the volume edited by Keith and Le Donne and bearing the same title as the conference. Each paper was an argument against the basic premise of each of the criteria of authenticity as they have been used in historical Jesus studies. You can read the book to get the details and you can read Mark Goodacre's blog for the play by play ( Oct 4 and 5 ). There is a question as to what the demise of the criteria of authenticity means for historical Jesus study and whether their demise is eminent. While many of the presenters highlighted th...

"...we use the terms 'college' and 'university' inchangeably. 'She went to Michigan,' we say, or 'he goes to Oberlin'--not bothering with the noun that follows the name, as if a college and a university were the same thing. They are not. They are, to be sure, interconnected (most college teachers nowadays hold an advanced university degree), and a college may exist as a division or 'school' within in university. But a college and a university have--or should have--different purposes. The former is about transmitting knowledge of and from the past to undergraduate students so that they may draw upon it as a living resource in the future. The latter is mainly an array of research activities conducted by faculty and graduate students with the aim of creating new knowledge in order to supercede the past."    --   Andrew Delbanco, College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 2. The terminolog...

Another quote from Hans Urs von Balthasar's Prayer : "This looking to God is contemplation. It is looking inward into the depths of the soul, and hence beyond the soul toward God. The more contemplation finds God, the more it forgets itself and yet discovers itself in him. This unwavering "beholding", moreover, is also and always a "hearing", because what is beheld is the free and infinite Person who, from the depths of his freedom, can give himself in a way that is ever new,  unsuspected and unpredictable. Therefore the word of God is never something finished, to be surveyed like a particular landscape, but it is something new every moment, like water from a spring or rays of light. "And so it is not enough to have received 'insight' and to 'know the testimonies of God', if we do not continually receive and become inebriated by the fountain of eternal light" (Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 118, XXVI, 6). The lover already knows this...

The following selection is from Hans Urs von Balthasar's preface in his book Prayer. The book, so far, is excellent. "Anyone entering the sphere of radiance of the divine word is held fast by it; he knows from experience that this word not only communicates knowledge about God, but--hidden within the garb of the letter--actually has divine qualities: in itself it is an overpowering manifestation of God's infinity and truth, his majesty and love. God's epiphany compels the hearer to kneel in humble submission. The latter had imagined that he was dealing with a word he could grasp and evaluate, like other great and profound utterances of mankind; yet once he enters its field of force, he himself is the one who is grasped and evaluated. He had wanted to approach Jesus in order to see him ("Come and see!"), and now, under the gaze of Jesus, he finds that it is he who has long been observed, seen through, judged and accepted in grace by Jesus. All he can do now...

"The whole are of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards." -- Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1920) as cited in Susan Vanzanten, Joining the Mission: A Guide for (Mainly) New College Faculty (Eerdmans, 2011) 54-55.

"...for the love of letters, and the benefit of reading, are bounded, not by the time spent at school, but by the extent of life."  -- Quintilian, Institutio oratorio , 1.8.12. A great little reminder that learning is not about formal education, but learning is for life.

New location for the Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity Conference which was organized by Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne. It will be held in Dayton, Ohio, on October 4-5 and co-hosted by United Theological Seminary and the University of Dayton's Center for Scriptural Exegesis, Philosophy, and Doctrine. See Mark Goodacre's post .

This Friday, 18 May 2012, Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto will be hosting the spring colloquium of the Wycliffe Centre for Scripture and Theology. The discussion and papers will be on Pope Benedict XVI's two volume work on Jesus. More details can be found here . "Engaging and Evaluating Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth" Pope Benedict XIV’s two-part volume on Jesus, which traces his life “historically” even as it describes him theologically and in a way that is congruent with traditional Catholic dogma, has proven both an extraordinarily popular work and one that has challenged biblical scholars in various critical ways. Several Protestant scholars here work with Benedict’s second volume (“Holy Week”) and discuss it with a Catholic theologian. Presentations by: David Trobisch (Nussloch/Springfield, MI ) Terence L. Donaldson (Wycliffe College, Toronto ) Joseph Mangina (Wycliffe College, Toronto )...

"The most important task of the doctrine of God is to identify the God of the gospel who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ through the Scriptures. It is therefore surprising that the bulk of evangelical treatments have been given over to discussions of the existence, nature, and attributes of God-- that God is and what God is--rather than to God's identity or who God is, even though Scripture itself identifies God by what he says and by what he does: 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt' (Exod. 20:2). When it comes to personal identity, actions speak louder than words, even when that word is perfect being ." ..... "As Barth insisted, however, the only God Christians know and confess is the God who has revealed himself as Father, Son, and Spirit. The Trinity is not merely the appendix to the doctrine of God, then, but the primary and distinctive way in which Christians should think about God. "The doctrine of the Tri...

Karina Hogan has reviewed Jonathan Moo's Creation, Nature and Hope in 4 Ezra (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011) in RBL . She gives a positive review of Moo's look at 4 Ezra's  portrayal of the created order, while also criticizing what she sees as hair-splitting on some occasions. Regardless, Moo's work is worth reading for those interested in Jewish apocalyptic and Jewish understandings of nature and creation at the end of the first-century.