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Scot McKnight and Mariology
2007-05-25 09:17:00
Over at Internet Monk, there?s an interview with Scot McKnight about the new evangelical interest in Mari ology . If you?re not yet familiar with Scot?s excellent blog, you might also like to check it out.
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Must-read theological books
2007-05-24 00:44:00
Michael Jensen asks for a list of ?the must-read theological books that are coming out soon or have recently appeared.? So I thought I?d try to respond with a series of suggestions in various categories. First of all, though, if you somehow missed David Bentley Hart?s The Beauty of the Infinite (Eerdmans, 2003), then you should skip all these other books and start with that one ? it will almost certainly prove to be the most important theological work of the decade.Anyway, here are my selections of ?must-read books? under various headings (restricted to books that are forthcoming or that have appeared within the past 18 months or so). These aren?t necessarily my favourite books, but they?re the books that I think are (or will be) ?important? in the theological conversation. I?d welcome any other suggestions as well!Old TestamentRolf Rendtorff, The Canonical Hebrew Bible (Deo, 2005)New TestamentRichard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans, 2006) ? I haven?t read this one ye...
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Matt Jenson: The Gravity of Sin
2007-05-22 22:35:00
Matt Jens on , The G ravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther and Barth on homo incurvatus in se (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 202 pp. (review copy courtesy of T&T Clark)The doctrine of sin has fallen on hard times in recent decades, especially in the wake of Karl Barth?s argument that we can speak of sin only in the light of grace, so that an independent ?doctrine of sin? becomes illegitimate. Of course, Barth himself developed a massive doctrinal account of sin; but his methodology has made subsequent generations of theologians reticent about this theme. Indeed, in a 1993 article, David Kelsey wondered: ?Whatever happened to the doctrine of sin??It seems, however, that this situation is now changing. In recent years, Eberhard Jüngel has offered an intensive existential analysis of sin in his work on Justification (1999); Marilyn McCord Adams has offered a brilliant philosophical account of Horrendous Evils (1999); James K. A. Smith has argued for the hermeneutical significance of sin in...
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Jesus Christ, electing God
2007-05-20 00:23:00
There is a beautiful passage in Karl Barth?s volume on election: ?Jesu s Christ us ist der erwählende Gott. Wir haben nach keinem anderen als nach ihm zu fragen. Wir werden in keiner Tiefe der Gottheit einem anderen als ihm begegnen. Es gibt keine Gottheit an sich. Sie ist die Gottheit des Vaters, des Sohnes und des Heiligen Geistes. Der Vater ist aber der Vater Jesu Christi und der Heilige Geist ist der Geist dieses Vaters und der Geist Jesu Christi.? (KD II/2, pp. 123-24; CD II/2, p. 115)Instead of a prose translation, I thought I?d turn it into a short poem:Jesus Christ , electing God!None but him,None else to ask about,No depth in God where we could ever Meet another.No Godness to be found, except in him:Father of this Son, Spirit of this Son and of his Father;Father, Spirit, Son ?The depths of God are in his face, The face of Jesus Christ.

Schleiermacher, textbooks and oral tradition
2007-05-18 22:32:00
In his charming little book On the Glaubenslehre: Two Letters to Dr Lücke (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1981), Schleiermacher makes a humorous observation about textbooks (p. 75): ?Not only must we always take care that there is enough room to shelve these printed pages, but in my opinion it is important that our students have books that they can carry around comfortably?. Moreover, in our universities there is a great deal of oral tradition about both the teachers and the texts, and it seems to have quite an influence on our beginning students.?I love this tongue-in-cheek reference to ?oral tradition.? And he?s right, too: when you talk with first-year students in a theological faculty or seminary, it?s often very striking to see that they have already formed crystal-clear opinions about which books and authors are important or unimportant, which teachers should be taken seriously, which ideas are childish and naïve, and so on. It would be interesting to know something about the sociol...
