Monday, August 18, 2008

American Politicians and Religion

I find the interface between religion and politics in the USA to be most amusing. Watching, for the most part, irreligious men and women feign religion and seeing people buy it does not happen in most western countries. In fact, in some places, being a Christian is probably a liability to being elected. My own country Australia has no equivalent to the "Religious Right" although there are some Christians in politics in both major political parties. Yet I should say that the Australian Greens try to pick on any one who is a Christian in politics as among the "Religious Right" and the Greens' idea of secularism means feeding evangelicals to the lions at Stadium Australia as a commemoration to the genius of Nero and for the entertainment of the left-wing intelligentsia. Apparently, it is a good opening act to Keating: The Musical!

On Americans, Religion, and Politics, what would happen if certain persons were to find themselves in heaven?

1. A Democrat: Well I'll be darned, there really is a heaven!
2. A Republican: Wow, heaven sure is shiny, but it ain't as big as Texas!
3. John McCain: Well I'll be darned, there really is a heaven!
4. Barack Obama: Say, why isn't Jeremiah Wright here, he died six months ago?
5. Hillary Clinton: What the heck is my husband doing here? I didn't think that you let adulterers into this place.
6. Mike Huckabee: What, you want me to go back and preach to America that one can be a social conservative and still believe in universal health care and compassionate economics? Lord, even if someone rises from the dead, they will not believe!
7. Mitt Romney: Yes, Lord, I do have bags of money with me, during my life time I found a way to take it with me. Now where are those golden tablets that I heard about?
8. George W. Bush: [Before the seat of judgment] You know, apology is a word that gets used alot these days ...
9. Nancy Pelosi: What are the souls of all these unborn babies doing here, I thought I had them "taken care of"?
10. Colin Powell: I guess I'm here because working for George was kinda like doing purgatory already.

Something to offend everyone!

How Did Christianity Begin?



The Bird vs. Crossley smack down is just about here. To be released in mid-September in the US and UK. At the Hendrickson website you can read: The objective of How Did Christianity Begin? is to present two contrasting perspectives on the history of early Christianity. The contrast is evidently sharp as one co-author comes from a conservative Christian background (Michael Bird), while the other co-author (James Crossley) approaches the matter from a secular standpoint. The volume works sequentially through Christian origins and addresses various topics including the historical Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, the Apostle Paul, the Gospels, and the early church. Each author in turn examines these subjects and lays out his historical arguments concerning their origin and meaning. The volume also includes short responses from two other scholars (Maurice Casey and Scot McKnight) to the arguments of Bird and Crossley so as to give an even handed and broad evaluation of the arguments and debates that unfold.


Let me say that Scot McKnight's rejoinder to Crossley is worth the price of the book alone! There are some good exchanges, more agreements than we first imagined, and some humorous ancedotes as well! Hopefully Crossley and I will be invited on the Colbert Report which I can use to make fun of Crossley's gothic fashion sense and his religious devotion to ManUism.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Jews eating with Gentiles

When it comes to Jews eating with Gentiles, what were the options, and what attitudes did Jews have towards Gentile food and Gentile dining company? This is an important question for Jews living in cities of the Diaspora where kosher food was not always plentiful and they had to interact with Gentiles in order to get anywhere in the social order. Here's an overview:

Rejection of Gentile oil as impure: Josephus, Life 74; War 2.591; Ant. 12.120.
Rejection of Gentile wine: Dan. 1.8; Add. Esth. 4.17.
Bringing one’s own food and wine to a meal: Jdth. 12.1-4, 19.
Eating only vegetables: Dan. 1.8-15; Josephus, Life 14; Rom. 14.1-2.
Dispensing with prayers and libations at joint meals: Ep. Arist. 184-85.
Sitting at separate tables: Jos. and Asen. 7.1.
Not eating with Gentiles at all: Acts 10.28; 11.3; Tacitus, Hist. 5.5.

