andygoodliff

Pete Ward's Participation and Mediation out now

Pete's sequel of sorts to Liquid Church is now available. You can read chapter one here.

Contents:

Part 1 Converging on Culture
1 Practical Theology
2 Missiology and Culture
3 Doing Cultural Studies
4 Production, Text and Audience: 'Shine, Jesus, Jesus'

Part 2 Participation and Mediation
5 Participation
6 Mediation
7 Communion and Mediation

Part 3 Liquid Church and a Consuming Faith
8 Things
9 The Christian Culture Industry
10 Flow

Scottish Journal of Theology, November 2008

'The Policing of Signs: sacramentalism and authority in Rowan Williams' theology' - Theo Hobson

'Moltmann's dismissal of divine impassibility: Warranted?' - Daniel Castelo

'How to speak with intellectual and theological decency on the resurrection of Christ?: A Comparison of Swinburne and Wright' - Gijsbert van den Brink

'Bridging the gulf between biblical scholars and theologians' - Macio Mitchielin

'Directed, ordered and related: The male and female interpersonal relation in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics' - Lisa P. Stephenson

'The Emergent church and neo-correlational theology after Tillich, Schleiermacher and Browning' - Jeff Keuss

'Critical Postliberalism: Linkbeck's cultural-linguistic system and the socially extrasystematic' - Noel Heather

'Article Review: Oliver O'Donovan's The Ways of Judgement' - Jonathan Chaplin

Article Review: Hans Boersma's Violence, Hospitality and the Cross and J. Denny Weaver's The Non-violent Atonement' - Joseph Mangina

Richard Hays in Oxford

I spent the afternoon today listening to Richard Hays who was visiting Keble College, Oxford. First a lecture on Jesus as the embodiment of the God of Israel in Mark's gospel.  This was part of a new book project looking at  intertextuality in the gospels (Hay's earlier work look at echoes of scripture in the letters of Paul).

Second was Hays and Nigel Biggar in conversation over whether the New Testament teaches non-violence. Nigel Biggar is a proponent of the just war tradition and Hays, like his Duke colleague Stanley Hauerwas, is a proponent of a non-violent tradition.  Biggar offered a critical reading of Hay's chapter in the 'classic' Moral Vision in the New Testament. It was fantastic seeing them going head-to-head.  The results will eventually appear next year in Studies in Christian Ethics journal.

Ethel M Wood Lecure 2009

Wed 4th March 2009 
Annual Ethel M Wood Lecture
            Professor Andrew Lincoln (University of Gloucestershire)
            The Birth of Jesus in New Testament Tradition: A Variety of
            Conceptions?
            Room K2.31 (formerly Room 2C), King's College London
            NB Start time: 5.30pm

This sounds interesting. Lincoln contributed an interesting chapter to Christology and Scripture, where he made some interesting arguments around whether a literal virgin birth was a valid interpretation of the New Testament witness.

Book Review: Public Theology in Cultural Engagement

Stephen Holmes (ed.), Public Theology in Cultural Engagement (Paternoster, 2008), 196pp (with thanks to Paternoster for a review copy)

This is a set of previously unpublished essays engaging theologically with culture.  The papers have emerged from a recent project between the Bible Society and the Research Institute in Systematic Theology at King's College London. With essays from Colin Gunton, Robert Jenson, Colin Greene, Brian Horne, Luke Bretherton and Stephen Holmes this is an excellent book which addresses important concerns. Unlike other works engaging theology and culture, this book seeks to be 'theological rather than sociological.'

The book begins with Holmes asking whether theology can engage with culture; followed by essays dealing with the same question 'through the lens of particular biblical, theological, or historical data', and then a second part which puts the theory into practice - on issues of drugs, art and nationalism.

Highlights for me were in Brian Horne's essay on not confusing art and religion - as parts of the church continue to rediscover the arts, especially within worship - Horne tracks and discusses some of the problems of equating art with religion.  Some commentators want to see art is one thing, religion is another, Horne himself argues at the end that 'art and religion are inextricably and intimately linked' and art is vital to communicating and revealing faith.

As Holmes suggests 'a genuinely theological engagement [with culture] ... is possible', and 'missiologically, it is urgent'. This book, as Paul Louis Metzger says on the back cover, is an important and welcome contribution to a growing body of literature.

Website for McDonald Centre

The McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics and Public Life has its own website here. Lots of good things look like they might emerge from this venture. I'm off to the launch tonight.

ministry after christendom

How seriously should we take the arguments of the 'after christendom' series?  The series' fourth book - Youth work after christendom was published earlier this year. At Regent's we spent Friday with Nigel Pimlott, co-author of Youth work after christendom, as part of a week looking at working with young people. What struck me was how Nigel's presentation was in many ways at odds to the approaches taken by other speakers (all good) from earlier in the week. I found myself asking are those training for baptist ministry being trained for a christendom church or for a church after christendom?

This made my day

This made my day because it is so ridiculous - the idea that Graham Kendrick has "wrecked Britain."

2nd presidential debate

Watching the 2nd American presidential debate was depressing. I thought Obama was an alternative to McCain, but when it came to foreign policy, it was difficult to tell the two apart. McCain just talked rubbish, scary rubbish. The only real difference seemed that Obama would not have gone into Iraq. But he was quite happy to go and kill Bin Laden and seemed to believe that would end the (supposed) 'war on terror'. Both men seemed to live in a dream world. Listening to them on Russia: Obama talked about 'dangerous nationalist impulses' - look at yourselves!!!  America, like Great Britain, has very rarely, in my opinion, been a 'force for good' in the world. I can only hope that this is just Obama feeling he has to sound tough on foreign policy for the voters.

Journal of Theological Interpretation, Fall 2008

Docetism, Käsemann, and Christology:Can Historical Criticism Help Christological Orthodoxy (and Other Theology) After All? - Brent A. Strawn

Scripture in Pauline Theology: How Far Down Does It Go? - Francis Watson

Can Narrative Criticism Recover the Theological Unity of Scripture? - Richard B. Hays

A View from the Retail Market: The Promise ofTheological Interpretation of Scripture for Preaching - Patrick J. Willson

The Trinitarian Shape of πίστις: A Theological Exegesis of Galatians - David W. Congdon

Atonement and the Gospels - George C. Heider

Review Article: "Too Hard for the Teeth of Time": Difficulties in Using Scripture in the Church Since the Reformation - Robert E. Meditz

Review Article: Benedict's Jesus and the Rehabilitation of Christian Figural Reading - David Lincicum

Review Article: Giving God Hermeneutical Glory: Biblical Interpretation as if God Mattered - James R. A. Merrick