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.

Comments

[michael jensen]

Great to meet you!