One of Wright’s respondents argued for what he called a “skeptical theism” with regard to the problem of evil. The main points are: 1) We don’t have the cognitive equipment to figure out whether God intends to achieve goods that are morally sufficient to justify His permission of evil. When someone asks for a straightfoward theodicy, the skeptical theist will say that this demands the kinds of answers that human beings are inequipped to give. 2) Besides, we ourselves are... Read more
In a discussion of NT Wright’s new book on evil, the question of pre-fall carnivores came up. Both Wright and his respondent basically agreed that animals killed and ate other animals before the fall, and that this was not incompatible with Yahweh’s judgment that this was “very good.” But both also emphasized that this was part of the immaturity of the original creation. That’s as good a way as I’ve heard to make sense of the biblical data: Animals were... Read more
I don’t recall now if I noticed the connections between Isaac and Saul in 1 Samuel. Isaac abuses his divinely favored son Jacob; Saul abuses his son-in-law David. Isaac preferred Esau, the eldest, to the second son; Saul prefers Jonathan to David. One of the key discontinuities is Jonathan’s behavior. He is the anti-Esau, the older son who willingly cedes his place of priority to his younger “brother” David. Read more
One of the most annoying things about critical biblical scholarship is the way that every discussion has to contribute to questions of composition, authorship, historical setting, etc. Harrington gives a very intriguing paper on holiness in Ezra-Nehemiah, but the whole thing is part of a “larger” argument about the common authorship of the two books. Without a church to serve with edifying theological interpretation, scholars serve the pseudo-church of biblical scholarship. Read more
Hannah Harrington gave a very fine presentation on the holiness and purity terminology in Ezra and Nehemiah. She showed that these post-exilic texts display an expansion of holy space to encompass the whole city as well as an expansion of the duties of Levites, a closing of the gap between Levites and priests. These two changes are perfectly consistent, displaying a general trend of “up-grading” the holiness of Israel after the exile. The people of Israel become the new sanctum,... Read more
John Milbank claims that the Wellhausen documentary hypothesis is shaped by what he calls the “liberal Protestant metanarrative,” the view that Christianity moved from a religion of inner simplicity to a religion of complex external ritual (JEDP traces this story). In his SBL presentation, Nick Perrin of Wheaton showed how a form of this same metanarrative shapes New testament scholarship. The assumption of 19th and 20th century historical criticism is the “criterion of antiquity,” the notion that earlier texts are... Read more
Carl Mosser of Eastern College gave a superb presentation on deification at the ETS meeting. A large part of the presentation was a study of terminology. He noted that the Greek work THEOS (often thought to be equivalent to “God”) had a broader meaning, referring to powers that were immortal, incorruptible, and glorious – the very words that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15 to describe the resurrected body. For the early fathers, this is what is meant by “deification,”... Read more
A few further scattered comments from and on Latour. 1) He disputes the notion that the modern world is disenchanted, claiming that the claim of disenchantment is merely the reflex of the Constitution of modernity and its premise that We are completely different from Them. He also attributes the modern self-castigation for disenchantment and meaninglessness to a kind of perverse asceticism – “how we do love to wear the hair shirt of the absurd.” But the world has not and... Read more
Some reflections based on an ETS talk by Edward Meadors on Romans 9-11. Meadors suggested that “Esau” in Romans 9 refers to Esau as the patriarch of Edom, well-known for its opposition to Israel throughout the centuries. That is Malachi’s focus in the passage Paul cites. And this is set in a context where Paul is charging ethnic Israel with turning to idols and thus suffering the hardness of heart that attends idolatry (ie, worship stone, you become stony). He... Read more
Westminster OT professor Pete Enns has been a friend since he taught me German at seminary nearly twenty years ago, and as editor of the Westminster Journal he regularly published my work. I have raised questions to him in private in the past, and we have had our friendly disagreements. I offer the following public responses to his ETS in the same spirit of friendship. Pete gave a provocative talk to a crowded room on the “incarnational” model of Scripture,... Read more
Leithart
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