andygoodliff

The Faith of Jesus Christ, SBL Seminar

As well as the AAR meeting, the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) meeting happens at the same time in the same location. This seminar on the pistis Christou debate will be a definite highlight. It was in 1991 (I think) at SBL that Richard Hays (arguing for 'faith/fulness of Christ') and Jimmy Dunn (arguing for 'faith in Christ') had a famous debate. (You can find both these papers in Hays' 2nd ed. of The Faith of Jesus Christ, Eerdmans 2002)  Michael Bird is editing a collection of papers (I'm guessing emerging out of this seminar) on this topic.

The Faith of Jesus Christ: Exegetical, Biblical and Theological Studies

Michael Bird, Highland Theological College
The Faith of Jesus Christ: Problems and Prospects

Stanley Porter, McMaster Divinity College
Lexical and Semantic Reflections on Pistis

Douglas Campbell, Duke University
The Faithfulness of Jesus Christ in Romans and Galatians

Preston Sprinkle, Aberdeen University
Pistis Christou as an Eschatological Event

Ardel Caneday, Northwestern College, St. Paul
The Faithfulness of Jesus as a Theme of Pauline Theology

Francis Watson, University of Durham
The Faith of Jesus Christ

R. Barry Matlock, University of Sheffield
The Faithfulness of Jesus Christ in Romans and Galatians

Mark Elliott, University of St. Andrews
The Faith of Jesus Christ in the Church Fathers

Benjamin Myers, University of Queensland
The Faithfulness of Christ in the Theology of Karl Barth

Douglas Campbell at SBL

Douglas Campbell, who taught me Paul at KCL is busy at SBL this year. (The book he's been working on on the problem of the JF reading is almost finished.) I've also highlighted some other interesting papers on Paul that look good.

Douglas A. Campbell, Duke University
Tit for Tat: A Rhetorical and Apocalyptic Analysis of Paul's Intertextuality in His Justification Texts
The language that Paul uses in the passages where he speaks about Justification is distinctly intertextual. Most interpreters have construed this language as an attempt by Paul to corroborate a particular account of his gospel directly, building from problem to solution. Against this trajectory, this paper will argue that Paul's use of Scripture represents a "tit-for-tat" argument with another adept Jewish-Christian exegete from whose system Paul has appropriated some of the texts that he cites. In the process, Paul constructs an argument that is framed around a web of scriptural texts linked together by shared key words. This web offers a systematic, point-by-point refutation of the opposing system of his opponent. Viewed in this light, Paul's argument from Scripture turns out to be less direct than many interpreters have supposed for the reconstruction of his own position. It deploys explicit scriptural texts, and also draws, slightly less directly, on a shared theology of divine kingship. The theology behind this argument turns out to be more apocalyptic than is usually thought.

Francis Watson, University of Durham
The Hermeneutics of Salvation: Paul, Isaiah and the Servant

John M.G. Barclay, Durham University
Why the Roman Empire was Insignificant to Paul

N. Thomas Wright, Church of England
Paul's Counter-Imperial Theology

Theme: Divine and Human Agency in Pauline Theology
Douglas Campbell, Duke University, Presiding
Susan Eastman, Duke University
Philippians 2: Divine and Human Agency in Christ's Story
J. Louis Martyn, Union Theological Seminary
The Newly-Created Moral Agent in Paul
Alan Torrance, University of St. Andrews, Respondent
Telford Work, Westmont College, Respondent

AAR interesting-looking papers

The American Academy of Religion annual meeting is only a few weeks away (17-20 Nov). The titles below from theologians working in British universities caught my eye:

Gerard Loughlin, Durham University
The Blood and the Beauty: On Watching Gibson Torture Christ

Oliver Crisp, University of Bristol
Jonathan Edwards and the Closing of the Table: Must the Eucharist be Open to All?