Colossians 2.8-23 - Significance

I have been (and still am) working through Col. 2.8-23 for a writing project. I am convinced that this section shows fairly convincingly that Paul is countering a form of Jewish Mysticism. It is certainly the most theological and polemical section of the entire letter, which has led me to reflect on its significance for the contemporary church. Here's my thoughts so far:

The new covenant community has always been a creedal community confessing its faith as to what God has done in creation, in the history of Israel, in Jesus, and in the life of the church. The triune God has made himself known in his acts of reconciliation and renewal and this fills the content of sermons, Bible studies, liturgies, songs, prayers, and statements of belief from ancient times until even now. For this reason, the early church developed creeds as short programmatic summaries of its faith. These creeds enabled the church to know its own mind and to state how it distinguished itself from Judaism and paganism and from unwholesome derivations of its own beliefs. While no one likes people who are doctrinaire and unduly infatuated with doctrinal precision over every minor issue, nonetheless, we cannot help but notice that the content of faith matters immensely. A common faith is what ultimately defines the centre and boundaries of the church and even forms the fulcrum of our common fellowship.

It is vitally important, then, that the church in all ages guard its theological vision of the nature of God, Christ, and salvation without being pointlessly puritanical or vacuously broad. Even though it might seem unpopular, we should maintain the language of ‘heresy’ and warnings against it, as perversions of our distinct theological vision can endanger the integrity of our message, the focus of our worship, detract from our mission, and even risk shipwrecking our faith upon the jagged rocks of cultural conformity. Heretics never intend to distort the biblical and ancient faith, rather, they intend to make it more palatable and pliable to the spirit of the age, and so remove barriers to belief. For the second century gnostics this meant marrying Christianity to platonic cosmology and for the old liberals of the early twentieth century it required revizing Christian doctrines in light of rationalistic critiques of revealed religion. We should embody the virtue of tolerance, especially in matters that are adiaphora or ‘indifferent’, but at the same time we should think carefully of what we tolerate and not allow anyone to bring sin or false teaching into the church and expect it to be baptized and blessed in Jesus’ name.

We live in an age where, in some circles, inclusiveness has become the new orthodoxy and where exclusiveness has become the new heresy. This is where Col. 2.8-23 is so important. It informs us that some things are not for negotiation, such as the sufficiency and supremacy of Christ, and that nothing can supplement or detract from God’s actions in his annointed Son. Colossians demands no compromise to the creed of solus Christus or ‘Christ alone’. To capitulate this point will result in a theology that is at first imprecise, then wishy-washy, then populalist, then worldly, and finally trivial. Paul calls on Christian communities to confess their faith with courage and fidelity against the philosophies of this world, be they within the church or external to it, and to singularly propound without reservation the absolute finality and ultimacy of Jesus Christ in all things. From this faithful confession emerges a unity rooted in one faith, one Lord, and one baptism, it unites believers from all over the world, it brings them together in a common mission, it entreats them to recline at a common table, and forges their shared identity as those who are in the Messiah.

N.T. Wright on Col. 2.15

NTW is at his best when he writes on Col. 2.15:

"The 'rulers and authorities' of Rome and of Israel - as Caird points out, the best government and the highest religion of the world of that time had ever known - conspired to place Jesus on the cross. These powers, angry at his challenge to their sovereignty, stripped him naked, held him up to public contempt, and celebrated a triumph over him. In one of his most dramatic statements of the paradox of the cross, and one moreover which shows in what physical detail Paul could envisage the horrible death Jesus had died, he declares that, on the contrary, on the cross God was stripping them naked, was holding them to public contempt, and leading them in his own triumphal procession - in Christ, the crucified Messiah. When the 'powers' had done their worst, crucifying the lord of glory incognito on the charge of blasphemy and rebellion, they have overreached themselves. He, neither blasphemer nor rebel, was in fact their rightful sovereign. They thereby exposed themselves for what they were - usurpers of the authority which was properly his. The cross therefore becomes the source of hope for all who had been held captive under their rule, enslaved in fear and mutual suspicion. Christ breaks the last hold that the 'powers' had over his people, by dying on their behalf. He now welcomes them into a new family in which the ways of the old world - its behaviour, its distinctions of race and class and sex, its blind obedience to the 'forces' of politics and economics, prejudice and superstition - have become quite simply out of date, a ragged and defeated rabble." (Colossian, pp. 116-17).

