Richard Hays presented an SBL paper disputing with Frances Watson’s view that the gospel preached by Paul cannot be narrated. According to Hays, Watson’s main concern is that the story of the gospel will be immanentized and become a story of human self-salvation instead of a story of God’s salvation of helpless humanity. But, as Hays says, this criticism only stands if “story” by definition refers to an immanent series of events, and excludes God’s action from the beginning. An... Read more
God in Flesh, John 1:1-18 INTRODUCTION Many Christians puzzle over the incarnation, the fact that the Son of God took on human flesh. But most of the difficulties come from trying to think about the incarnation using categories from outside the Bible. We think about the incarnation as if the God who became incarnate were Aristotle’s “unmoved mover,” or Plato’s “form of the Good,” or the god of seventeenth-century Deists. We wonder how the “infinite” could be contained in the... Read more
One would not think Rosemary Reuther would have much in common with the John Birch Society. During an SBL seminar, though, she said “One of the first things we have to recognize is that we have been taken over.” I’m going to send the JBS her address, since she seems to be dealing in conspiracy theories. Read more
One would not think Rosemary Reuther would have much in common with the John Birch Society. During an SBL seminar, though, she said “One of the first things we have to recognize is that we have been taken over.” I’m going to send the JBS her address, since she seems to be dealing in conspiracy theories. Read more
In the course of saying some interesting and true things about Rome and Roman empire, Richard Horsely raised this revealing question: What is it, he wondered, that made so many diaspora Jews join the church so quickly? What was driving them? Why were they looking for something new? The way he raised the question made it clear that he was discounting 1) the expectation that nearly every Jew shared of a future redemption and 2) the work of the Spirit.... Read more
John Milbank claims that Reformed theology has allowed Pelagianism to come in under the guise of a covenant theology that includes the covenant of works (especially when the Mosaic covenant is treated as a covenant of works). The problem with Reformed theology, Milbank argues, is its insufficient emphasis on the depravity of man. Odd for Reformed folks to be exhorted to be serious about sin by an Anglican, but there you go. Read more
Brad Green of Union University gave a talk on Gunton’s Augustine, in which he got everything exactly right. He was respectful toward Gunton, but finally concluded that Gunton had not read Augustine correctly, that Augustine said all the things that Gunton denies he said and none of the things Gunton accuses him of saying. Read more
George Hunsinger used his lecture at the Bonhoeffer seminar to launch into the Iraqi war. It was truly dreadful. In the name of Bonhoefferian “truth-telling,” he said that 10,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed (an estimate that has been discredited); that 30,000 Iraqi soldiers died (which sounds preposterously high); that the Administration has a “five-year-plan” to invade and conquer seven other countries (a claim made in a recent book by Wesley Clark that has also been widely questioned and discredited);... Read more
Interacting with NT Wright’s book on resurrection, Dominic Crossan says that what’s important for him is not whether the claims of the resurrection are literal or metaphorical. Either way, the claims forced a clash with imperial Rome, and that’s what really matters. He wants to say that we should read the imperial claims about Augustus’s divine sonship and Christian claims about Jesus’ in the same way ?Eeither both are meant literally or both metaphorically. Yet, whichever we choose, we still... Read more
In another talk at the Augustine seminar, a Princeton grad student provocatively claims that Augustine never used the “visible-invisible church” distinction. Admittedly, Augustine has some elements of that distinction, and he was read by the Reformers as supporting the Protestant view. But Augustine never uses the terminology (so far as this student has found). The earliest use of something like the later Reformed distinction (invisible = elect, visible = external structured church) is found in Wyclif, where the distinction is... Read more
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