Videos and Audios from the Douglas Campbell Conference

First, a huge thanks to the guys from Grace Communion International for filming and recording the whole conference.*

Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul: A conference critically engaging Douglas Campbell's book, The deliverance of God. Held at King's College London on December 16-17, 2011

It was a unique and memorable experience, and an honour to help organise and contribute to (ooo, ending a sentence with a preposition, naughty me). I spoke to introduce the conference, talk about Campbell, Athanasius and Paul, and finally faith language in Galatians. I was very grateful for and inspired by the brilliant and searching contributions of all participants, many thanks, it was everything I hoped it would be. Of course, special kudos to Douglas Campbell, for his book and his riveting papers. A (smaller than Deliverance of God!) book will be published by Wipf&Stock next year, largely coming out of this, and I will give more info about that later. And finally, my sincere thanks to Kings College London, and especially Eddie Adams and Richard Burridge, who made this possible. So, if you fancy watching videos or downloading the audio of all sessions, click …

here (http://www.gci.org/media/paulconf2011)

* Please do check out GCI’s incredible online video library, by the way; they have some seriously helpful entries.

:)

A test to check my iPad access to my blog. Mostly.

This post does what it says on the tin, and very little else. Oh, okay, I'll add this picture




Rather excited about this beauty. Max deserves nothing less. Well done to the editors for gathering this together.

Hurtado, Christology and chronology

There is some good discussion on Larry Hurtado's blog here. I agree with LH that early Christology was not only divine, but pretty universally accepted as such across the board of early Christianity. I have my differences of opinion, but that is for another post!

Hunn on Pistis Christou

Just seen a summary of a new article on pistis Christou in the TynBul, by Debbie Hunn (thanks, Nijay):

"The coherence of Paul’s argument in Galatians 2:15–3:14 depends upon strong links among the phrases. Therefore the reader who understands a single use of in the passage can correctly infer basic aspects of the others. Therefore ek pistews in Habakkuk 2:4, because it is cited in Galatians 3:11, informs the discussion about pistis Christou in Galatians 2:16, 20; and an Old Testament prophet speaks in a present-day controversy. Habakkuk, by using ek pistews to refer to the faith of Gentiles, testifies that pistis Christou in Galatians refers to human faith as well"

All sounds good to me, right up to the crucial last sentence! But I won’t judge an article by its summary. Can anyone send me a scan?!

Marking a pile of biblical studies essays

At the beginning it feels like this:

You might read something that makes you do this:

By the 15th script you start daydreaming about things like this:

And this:

And when it is all over, you do this:

This one makes me laugh every single time I watch it!

Tübingen

Sitting on a balcony at the mo overlooking the Swabian Alps, having enjoyed delicious Schnitzel last night, and too much gorgeous German cake this afternoon. I sure needed this break, especially as the last few weeks have been pretty busy. I miss Tübingen! But I do get to do what I love in London, so you won't hear much complaining from me!

On Good Friday I co-lead the HTB meditations with two of my St Mellitus colleagues. I spoke on Romans 5:1-11 and Matthew 27:27-50.

On the basis of the Irenaean principle ("No one can know God unless God himself is the teacher"), we see that in the Romans 5 texts:

God makes himself known in Christ and by the Spirit as one utterly and unconditionally committed to us in love. And because this is so we can have confidence, through trials, that God is entirely for us.

The "existential" point of my sermon on Matthew 27, was that the cry of dereliction sanctifies the parts of our human existence that seem absent of the presence and blessing of God, it hallows and respects our hardest and most painful questions, doubts and struggles. As we are called up into Christ and his death, our laments are not superseded, or judged unholy, they are rather sanctified and included as part of an authentic spiritual life. As much as our praise, our ‘Why God?’ questions are holy.

The awkward moment when you realise

…that signed copies of books by the likes of Tom Wright, or John Webster, or Bruce McCormack, or John Barclay, etc. will probably sell for more.
But if I signed my book, the value would be reduced for being defaced! (“Slightly used”, “Some markings”)

Publishing my PhD

My work on Paul will be published soon: Paul’s Divine Christology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012). Can’t wait to hold it in my hand. Not sure how others felt about their first book, but proofreading the whole thing the last few days led to some mixed feelings. I still completely stand behind my argument, and for some of it I thought “Yea, I darn like this stuff! Downright interesting, actually!” But for other parts, I did question: “Oops, can I really say it like that?”, “Yikes, what will the critics say about this section?!” etc. I am sure we are all our own worst critics (especially when one, like me, has a slightly unhealthy perfectionist streak). I stand in awe of those who seem to pump out enduring gold from word go, e.g. Richard Hays (The Faith of Jesus Christ), Bruce McCromack (Karl Barth's Critically. Realistic Dialectical Theology) etc.