Friday, August 15, 2008

Books on Calvin and Union with Christ

Next year is the 500th anniversary of the nerdy but brilliant little frenchman, John Calvin, and it seems that everyone is celebrating his birth, not by cheering for Rodger Federer or by consuming copious amounts of swiss chocolate, but by writing books on Calvin's doctrine of union with Christ and its effects on later theology. Here's three I've found:


Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin's Theology by Mark A. Garcia (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008).

Imputation and Impartation: Union with Christ in American Reformed Theology by William B. Evans (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008) [Yes, I know that this isn't directly on Calvin, but he obviously has a lot to do with it and his face is on the front cover of the book!].

Latest Evangelical Quarterly

The latest EQ includes:

"The Evangelical Sacrament: baptisma semper reformandum".
Anthony R. Cross

"In the wake of Trypho: Jewish-Christian Dialogues to the third to the six centuries".
William Varner

"Puritan or Enlightened? John Erskine and the transition of Scottish Evangelical Theology".
Jonathan Yeager

"'Let there be no compulsion in religion.' Tafsir comparison on the verse 2:256".
Anna Munster

It also includes some good reviews of Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer, Jesus und das Judentum (I. Howard Marshall) and Maurice Casey, The Solution to the "Son of Man" Problem (Dick France).

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Kasemann on Christ and the Powers

The great Kaesemann writes:

"The letter itself answers the question at hand in terms of 'Christ alone.' The powers cannot establish a connection with Christ, nor can they separate from him. All that can be said about them is that they who were once rulers of the world have been disempowered by the Christ, who alone as the eschatological ruler of the All [kosmocrator] holds in his hands the governance of the world and the salvation of his own" ("Romer 13:1-7", 359).

Monday, August 11, 2008

Lightfoot on Col. 2.15

Lightfoot's commentaries are not dry remarks on ancient Greek, but are powerfully sermonic at certain points. Consider this quote on Colossians 2.15:

"The final act in the conflict began with the agony of Gethsemane; it ended with the cross of Calvary. The victory was complete. The enemy of man was defeated. The powers of evil, which had clung like a Nessus robe about His humanity, were torn off and cast aside for ever. And the victory of mankind is involved in the victory of Christ. In His cross we too are divested of the poisonous clinging garments of temptation and sin and death" (p. 190).

An "orderly separation" for Anglicanism?