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On textbooks: Hendrikus Berkhof
2007-05-18 01:07:00
I reckon one of the best texts for theological students is Hendrikus Berk hof?s profound and exciting work, Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith (Eerdmans, 1979). Although this book is dated in several important respects, in other respects it?s still far more ?up to date? than many recently published works. Berkhof is a real theologian who really knows what theology is all about: he grapples intensely with the history of theology, with the best biblical scholarship, with the surprises and possibilities of other Christian traditions, and with the specific demands of contemporary faith and proclamation.In the opening pages of Christian Faith, Berkhof rightly notes that systematic theology is ?not something to learn so much as something to do and practice? (p. xii), so that the task of a textbook is simply to induct students into this practice. Or, as he puts it in a later essay: ?Theology is not so much a set of convictions, but a way of discoveries.?
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In search of a good theology textbook
2007-05-17 00:21:00
Yesterday we were discussing Wayne Grudem?s widely used theology textbook. In a comment, I suggested that ?a good theological textbook should model actual theological thinking, instead of merely providing students with the illusion of ready-made answers. After all, many theological students will go on to become pastors: and in pastoral ministry, what?s needed is not ready-made answers, but the ability to think theologically in new and unpredictable situations.? That?s why, in my view, some of the most popular books (e.g. Wayne Grudem, Louis Berkhof, Millard Erickson) are fundamentally unsuitable as classroom texts ? even though they might be interesting and informative in many ways. Anyway, several people yesterday raised the question of which books would be best-suited as theological texts. What do you think? I?d welcome any comments regarding the texts that you prefer or that you?ve found most useful ? or whether you think classroom texts are useful at all.
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Bob Dylan and the pope
2007-05-17 00:18:00
A while back, I mentioned Benedict X VI?s dislike for the music of Bob Dylan . Now Sean Curnyn (who has a blog with the unlikely title Right-Wing Bob) has written a nice piece about ?The Pope and the Pop Star? in First Things: ?In a world of popular music that often seems dominated by nihilism and its close relations, Dylan?s work can be seen as sneakily inserting important question marks and surprising diversions toward biblical truths.?

Some discouraging statistics
2007-05-16 01:06:00
?The impact of this book [Wayne Grudem?s Systematic Theology] on evangelicals should not be underestimated. Over 135,000 copies have been sold, and the abridged version, Bible Doctrine, ? has sold over 35,000 copies. The former is now the most widely used systematic theology text in evangelical seminaries and Bible colleges in North America and most other English-speaking countries.??Kevin Giles, Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), p. 20.
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Podcast: John Webster on mercy
2007-05-15 01:17:00
John Webster recently gave a lecture on ?mercy? at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. Jordan Barrett made a recording, and (with Webster?s permission) he has now made it available as a podcast. The sound-quality isn?t perfect, but the lecture is well worth listening to.
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Mozart and the invitation to freedom
2007-05-15 01:13:00
In a delightful essay in the latest issue of New Blackfriars, Thomas Casey explores the depiction of human freedom in Moza rt ?s opera Don Giovanni: ?Mozart?s Don Giovanni and the Invitation to Full Freedom ,? ?New Blackfriars 88:1015 (2007), 288-299. Here?s an excerpt:?The truth that ushers in our freedom is the realization that there is more to each of us than we suspect: as persons, we exist beyond ourselves. We can never be circumscribed within the immanent horizons of culture and society. We are not commodities or things. However limiting the culture we inhabit, it can never definitively stifle the infinite desires that surge and rise within us. We are excessive creatures, elastically exceeding the web of finite contexts. This is because we are founded upon a freedom that is full and expansive and perfect. We find our origin ? and goal ? in God.?
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The God Delusion: podcast
2007-05-14 09:28:00
The main talks from our Brisbane seminar on Richard Dawkins? God Delusion are now available as podcasts.