Luke Bretherton, University of London
Political Theology, Broad-based Community Organizing, and Pursuit of the Common Good

Rachel Muers, University of Exeter
Theology and the Ethics of Breastfeeding

Brian Brock, University of Aberdeen
Disability in the Christian Tradition

The Bible and Justice conference

HT to Sean for the heads up about a conference hosted by the biblical studies department at Sheffield University. Information can be found here. Speakers include Stanley Hauerwas, Tim Gorringe and John Robertson. Topics include human rights, economic justice and environmental justice. What really attracts me, as well as the topic, is an opportunity to hear Stan Hauerwas in the flesh for the first time, a chance not be missed, so I'm going to see about attending.

Oxford, Week 3

This week at Oxford I went along to a Christian ethics group in the college where we discussed with Nigel Biggar a paper on Richard Hay's new testament argument for pacifism (see his highly acclaimed The Moral Vision of the New Testament). Nigel's paper was an attempt to show the weaknesses in Hay's argument. I think he was successful, but I'm uneasy about a just war position that allows limited violence.

I also attended the graduate seminar in moral theology, which is currently looking at the different ways of doing moral theology. This week was natural law, looking at Aquinas, John Paul II, Finnis and briefly at Hauerwas' criticisms. Next week its divine commands, so I'm reading Barth's Church Dogmatics II/2 (which I recently purchased) and Biggar's The Hastening that Waits, chapter 1.

At both these I met Michael Jenson, the blogging parson, who is doing a DPhil on martyrdom and the self.

Part of ministerial formation this week was looking at communication theory, which has encouraged me to get my head around the work of Kevin Vanhoozer, namely in Is There Meaning in this Text? (which I read a few years ago, but this time I think I'll be able to interact more with it) and his collection of essays in First Theology. One thing we were told is that the use of technology in communication is never neutral, it always changes communication sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, sometimes it is a mixture of both. This is certainly my reflection on the use of powerpoint when preaching. It seems too often preaching has become a presentation with slides.

L Gregory Jones on Myers-Briggs

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator combines the techniques of the therapist and the manger, purporting to be a neutral tool that identifies my "personality type" within manageable categories that can be used to differentiate those with whom I am compatible from those with whom I am not. Even more, bureaucratic structures in churches are increasingly mandating that such inventories become a primary means of determining whether someone is or is not fit for leadership in the Church. Thomas Long aptly reveals the dangers of the Myers-Briggs in a short piece entitled "Myers-Briggs and Other Modern Astrologies." He writes,

In short, the MBTI profiles read like horoscopes from Camelot. Taken too seriously, they can be perilously close to fortune cookies for the human potential movement. In contrast, running through the Christian theological tradition is a view of humanity that is far more complex, at once far more sober about human failings, far more truly hopeful about the human prospect, and far more infused with mystery, featuring a landscape of exhilarating peaks of communion with the holy and also valleys of tragic denial of our humanity. (Theology Today 49/3 [1993])

The Myers-Briggs is not simply a neutral technique for evaluating personality types and managing people; rather, it is an instrument predicated both on modernity's bifurcation of ends and means and on its construction of the self as an enduring, discrete entity that is impervious to cultural, moral, and theological shapes.

L. Gregory Jones, Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis, Eerdmans, 1995, 40-41.

Dialog's Theological Autobiographies

Dialog: a Journal of Theology does regular theological autobiographical slot, which make for great reading.

'An intellectual pilgrimage' Wolfhart Pannenberg, Summer 2006

'My life journey' Rosemary Radford Ruether, Fall 2006

'Confessions of a post-conservative evangelical theologian' Clark Pinnock, Winter 2006

'A Theological autobiography, to date' Robert Jenson, Spring 2007

'What I really said about Secularisation' David Martin, Summer 2007

'Wind and Spirit: a Theological autobiography' Nancy Murphy, Fall 2007

British Baptist Theologians 9: George Beasley-Murray

George Beasley-Murray is probably the most famous British Baptist theologian of the 20th Century. He specialised in New Testament studies and wrote an influential book on baptism in the New Testament.