The Rt. Rev. Michael Scott-Joynt, bishop of Winchester, offers some interesting thoughts about the 2008 Lambeth conference and about the future of Anglicanism. On the former, while he lauds Rowan Williams' third plenary address (which I have to say is quite encouraging including an olive branch to GAFCON), he laments that: "By the second full week of the Conference I and many other bishops had come to the view that the programme as a whole was designed to ensure that the Conference should not seek to offer any clear guidance or teaching on any issue, because of the potentially divisive effects of our starting upon the plenary debates, and the voting, which alone would enable the Conference to articulate a particular view comparable to that of 'Lambeth [1998]'". This confirms what has been my suspicion for some time, namely, that Williams' strategy to hold the communion together is, in desperation I suspect, to filibuster the communion by stifling any democratic process leading to a definitive resolution precisely because it would lead to a dissolution of the communion as it stands. This might not be as bad as it sounds if Williams is trying to buy time in order to (1) let all sides cool down, re-think their actions, meet face to face, and get an alternative perspective on what is going and where, and also (2) create some space for an Anglican covenant that can hopefully provide a way forward where all parties can agree on a new rule book for the communion and force TEC to swap "unilateral" for "mutally accountable". Sadly, the problem I have with such a strategy, noble as it sounds, is that in order to do that Williiams must brazenly defy the will of the majority of the communion who, as far as I can tell, would very much have liked a democratic resolution to the current crisis at Lambeth: vote to reaffirm LR 1.10 and then vote that those who do not agree to live-by LR 1.10 (note: [1] "live-by" and "agree with" are different things, no one's asking for the latter; [2] "live-by" means moratoria on same-sex blessing and ordination of active homosexuals to the episcopate) are invited to remain in the communion, but only in a second tier position. I'm sure someone can show me a problem with that scenario somewhere, but I understand the annoyance of the global south who claim that the voice of the majority is being quashed by an elite few. On the future of Anglicanism, Scott-Joynt states: "I described this apparently likely outcomes 'living down' to the concerns about “Lambeth 2008” that motivated the Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem in July, and that led more than 200 bishops to refuse the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation to the Conference. I expressed my concern that if this were to be the outcome of the Conference, more Provinces might well be drawn away from the See of Canterbury to the new structures that GAFCON had committed itself to bringing into being; and I suggested that the wisest future for the Communion could be some kind of negotiated 'orderly separation' that would free both 'sides' from more years of necessarily inconclusive debate and from the damage that each perceived itself receiving from the other." This call for separation is not that of some ultra conservative licking his fingers waiting for the fabric of the communion to finally tear apart so he can say, "Ha, see, I told you so!". Rather, I think that Scott-Joynt's words are the recommendations of a realist who wants all sides to embrace the inevitable on terms that are, hopefully, acceptable to all parites.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Around the Blogs

Things of note around the blogosphere:

1. Scot McKnight, author of the Jesus Creed blog, is the featured blogger of the month over at Biblioblogs.com. See this: Blogger of the Month for August 2008.

2. Congrats to Ben Blackwell, a Ph.D student in Durham, who has just accepted a part-time position as N.T. Wright's research assistant.

3. Congrats to Chris Tilling for his appointment as NT Tutor at St Mellitus College and St Paul's Theological Centre where he'll be working with, among other people, the wives of Rowan Williams and Alister McGrath!

4. Nijay Gupta, also from the Durham cohort, offers some good thoughts on becoming a more well-rounded biblical theologian.

5. Andrew McGowan is preaching the excellencies of the great Baptist Preacher Charles Spurgeon to Presbyterians in Sydney, Australia and teaching Reformed folk what covenant theology is about (i.e. Meredith Kline doesn't know a covenant from his elbow [my words not McGowan's]). The good news is that so far no one has commented "You are surprisingly understandable for a Glaswegian" or asked him "Which part of England are you from?".

6. Wipf & Stock is producing some funky books on Anglicanism including the forthcoming title On Rowan Williams: Critical Essays including one essay by Ben Myers.

Friday is for Ad Fontes

I have to say that reading Book One of Ovid's Metamorphoses was most illuminating. It is, in the opening verses, a Graeco-Roman account of creation with many similarities to Genesis 1. History is also divided up into certain ages (Golden, Silver, Brazen, Iron). The god Saturn is driven to tartarus (cf. 2 Pet. 2.4; Jude 13 ), the giant Argus had a head with a hundred eyes (Zech. 4.10; Rev. 5.6), and the seating of the gods in a heavenly council reminds me Dan. 7.9:

"And he, their father, had assum'd the throne, Upon his iv'ry sceptre first he leant, Then shook his head, that shook the firmament: Air, Earth, and seas, obey'd th' almighty nod; And, with a gen'ral fear, confess'd the God. At length, with indignation, thus he broke His awful silence, and the Pow'rs bespoke."

A synopsis of the Metamorphoses is available here.