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Theology databases: Alexander Street Press
2007-05-14 09:16:00
My university library has just purchased subscriptions to two theology databases, both published by Alexander Street Press :The Digital Library of Classic Protestant TextsThe Digital Karl Barth LibraryThese are research databases of the highest quality. The organisation is elegant and intuitive, and the search capacities are highly sophisticated. For instance, you can find every time Barth?s correspondence mentions ?Bultmann? and ?myth? in a single sentence, or you can search Barth?s exegetical writings for the words that occur most frequently in close proximity to the word ??????; or (in the Protestant Texts database) you can search for every time Calvin cites Romans 11:33 in his sermons, or every time he refers to Luther in his early letters; and so on. This is the first time an Australian library has purchased these databases, and I?m sure they?ll prove to be indispensable resources for future research. If you want ask your own library for a subscription or free trial, you can get...
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Prayer in a time of war
2007-05-13 04:24:00
A guest-post by George HunsingerO Lord our God, heavenly Father, King of the universe, grant us wisdom and courage in this time of endless war, especially the unjust war we have promulgated in Iraq. Grant us the wisdom to seek the things that make for peace. Where there is misery, let us seek compassion; where there is hatred, let us seek healing; where there is falsehood in the public square, let us seek to recover the truth. Let us not be blinded by narrow national self-interest, by unnamed greed, by callous disregard for the suffering of others. Why are we so stricken by slaughters at home, like Virginia Tech, O Lord, and so unmoved by massacres abroad? Grant us the courage that we so desperately need: courage to face the wrong where we have done the wrong; courage to repent where we have departed from your Law, descending into the moral corruption of torture, of secret prisons, of indifference toward traumatized children, of pious invocations of your Name. Let not crime be comp...
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Miroslav Volf: The End of Memory
2007-05-12 06:15:00
Miroslav Volf, The End of Memo ry : Remembering Rightly in a Violent World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 244 pp. (review copy courtesy of Eerdmans)It?s a piece of conventional wisdom that we should never forget the wrongs of the past. In this delightful new work of theological psychology, Miroslav Volf offers a patient and probing critique of such conventional wisdom. On the one hand, he argues that we should remember past wrongs not only for the sake of the victims, but also for the sake of the perpetrators; and on the other hand, he argues that the proper goal of such remembering is in fact non-remembrance.Volf weaves his theological and psychological analysis around an unsettling set of memories from his own past. In the communist Yugoslavia of the early 1980s, Volf?s theological studies were interrupted by a summons to compulsory military service. As a Christian married to an American, an advocate of non-violence, and an expert on Marxist socialism, Volf was perceived to be an o...
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Thinking bloggers
2007-05-11 00:44:00
Various people have kindly nominated Faith & Theology in the ?thinking blog? meme (e.g. here, here, here, here, here, here and here). So I thought I should return the courtesy ? here are five blogs that make me think:Per CaritatemThis is the only philosophy of religion blog that I visit. Cynthia is extremely engaging, and her blog has a delightful ?flavour? that I really appreciate. At her blog, you can learn all sorts of exciting new things about Balthasar, Jean-Luc Marion, Augustine, jazz, and more.Missions and TheologyJoey is a Filipino missionary working near the border between Thailand and the Philippines. He?s a bright and well-read guy whose theological and missiological reflection is deeply shaped by his own challenging ministry context.The Fire and the RoseDavid is a promising Princeton student who is passionate about his theology. He?s got stacks of good ideas, and his posts are always filled with verve and vigour.EuangelionTogether with Chrisendom, this is one of my two f...
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Karl Barth's birthday
2007-05-10 23:31:00
Jim celebrates Karl Bart h ?s birthday (10 May) with a nice post. He notes that Barth is now ?in heaven, listening to Mozart and being rightly corrected by Zwingli.? What more could anyone want?