Something my dad sent through

Apparently, this is a real reply from the UK Inland Revenue. The Guardian newspaper had to ask for special permission to print it.  The funniest part of this is imagining the content of the letter sent to the Tax Office which prompted this reply!

Dear Mr Addison,

I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more than prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise.   I will address them, as ever, in order.

Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last as a "begging letter".    It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a "tax demand".    This is how we at the Inland Revenue have always,  for reasons of accuracy,  traditionally referred to such documents.

Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the "endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat" has been noted.    However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer I would cautiously suggest that their being from "pauper councils, Lombardy pirate banking houses and pissant gas-mongerers"  might indicate that your decision to  "file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies"  is at best a little ill-advised.    In common with my own organisation,  it is unlikely that the senders of these letters do see you as a "lackwit bumpkin" or, come to that, a "sodding charity".    More likely they see you as a citizen of Great Britain , with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of the nation as a whole.

Which brings me to my next point.   Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you pay  "go to shore up the canker-blighted, toppling folly that is the Public Services",  a moment's rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you to "stump up for the whole damned party"  yourself.    The estimates you provide for the Chancellor's disbursement of the funds levied by taxation,  whilst colourful,  are,  in fairness,  a little off the mark.     Less than you seem to imagine is spent on "junkets for Bunterish lickspittles"  and  "dancing whores"  whilst far more than you have accounted for is allocated to,  for example,  "that box-ticking facade of a university system."

A couple of technical points arising from direct queries:

1. The reason we don't simply write  "Muggins" on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system;

2. You can rest assured that  "sucking the very marrow of those with nothing else to give"  has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance didn't render it irrelevant,  the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially unviable.

I trust this has helped.   In the meantime,  whilst I would not in any way wish to influence your decision one way or the other,  I ought to point out that even if you did choose to  "give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India "  you would still owe us the money.

Please send it to us by Friday.

Yours sincerely,

H J Lee

Customer Relations

Inland Revenue

"Finish him"!

Christmas with the Dymythologisers!

My colleague, Michael Lloyd, just emailed me this Bultmann poem penned by Eric Mascall OGS (1905 – 1993), sent out as his Christmas round robin in the 1950s. I thought my blog readers would appreciate this one!

 

Christmas with the Dymythologisers

 

                    1

Hark, the herald angels sing:

'Bultmann is the latest thing!'

(Or they would if he had not

Demythologized the lot.)

Joyful, all ye nations rise,

Glad to existentialize!

Peace on earth and mercy mild,

God and Science reconciled.

 

Lo, the ancient myths disperse.

Hence, three-storied universe!

Let three-decker pulpits stay:

Bultmann has a lot to say,

Since Kerygma still survives

When the myths have lost their lives.

Hark, the herald angels sing:

'Bultmann shot us on the wing!'

 

Dr Farrer we detect

Somewhat lacking in respect,

Launching, with his puckish arts,

Tiny well-directed darts;

While Herr Luther's lumpish sons

Overload their massive guns,

Blowing, when the barrel splits,

Bultmann - and themselves - to bits.

 

Let us with a gladsome mind

Leave the ancient world behind.

Modern man, rejoice with us!

We have read Copernicus.

While the herald angels sing:

'Bultmann ist ein gutes Ding!'

We respond in simple trust:

'Demythologize or bust!'

 

 

                 2

(Air - Good King Wenceslas)

Dr. Bultmann ventured forth

Boldly from his study,

When the wind was in the north,

and the roads were muddy.

All his thoughts were in a maze;

This was not surprising.

He had spent some weary days

Demythologizing.

 

'Hither, pupil, strain thy sight

If thou canst, descrying

Yonder folk who shove and fight -

What can they be buying?'

'Sir, 'tis cards with scraps of verse,

Pictured with a fable:

Shepherds and astrologers

Kneeling in a stable.'

 

'Bring my writings, if you please,

in the last editions.

Du und ich we'll stifle these

Outworn superstitions.'

Sage and pupil forth they go,

Braving every stigma,

Shedding myths like billy-o,

Clinging to kerygma.

 

'Sir, my thoughts begin to stray

And my faith grows bleaker.

Since I threw my myths away

My kerygma's weaker.'

'Think on Heidegger, my lad,

That pellucid Teuton;

Then you won't feel half so bad

When they talk of Newton.'

 

Existentially he thought,

as his master hinted.