The Expulsion of Jews from Rome

Walter Wiefel's hypothesis is that Romans should be understood against the backdrop of the expulsion of the Jews from Rome in 49 CE and their return at the accession of Nero in 54 CE which significantly effected the contours of Roman Christianity in the mid-50s. I have made use of this myself in lecturing, preaching, and writing on Romans. In my mind, Romans is essentially a fund raising letter and Paul wants to outline his apostolic message, assuage reservations about his stance vis-a-vis Israel and the Torah, but he also wants to make a positive impact upon Christian groupings there in order to address a potenially fractious cosmopolitan community on the verges of being Balkanized (or Galatianized!) over matters pertaining to Torah observance. I have always wondered, however, that if the Roman expulsion was part of the ocassion of Romans then why does Paul not explicitly mention it? Is it kind of like the grandmother in the sitting room that everybody knows about but never talks about?

In an article review of Bob Jewett's Romans commentary (JSNT 31.1 [2008]: 91-94), John Barlcay questions the evidence for and relevance of the expulsion for interpreting Romans. Barclay makes a good point about how little we really know about Judaism in Rome in the 40s. Dio Cassius' account of Claudius' clamp down on synagogue meetings in 41 CE is of a piece with Claudius' general suppression of meetings in clubs and taverns and not necessarily due to intra-Jewish debates about Jesus, Messianism, and Torah. Suetonius' reference to the impulsore Chresto is not necessarily a faulty latinism of Christus. The name Chrestus was an extremely common Roman name and Suetonius knew that Christians were called Christianoi so he would be unlikely to get them confused if he knew of the Christianoi and their Christus. Furthermore, Paul makes no mention of changes in leadership or shifts from synagogues to house churches as the new meeting places for Jesus believers,which one might expect if seismic ecclesial shifts have transpired among the Roman Christian communities.

Even so, I'm a little more sanguine about the relevance of the expulsion for when Paul writes Romans ca. 55-56 CE. Any study of Judaism and Christianity in Rome in the first and second centuries must take into account Peter Lampe's astute study which provides more detailed evidence and hypotheses about the emergence of Christianity in Rome. Also, there is enough evidence from Tacitus, Tertullian, and textual variants to suggest that mistaking Christus for Chrestus was common place. The evidence from Acts 18.2 about Priscilla and Aquila's journey to Corinth from Rome because of the expulsion is further proof of the expulsion and also Paul's contact with Roman Christianity suffering effects of the expulsion. Like Jewett, I find Barlcay's conclusion that Priscilla and Aquila may not have been converted until after they left Rome unconvincing. Finally, Romans 14-15 looks very much like Paul using prior theological debates (i.e. 1 Corinthians 8-10) as the basis of exhortations to unity and mutual acceptance among the Roman Christians.

Friday, August 08, 2008

Two Recent Articles in the Pistis Christou Debate

In recent days there have been two articles published on the Pistis Christou debate:

1. Jae Hyun Lee, "Against Richard B. Hays’s ‘Faith of Jesus Christ’" JGRChJ (2008): 51-80.

Here Lee critiques Richard Hays' monograph The Faith of Jesus Christ. In particular, Lee takes Hays to task on the purported narrative structure of Galatians and the alleged divine-human dichotomy that Hays seems to assume. Overall, this is a good lexical semantic approach to the pistis christou debate, but it suffers from historical redundancy. Hays himself has pretty much abandoned arguing for the subjective genitive view based on a narrative sub-structure to Galatians and few subjective genitivalists refer to the redundancy of pistis/pisteuo any more (I know for a fact that Doug Campbell has abandoned that line of argument all together). Lee's critique might have been relevant in the early 1980s, but I question its utility now in 2008, the debate has moved on. What is more, I would point out that by undermining the weakest point of someone's argument does not mean that you have thereby undermined their argument in total. Lee's critique may be correct (and I surmize that for the most part it is), but Hays' argument has stronger nodes especially in his analysis of Romans 1-4 and reading Gal. 2.15-16 in light of Gal. 3.23, which do not get dealt with.