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Twelve indispensable books on creation
2007-05-10 01:03:00
Here?s a list of 12 indispensable books on the doctrine of creation. It?s not really a balanced list ? e.g. there?s nothing here on the New Testament, and I?ve restricted the list to modern works. But in any case, these are some of the books that I?ve found most impressive and most useful. Here they are, in chronological order:Hermann Gunkel, Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton (1895; translated 2006)Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/1 (1958)Jon Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (1988)Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural (1967)Claus Westermann, Creation (1971)T. F. Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order (1981)Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation (1985)Bernhard Anderson, Creation Versus Chaos: The Reinterpretation of Mythical Symbolism in the Bible (1987)Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology (1988)Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2 (1994)Alister McGrath, A Scientific Theology,...
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Free for God
2007-05-10 00:57:00
?Not for anything in the world would I be free from God; I wish to be free in God and for God?. God must again be the centre of our whole life.??Nicolai Berdyaev, The End of Our Time (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1933), p. 105.
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Conference: the offence of beauty
2007-05-10 00:54:00
Jason alerts us to a conference at St Andrews on the offence of beauty: ?what can a theological perspective on beauty offer to the arts today?? Speakers include Robert Jenson, Jeremy Begbie and Nicholas Wolterstorff.
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Christianity and capitalism
2007-05-09 09:19:00
Over at Journeying with Those in Exile, Dan has been posting a long and challenging series on Chris tianity and capitalism. He advocates radically ?nonsensical? forms of sharing, and in the latest post he highlights the economic significance of the eucharist: ?We will have sufficient for all, even the least, as long as we break bread together. What we need to remember is that every time we partake of the Eucharist, we are breaking bread with the global body of Christ, with Christians in the two-thirds world. Thus, after such bread breaking, how can we not also share all things with them??
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The world's luckiest kindergarten
2007-05-09 09:13:00
Apparently Bob Dylan has been performing songs at his grandson?s kindergarten: ?The kids have been coming home and telling their parents about the weird man who keeps coming to class to sing scary songs on his guitar.?
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Michael Bird: The Saving Righteousness of God
2007-05-08 00:41:00
My good friend Mike Bird has released his second book: The Saving Right eousness of God: Studies on Paul, Justification and the New Perspective (Paternoster, 2007), 230 pp. James Dunn describes Mike?s work as ?a calm, judicious and irenic voice amid the welter of paranoid accusation and counteraccusation? of the New Perspective controversy. Robert Gundry says that ?for fair treatment and thoroughness of coverage, ? this book is probably unmatched.? I. Howard Marshall describes this as a ?fresh and sane approach to a difficult area,? which ?will clarify the essential issues for students and preachers alike as they wrestle with expounding the thought of Paul for the contemporary church.? Mike?s aim is to offer an evangelical integration of the traditional Reformed doctrine of justification with the framework of the New Perspective on Paul. He argues that the covenantal and forensic dimensions of justification should be viewed as two sides of the same coin, not as opposing interpretatio...
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ETS president converts to Rome
2007-05-08 00:17:00
Aaron notes that, in a fascinating turn of events, the current president of the conservative Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) has converted to the Roman Catholic Church. Francis Beckwith had planned to keep his conversion under wraps until the end of his term as ETS president. But unfortunately a talkative blogger broke the news. So now, in an attempt to minimise controversy, Beckwith has decided both to resign as president and to withdraw his membership from the ETS. (Ironically, however, he observes that ?I can in good conscience, as a Catholic, affirm the ETS doctrinal statement.?)On his blog, Beckwith discusses his conversion to Rome , as well as his resignation from the ETS. It?s depressing to see the rancour of some of the Protestant responses. Even a professional theologian (who ought to know better) adds a comment describing Beckwith?s conversion as ?a sad day for all true sons and daughters of the Protestant Reformation, for all who lived and died for its truths? ? as t...