All the learned works he bought

Which the sage had printed.

Therefore, folk, when science sends

Doubts and fears depressing,

Demythologize your friends -

Then you'll win their blessing.

 

(Many ancient authorities read flakes of snow instead of billy-o.)

More on McGrath’s critiques of Barth

Some more reflections on Alister McGrath claims about Karl Barth, in "Karl Barth's doctrine of Justification for an Evangelical Perspective", in Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology, ed. Sung Wook Chung (Paternoster; Baker Academic, 2006), pp. 172-190

(1)

"Soteriology is necessarily secondary to the fact of revelation" (McGrath)

Is it? Or is it rather that soteriology is bound up together with revelation, for Barth. In other words, Barth challenges the distinction that McGrath seems to press.

(2)

The following comment really jarred me:

"For Barth, the death of Christ does not in any sense change the soteriological situation, in that this has been determined from all eternity" (McGrath)

I suspect this may underestimate the way time itself is reconfigured by Barth around Christ. It is not straightforward, working from eternity to Christ at some point. Rather, Christ’s time is the fulness of time, the time of God.

(3)

McGrath reasons: because "all people will be saved eventually" (the necessary logic, he claims, of Barth’s theology), it follows that "[h]umans are saved, but do not realise it". Therefore Barth has an inordinate stress on epistemological matters rather than soteriological. It follows that "Barth operates within much the same theological framework as … Schleiermacher and the liberal school at this point"

But I don’t think this follows the logic of Barth’s presentation (Barth, of course, famously resists Universalism, too, however problematic this may be. I refer to Tom Greggs on this!). I don’t think it is “universalism therefore the stress must be all about epistemology”, for Barth. Rather, his thinking is shaped by and begins with the Word of God.

I must say, I do not have half the theological mind of the incredibly learned McGrath, and perhaps I read Barth with too generous a hermeneutic. But McGrath’s comments seem questionable to me. Or am I missing the point?

I shall have to ask him myself as he is one of our illustrious visiting professors, after all!

Who gets it wrong? Barth or McGrath? Aide moi!

I don't claim to be a scholar of Barth, so any help from experts would be appreciated. I have just read an article by Alister McGrath on Karl Barth's doctrine of justification in which he argues:

“Whereas for Luther, the gospel was primarily concerned with the promise of the forgiveness of sins to sinful humanity, for Barth it is primarily concerned with the possibility of the right knowledge of God” (McGrath).

My problem with this criticism is that it underestimates the topics of sin and forgiveness inherent in Barth's understanding of the knowledge of God. Of course, key to this discussion will be CD II/1, and especially § 25. There, Barth explicates the knowledge of God in terms of faith and obedience, love and the fear of the Lord. Reading this, it seems highly dubious to me to isolate the knowledge of God, in Barth, from forgiveness and sinfulness. Epistemology, in Barth, is not simply cognitive, but embraces the whole of life. So Barth’s paragraph heading for this section runs:

“The knowledge of God occurs in the fulfilment of the revelation of His Word by the Holy Spirit, and therefore in the reality and with the necessity of faith and its obedience. Its content is the existence of Him whom we must fear above all things because we may love Him above all things”

More demythologising please!

Here’s a proposition for you to ponder: Demythologising is an activity of godly wisdom. Further, I think it is one which most Christians do without even realising it. Really? Well, think about the Apostle’s Creed, and the “ascent” and “descent” language. So, "He descended into hell". What kind of cosmology does this reflect, do you think? I'd be interested to know if anyone thinks they don't demythologise this.

Justification: Five Views

My thanks to friends at IVP for a review copy.

I started Justification: Five Views yesterday, and I enjoyed the essay "Justification in Historical Perspective" by Paul Rhodes Eddy, James K. Beilby and Stephen E. Enderlein. This chapter is an ambitious attempt to cover a lot of ground, so I wouldn't ever want to be too fussy about what they don't cover. They cram a lot in approximately 50 pages already. Their overview of Pentecostal contributions to the debate was particularly interesting and it is always good to see engagement with my two heroes, Bultmann and Barth.

Having said that, they hedged their bets a bit too much on their reflections on Barth! In a footnote they write:

"Even so, perhaps it says something about the current state of Barth studies that this is the only section of this historical survey about which the authors are nervous to say anything for fear of being shown not just wrong, but pitifully wrong. Then again, we find a small bit of comfort in the fact that no matter what we say here, most likely someone in the Barthian world will come to our defence!" (37 n.96)

I think they hit upon the crucial point at this juncture, however, when they note that, for Barth, Jesus Christ accomplishes the reality of reconciliation with God, and not merely its possibility. Yes! And amen!