2. Kenneth Schenck, "2 Corinthians and the Pistis Christou Debate" CBQ 70.3 (2008): 524-37.

Schenck maintains that 2 Cor. 4.13 provides evidence that Paul could think of Jesus as having faith and that Paul saw Jesus' faith as exemplary for the faith of subsequent believers in addition to its instrumental role in their resurrection. This depends on seeing Paul's quotation of Ps. 115 (LXX) as messianic where the speaker is Jesus himself and it refers to Jesus' faith that God will raise him from the dead. The line of argument runs: (1) Paul reads the psalm and sees Jesus having faith that God would raise him from the dead; (2) Paul also has this faith that God will one day raise him and the dead in Christ; (3) because the God who raised Jesus will also raise him and the dead in Christ (p. 528). Schenck supposes that the concepts of Jesus' obedience to God in his death and his confidence in God to raise him from the dead "flowed into each other in Paul's mind" (p. 535). The significance of this observation is that it might illuminate other texts. Perhaps in Rom. 1.17 ("from faith to faith") Paul refers to Jesus' faith and the believer's faith and Gal. 2.16 where three faith expressions are used in sequence. My only quibbles here are that (1) the Church Fathers had much to say against Jesus' faith as exemplary for various reasons. (2) One could accept Schenck's conclusion about 2 Cor.4.13, but still maintain the objective genitive interpretation of the relevant passages in Galatians, Romans, and Philippians. While it might illuminate the subjective genitive position it does not necessitate it or reinforce it.

Book Review: Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles

I found Francis Watson's revised monograph Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective to be a stimulating read with much to think about it. I think this book proves (as do others, e.g. Jewett on Romans) that we are entering a post-NPP phase. It also makes a good synthesis of Luther and Baur on Paul and demonstrates that social readings and theological interpretation are not mutually exclusive. My review can be uploaded here (seven pages).

Thursday, August 07, 2008

The Top Ten most Critical Topics in Pauline Research

What are the big issues you need to solve in historical and theological study of Paul. Here's my ten picks in no particular order.

§ Why Did Saul of Tarsus Persecute the Church?
§ The Origin of Paul’s Gospel?
§ Paul and the Beginnings of the Gentile Mission
§ Paul and the Antioch Episode
§ Paul’s Problem with the Law
§ Paul and His Opponents
§ The Pauline Hermeneutic: Paul and Israel’s Sacred Traditions
§ The Purpose of Romans
§ Paul and the Parting of the Ways
§ The Quest for the Centrum Paulinium

Paul and Sola Gratia

Can Paul's theology be summarized as an expression of sola gratia? If faith and obedience are the necessary means or necessary evidences of salvation, is this really by grace alone? Recently Francis Watson has written: ‘The Reformational assumption that Pauline theology is summed up in the phrase sola gratia should be treated with considerable caution’ (Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles, p. 346). In my mind, Paul’s remarks in Gal. 1.15-16 and 1 Cor. 15.8-10 seem to correspond remarkably well with a sola gratia principle indeed. What Watson has undermined is perhaps more akin to a monergism that leaves no room for conversion and obedience as the necessary pre-condition of salvation. The only genuinely form of monergism in this regard is probably some type of universalism. Incidentally, I hope to have a seven page review of Watson's book out soon, it's been a cracking read, easily one of the top five books in Pauline studies in the last ten years.

Roland Boer Responds to D.A. Carson

Over at his blog, Stalin's Moustache, Roland Boer responds to D.A. Carson's recent RBL review of his book. I would be keen to know what and how Boer determines who is on the religious right. I would consider myself "evangelical" and fairly conservative in terms of theology, but economically I believe in universal health care, that the state should control essential services like gas and electricity supply, which does not quite fit into the RR of the USA.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Robert Morgan on Conservative NT Theologies

Robert Morgan, probably the foremost expert on the discipline of NT Theology in our time, writes as follows:

