Divinity United

Jason Maston asked me some questions recently about the recent book I co-edited on the relationship between biblical and systematic theology: https://dunelm.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/ben-reynolds-on-biblical-and-systematic-theology-author-interview/. Thanks, Jason and the Dunelm crew.

I have just added a link to Markus Bockmuehl's Theology Resources website that has some helpful advice about writing essays . They are a useful read. 

I sat in on Ruth Heeg's paper at the Native American Institute of Indigenous Theological Studies Symposium 2013 Friday afternoon. The paper was quite interesting, especially for someone who teaches Greek and challenges students to think about translation. Some sitting near me were less than enthused about the discussion of transitive and intransitive verbs and abstract nouns in Greek, English, and Algonquian languages. At some level, (μεν) I agree with them, but (δε) on the other hand, all of these grammatical details are important for translation, especially when it involves translating a text that means a lot to many people. In her paper, Heeg focused on the translation of Greek abstract nouns in First Nations languages, particularly Algonquian languages such as James Bay Cree, Ojibwe, and Plains Cree, in New Testament doxologies. One passage she used as an example was Rev 4:11: “Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou didst create a...

Here is the link to David F. Wells' piece on why those interested in ministry should go to seminary. As a elder theologian statesman, he provides an excellent historical and theological argument for going to seminary. I meet many students who are content with a BA in Biblical Studies and Theology or Religious Studies who are ready to start serving in a church, but Wells' thoughts may be worth considering, even if you do take a break from school for a year or two before going to seminary. Wells challenges us to reflect on what it means to pastor and be a pastor. It is deeper than we often think.

The 2013 spring colloquium will be on the topic of Proverbs 8 in the trinitarian debates between Athanasius and the Arians: "Proverbs 8 and Christian Theological Interpretation of Scripture".  The date is Friday, May 17. More information can be found here .

Jeremy Begbie will be in Toronto giving a Performance Lecture entitled "The Sound of Freedom: The Music of Liberation" on March 20, 2013 at 3-4:30 pm. Wycliffe College is hosting this event at the TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning, Conservatory Theatre, 273 Bloor Street West, Toronto. Having seen him lecture before, his combination of theology and the arts is not something to miss.   Further details here .

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."

In his published thesis, Markus Bockmuehl has some thought-provoking comments on the hiddenness of God. "This hiddenness is not an abnormality, an unfortunate occasional blemish in an otherwise predictable system of theology. New revelation from God may not in fact be forthcoming for long periods of time: 'In those days it was rare for Yahweh to speak; visions were uncommon' (1 Sam 3:1 NJB). Characters like Job, David, Hezekiah, Jeremiah, all have to cope at one time or another with the torment and agony of God's silence. True, God's silence and absence are never His last word, and therefore the hiddenness of Yahweh is not ultimately a cornerstone of an OT theology of revelation. Nevertheless, God is not simply 'available' to man, whether in daily experience or in the cult." Markus N.A. Bockmuehl, Revelation and Mystery in Ancient Judaism and Pauline Christianity (WUNT 2.36; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1990), 10.

René Padilla will be speaking at Spring Garden Church this Sunday (June 17). Along with being an important evangelical figure in Latin America, he is the author of the essay "Evangelical theology in Latin American contexts," in Timothy Larsen and Daniel J. Treier, The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology (Cambridge 2007): 259-73. Padilla's essay frames evangelical theology in Latin America around three time periods of history: the Roman Catholic, revolutionary, and evangelical growth. He highlights the way in which Christianity came to Latin America with the imperial power of Spain and Portugal and that the Roman Catholic Church was essentially the same, state and religion. Out of this arose a revolution that sought to see faith in the care of the poor and not just the powerful and rich. Since the revolutionary time, evangelical groups have seen dramatic growth, but Padilla warns that evangelical church in Latin America cannot and should not replace the dom...

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...

"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...

In the introductory essay to  The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology (edited by Timothy Larsen and Daniel J. Treier; Cambridge, 2007), Timothy Larsen defines an "evangelical" as: 1. an orthodox Protestant 2. who stands in the tradition of the global Christian networks arising from the eighteenth-century revival movements associated with John Wesley and George Whitfield; 3. who has a preeminent place for the Bible in her or his Christian life as the divinely inspired, final authority in matters of faith and practice; 4. who stresses reconciliation with God through the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross; 5. and who stresses the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of an individual to bring about conversion and an ongoing life of fellowship with God and service to God and others, including the duty of all believers to participate in the task of proclaiming the gospel to all people.