As it seems that most have not understood Douglas Campbell's thesis, I was not surprised to find misunderstanding in this overview. They write: "Douglas Campbell, for example, agrees wholeheartedly with the new perspective that the old perspective—which he refers to as the ‘Justification theory’—is ‘a paradigms with multiple flaws’" (63). However, Campbell categorically does not equate the old perspective with “Justification theory”. In fact, as DC puts it in his conclusion: “the solution that I am aiming toward is deeply Protestant if not Lutheran” (The Deliverance of God 934)!

With contributions from Michael S. Horton, Michael F. Bird, James D. G. Dunn, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Gerald O'Collins and Oliver Rafferty, this promises to be an extremely helpful book on a very complicated set of debates.

Quick book review / notice

Okay, I have read enough of the new Edition Olms book, Fighting Chess with Magnus Carlsen, to realise that we are dealing with something really special here. Well done Adrian Mikhalchishin and Oleg Stetskio for producing a real gem! Just the right mixture of background information, analytical variations, and exclamatory prose within a game to make this a real delight, and not just for real chess experts, but also for the likes of me. And all of this on the best active chess player in the world.

Chess fans: buy this book

Here is one of my favourite early Carlsen games against the experienced Russian Grandmaster, Sergey Dolmatov. As White, Carlsen was only 13 years old and won in beautiful style (Mikhalchishin and Stetskio try to show that allowing Bc4 in the opening was the wrinkle which gave Carlsen the edge. But what a way to capitalise!).

 

Carlsen-Dolmatov, 2004

How to engage in debate with “capital C” Conservatives

T Michael Law and Chris Hays have responded to Kevin DeYoung's (unhelpful) blogpost: "10 reasons to believe in an historical" Adam. I don't think that there is a real debate here (on this issue, if T&C are Manchester United FC, DeYoung is Sutton Coldfield’s under 11s FC), so what I wanted to draw attention to, apart from the numerous terrific points T&C make, was their courteous and patient manner. It is so easy, when reading the kind of things DeYoung claims to either ignore it, or mock it. But apart from the fact that such a response does not demonstrate love for an intelligent Christian brother, it doesn't help anybody! T&C are modelling precisely the kind of scholarship that could be of real benefit to many evangelicals who are struggling with guilty consciences, watching the conservative worldview seem to crumble around them, propped up only by certain Bible verses pressed through a modernist/historicist mill. They avoided commenting on irritating language (e.g., DeYoung’s writes of those who question the historicity of Adam and Eve as “self-proclaimed evangelicals”!), and kept things as factual as possible. I think that there is a challenge here for many of us. It is not that we should make time to respond to every neo-fundamentalist unhealthy "defence of the faith", but T&C are pointing us in the right direction.

Go have a read of their post, and ponder these things!

The Knowledge of God on God’s terms

Barth reminds us that in ‘the doctrine of God we have to learn what we are saying when we say “God”’. Who is God? Do we speak rightly about this Subject? I am of the opinion that there is great confusion within evangelicalism concerning this very question. Given certain theological commitments regarding the atonement, and the rampant naive biblicism I see in so many quarters (something I consider to be Evangelicalism's greatest weakness), I suspect that behind many evangelical confessions that "God loves us" is more than a sneaking suspicion that God is not entirely for us, that there is a part of God which would sooner destroy us than embrace us.

Karl Barth, in CD II/1, § 25, kicks off his discussion of the knowledge of God by maintaining that this knowledge begins with God, a fact which involves a number of negative correlates. First, we cannot therefore ask whether knowledge of God is real "from some position outside itself", which would effectively create a position and standpoint to adjudicate on the matter outside of the actuality (an important word for Barth) of God's revelation of His Word by the Holy Spirit. As he argues:

‘[T]he possibility of the knowledge of God and therefore the knowability of God cannot be questioned in vacuo, or by means of a general criterion of knowledge delimiting the knowledge of God from without, but only from within this real knowledge itself’

Second, to begin analysis of what we mean when we say "God" outside of the revelation of God, will ultimately lead, through doubt and anxiety, to idolatry and even atheism.

What is required is the constraint of the Word of God, which is our only basis for considering the doctrine of God. It is precisely this wonderful constraint which is often lacking in the devoted biblicism of much evangelicalism, such that sincere “Bible believing” Christians, attempting their best to work out the "original meaning" or "plain sense" of given scriptures, can end up saying almost anything they want to about God. In the next post (in the Barth CD II/1 category), I will cite an alarming example which demonstrates this point.