‘The tendency of textbook NTTs to become compendia of the biblical material is always present in conservative or Biblicist presentations whose authors assume that saying what the Bible says is sufficient, or is all that biblical scholars can offer. But to repeat in a new historical situation what was said in an old one is inevitably to say something different. The problem of interpretation cannot be evaded, especially when reading religious texts still considered authoritative in a changed intellectual milieu. All NTTs are interpretations, though some modern theologians stand closer to the letter of scripture than others. The main question for them all is how the biblical material is aligned with the interpreter’s own understanding of the subject matter. The older textbooks had answered this by organizing the conceptual material according to the framework supplied by traditional dogmatics. Conservative NTTs retain more of this than more critical ones do. Doctrinal themes can provide a language for historical descriptions After all, these topics emerged in large part from the church’s engagement with scripture. But NTT needs to distinguish the historical descriptions provided by biblical theology from the accounts of modern belief constructed by dogmatics. Conservative NTTs which make extensive use of dogmatic vocabulary have been suspected of minimizing the distinction. They react against NTTs which exaggerate the gap between the New Testament and modern Christianity, but themselves underestimate it. Among these G.E. Ladd (1974) especially, but also D. Guthrie (1981) and L. Morris (1986) have served their evangelical market well, not least by making room in it for a cautious historical criticism, but they have not significantly advanced the discipline’ (pp. 474-75). [1]

I certainly feel the gravity of Morgan's objection. Some NTTs often feel like quasi-systematic theologies merely restricted to the New Testament for their material. Even so, I think one could be a little fairer on the Biblicist/Conservative approach for a number of reasons:

1. A NT Theology should, as a matter of form, include some element of synthesis and applicatio (as I think Morgan is saying), so it is not entirely illegimate to import notions and frameworks from modern theology as long as you recognize that you are using modern theology on the basis of the text rather than finding a modern theology in the text. In fact, my Tyndale House lecture was about "NT Theology Reloaded" which has urged a more socio-historical approach in NT Theology, but without undermining the theological nature of the texts, the theological nature of interpretation, and the necessity of dogmatic inquiry which begins, somewhat, with a biblical theology itself.
2. Notably Morgan does not provide any examples of over use of dogmatic theology in the nominated volumes. Does a stratification of topics like the 'christology' of Hebrews, the 'eschatology' of Revelation, and the 'soteriology' of Romans represent a crass and unhistorical approach even though the categories are drawn from systematic theology? Potentially so, but not necessarily and such an approach is not limited to theological conservatives, e.g. see the NTG series published by CUP.
3. I would not describe the named trio (Ladd, Guthrie, and Morris) as woodenly dogmatic. Ladd had drunk deeply from a well of German scholarship and is more in line with the salvation-historical school. Guthrie is certainly highly thematic and not given over to historical critical discussion, but many German theologies also take a thematic approach. Morris' theology is built on the idea of historical development and he proceeds largely in the chronological order that the NT was written, starting, I believe, with Galatians!
4. In terms of utilitity and homiletical preparation, like for preaching a series of what the NT has to say about Christ, I have to confess that in my experience (though I am of the evangelical camp), Guthrie has been more useful than Bultmann.

[1]. Morgan, Robert. ‘New Testament Theology Since Bultmann,’ ExpT 119.10 (2008): 472-80. I should add that this is a jolly good read for those who want a heads-up of NT Theologies in the last 40 years.

Monday, August 04, 2008

New Blogs: Koinonia

A new blog from Zondervan and its authors is: Koinōnia: Biblical-Theological Conversations for the Community of Christ. Some excellent contributors are here and the first poste is by Bill Mounce on the "obedience of faith" in Rom. 1.5.

Paul and an eight year old

I popped into work today to check mail and email and I brought my daughters with me. My elderst daughter, Alexis, asked to read one of my books while she was waiting: shock of my life, a member of my family actually interested in my academic writings! I had to make sure she didn't think it was a colouring book first and then I gave one to her to read. Then after reading a few pages of Saving Righteousness of God, she asks me:

"Dad, was Paul Catholic?"
"Umm. No darling".
"Was Paul Baptist?".
"Aah. No, those things came later."
"What was Paul then?"
Daddy pauses and thinks. "Paul was a Christian".