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.

"The challenge of the Christian interpreter in our day is to hear the full range of notes within all Scripture, to wrestle with the theological implication of this biblical witness, and above all, to come to grips with the agony of our age before a living God who still speaks through the Prophets and Apostles." --the concluding sentence of Brevard S. Childs, "Psalm 8 in the Context of the Christian Canon," Interpretation 23.1 (1969), 20-31 (31).

The October edition of First Things , which I have just had a chance to look through, has a review of Pope Benedict XVI's second volume of Jesus of Nazareth ( "Reading the Gospels with Benedict XVI" , pp. 35-40).   The review by Bruce Marshall is a good read, especially given that I do want to read Ratzinger's work on Jesus. There are a number of things about the review that could be mentioned, but I do want to note a discussion that comes toward the end of the review about the relationship between Biblical Studies and Theology. What sparks these comments by Marshall is the "frosty reception" that the he says the pope's book has been given by biblical scholars. He states that among other things: "...the book was dismissed as a misbegotten hybrid of critical scholarship and Catholic devotion..." (p. 39). And yes, that would cause some problems for the more historical-critically minded biblical scholar. Marshall continues, "Undeterred by...

During SBL this past weekend, I picked up a copy of Barth for Armchair Theologians by John R. Franke. I have always been intrigued by this armchair series published by Westminster John Knox, and knowing that I currently do not have time to begin reading Barth's extensive writings, a nice, light introduction sounded like a good idea. Franke makes a great comment in his discussion of Barth's developing theology, as Barth began to move away from liberal theology in the aftermath of World War I: "...Barth increasingly believed that to speak of God was to speak of something different, strange, and startling. God does not come to us in ways that simply affirm what we already believe and practice as a matter of course, but God comes to us and speaks to us on God's own terms, invading and disrupting what we have known and take for granted by calling into being a new reality that we could not have foreseen or imagined" (p. 31).

The cover story for this month's (October 2011) Christianity Today is an article by J. Todd Billings entitled "How to Read the Bible: New strategies for interpreting Scripture turn out to be not so new--and deepen our life in Christ" . The article introduces some of the main themes and scholars in the field of theological interpretation of Scripture. Billings makes some excellent points and is challenging about the place of a theological hermeneutic in relation to historical-critical exegesis and also in relation to the Church's engagement of Scripture in the context of worship and devotion. One quick quote (for now), pp. 25-26: "Instead of providing a detailed blueprint, a theological reading [of Scripture] brings a map for a journey. Our map does not give all the answers about a particular text. Instead, our reading sends us on a journey in which God in Scripture encounters us again and again, both with comforting signs of his presence and surprises that conf...

It is less than a month until the Wycliffe Centre for Scripture and Theology fall meeting 2011 . The program looks to be interesting and engaging. One of the presenters is Tyndale's own Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, Dr. Stanley Walters (PhD, Yale). The meeting will take place at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto on Friday, October 21. The program is as follows: Discussion will focus on Isaiah 9 in reception history, and on connections here with Legaspi's recent book,  The Death of Scripture & the Rise of Biblical Studies (OUP, 2010). Time Participants Friday, 21 October 2011 9:30 am Ephraim Radner Greeting & Introduction 10:00 am Gary Anderson Isaiah 9 with a focus TBD 11:00 am Michael Legaspi Isaiah 9 and the work of Robert Lowth 12:00 pm Stanley Walters Review of Legaspi’s The Death of Scripture… 1:00 pm everybody Lunch provided for attendees & presenters 2:00 pm Joseph Mangina Response to morning presentations...

Here are some comments by Graeme Goldsworthy in his book Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation . The comments come from his chapter "The Gospel and the Theological Dimension (II): Biblical and Systematic Theology." "The biblical theological dimension in hermeneutics is thus the major way of addressing the question of the gap between the text and the reader. It allows the reader to find where he or she actually fits into the totality of biblical revelation. If done with care, it will then provide the valid links between the meaning of a text in its own context and its application to the modern reader. The offending gap is the theological distance of texts from the modern reader. But, if the gap is uniformly closed by the reader to give an undifferentiated immediacy to all texts, the result is hermeneutical chaos. Some forms of pietism and 'Spirit-driven' subjective theology result in such an approach, whi...