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Three things I do (and do not) believe
2007-05-07 01:39:00
Today?s a public holiday here, so I?ll be spending a leisurely day in Maleny, one of my favourite Aussie towns. In the meantime, here?s a brief re-posting (originally posted last year):Three things I believe1. I believe that Jesus Christ is God?s self-giving Word.2. I believe that this Word is a wholly good Word for all people.3. I believe that this good Word is the meaning of life.Three things I do not believe1. I do not believe that the meaning of the word ?God? is obvious or self-evident.2. I do not believe that God is either self-evidently ?transcendent? or self-evidently ?immanent.?3. I do not believe that God?s will and work can be directly identified with anything in our religion, culture or experience.
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The practice of creation
2007-05-05 10:11:00
?It is widely held that creation became a crucial claim of Israel?s faith in exile, when Gen. 1:1-2:4a is commonly dated. This setting for creation faith suggests that affirmations of creation as an ordered, reliable arena of generosity is a treasured counter to the disordered experience of chaos in exile. If this critical judgment is accepted, creation then is an ?enactment,? done in worship, in order to resist the negation of the world in exile. As a consequence, creation is not to be understood as a theory or as an intellectual, speculative notion, but as a concrete life-or-death discipline and practice, whereby the peculiar claims of Yahweh were mediated in and to Israel.??Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), p. 533.
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JesusPets
2007-05-05 10:00:00
?If Jesu s returns tonight, who will feed your pets tomorrow?? I?ve always wondered about that. So I was relieved to hear about JesusPets, an organisation which is ?assembling a community of heathen pet-lovers to care for pets that are left behind? at the rapture. Now we can really fly away with an easy mind!Meanwhile, though, let?s just hope and pray that these heathen pet-lovers don?t get born again ? otherwise, little Poochie could be in serious trouble when the glorious day arrives....

The worst theological invention: results
2007-05-04 00:54:00
Well, after 579 votes, it?s time to announce the winner of ?the worst theological invention? poll. It was a very close contest. It was looking as though biblical inerrancy would be a clear winner ? but at the last moment, Christendom inched ahead to a first-place tie. So our joint winners are biblical inerrancy and Christendom, each with 18% of the votes. These winners are closely followed by the rapture and papal infallibility (17% each), and then Arianism (14%), double predestination (11%), and just war theory (5%). (In our egalitarian sub-poll, penal substitution was a clear winner, with 24% of 223 votes, followed by God as a male, with 21%.) So congratulations to our deserving winners: biblical inerrancy and the empire of Christendom!It was interesting to observe the geographical distribution of the votes. While biblical inerrancy and the rapture were more popular among North American voters, the Christendom vote was dominant in Europe and Asia (and, to a lesser extent, in the U...
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The God Delusion?
2007-05-02 22:23:00
Tomorrow night, I?ll be participating in a public seminar on Richard Dawkins? controversial book, The G o d Delusion. It should be an interesting and lively discussion ? if you?re in the Brisbane area, you?re welcome to come along and join us. And on Sunday night (unless, by then, Dawkins has persuaded me to become an atheist) I?ll be preaching on ?creation? at St Mark?s Anglican Church.
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Ten propositions on being a minister
2007-05-02 00:26:00
by Kim FabriciusA few years ago, as part of a working group in the Welsh Synod of the United Reformed Church, I wrote a report to launch a programme for local churches to explore the question, ?What are ministers for?? It was entitled Great Expectations. I began by deconstructing the question, suggesting that its pragmatism (as I would now put it) is theologically vulgar, and that, in any case, it begs a couple of questions: namely, that before we can say what ministers are for, we need to know what the church is for; and before we can say what the church is for, we need to know what God is up to. And as what God is up to is nothing less than cosmic reconciliation and renewal, and as the church is called to bear witness to God?s great work-in-progress, insofar as ministers are ?for? anything, it has to do with helping to align the church with the missio Dei.Having thrown a spanner into the works, I then got down to some nuts and bolts. Here is an adapted summary.1. Minister s should ...
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