Born 10 October 1916

MTh King's College London
PhD King's College London (1952)

Tutor in New Testament, Spurgeon's College (1950-1956)
Professor of Greek and New Testament, Baptist Theological Seminary, Ruschlikon (1956-1958)
Principal, Spurgeon's College (1958-1973)
James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation, South Baptist Theological Seminary (1973-1980)

The Whitley Lecturer 1959-60 published as Baptism in the New Testament (1962)
The Emanuel Ajahi Dahunsi Memorial New Testament Lecturer 1981 published as The Coming of God (Paternoster, 1983)

Died 23 February 2000

Major Publications

___ Jesus and the Future: An Examination of the Criticism of the Eschatological Discourse, Mark 13, with special Reference to the Little Apocalypse Theory (Macmillan, 1954)
___ Baptism in the New Testament (Macmillan, 1962)
___ Baptist Today and Tomorrow (Macmillan, 1966)
___ The Book of Revelation (New Century Commentary, Oliphants, 1974)
___ The Coming of God (Paternoster, 1983)
___ Jesus and the Kingdom of God (Paternoster, 1986)
___ The Gospel of John (Word Biblical Commentary, Word Books, 1988, 2nd ed. 1999)
___ The Gospel of Life: Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Hendrickson, 1991)

For more See Fearless for the Truth: A Personal Portrait of George Beasley-Murray by Paul Beasley-Murray (2002, Paternoster)

Martyn Percy on Alpha

In a challenging essay 'Shopping for God: Production, Consumption and Globalization' (found in The Salt of the Earth, Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) Martyn Percy makes some serious criticisms of the Alpha course.

'My guess is that for all the hype, triumphalism and talk, this course is mainly about 'refreshing' charismatic-evangelical identity. It does not address the world in all its pain, ambiguity and profusion - so it will not actually change it, in spite of the claims' (p.184)

He argues that Alpha is flawed because:

1. the church is an after thought - 'people become Christians first,  then join think about joining a church'

2. 'in the relentless appeal to 'basics', the course obviates the implicit and explicit paradoxes in the gospel, as well as it breadth. It offers Christianity as a simple, uncontextual, boundless project that is 'learned' through a course offering certain types of knowledge and experience ... the authors do not apparently do not like the course being adapted or inculturated. This suggests that a 'package' of truth is being sold. (Yet Christianity is arguably not something we 'possess'; like God, it possesses us, but it is beyond us too.)' (p.180)

3. 'the focus on the Holy Spirit is both extensive and intensive. The Spirit on offer obviously arises from a personal, therapeutic, 'Home-Counties' context that is concerned with the individual.' (p.181)

4. Alpha is therefore somewhat prescriptive, a package rather than a pilgrimage. Participants are locked into a hermetically sealed hermeneutical circle, which keeps more issues out than it actually addresses' (p.181) - there is no mention of baptism, eucharist, doctrine of the Trinity, church.
'

Oxford, Week 2

I've just finished week 2 at Oxford. I went along to Markus Bockmuehl's undergraduate 'Introduction to Paul' lecture series. He didn't convince to change my mind on Paul's biography or theology (Douglas Campbell remains my guide to all things Paul), but it was good to hear him share a few thoughts on 1 Thessalonians. It was annoying there was no time for questions.

From next week, I plan to join Nigel Biggar's graduate seminar in moral theology - we'll be reading some Aquinas, Barth, Hauerwas and others over the next few weeks.

I'm beginning to think about my first two MTh essays. I'm looking at doing one on baptist ecclesiology, engaging particularly with Nicholas Healy's Church, World and the Christian Life (CUP, 2000) and doing the other on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit with regard to Colin Gunton. Although nothing yet finalised.

I've got a growing list of books I'm trying to read (and some review).