Guest Post: Review Committee responds to Seifrid's review of Campbell's Deliverance of God
Have you ever asked, 'Who reviews the reviewer?' "The committee" (not code for me!) has found it necessary to review this review, and I have uploaded it for you below.
(Prof. Mark Seifrid's review of Campbell's The Deliverance of God, can be found, on the Themelios webpage, here)
Response to Seifrid's review of Campbell's The Deliverance of God
Labels: Guest Post, Review of Deliverance of God
posted by Chris Tilling @ 3:38 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Good to see somebody putting Seifrid in his place. I find that review to be pretty comparable to the other things I have read by him. He fits into that group of conservative American scholars who do a remarkably good job of not engaging the people whom they choose to criticize. I am consistently amazed that folks from that group even get published.
Is this 'review of a review' for real? There's hope for the rest of us who submit reviews!
Ouch...
Who is the "committee??"
As I read it I assumed Seifrid wasn't a real person but perhaps a composite charicature of those who write bad reviews, then I followed the link . . . oops.
I don't suppose Dr. Seifrid will actually get to read this..? Pity.
I do have a question about the committee's remarks, though. I can't quite make sense of what is being said here about DC's take on Romans 2:1ff. Seifrid describes 1:18-32 as "nothing other than the position of a false teacher" which is then dismantled (presumably in 2:1ff). The committee responds that this is not a novel reading, because it's generally affirmed that "the speaker of 2:1-4 has uttered the words of 1:18-32." That doesn't seem to be what Seifrid is saying... so are we criticizing his claim that DC's reading is 'novel' or (again) his representation of DC's reading? To my ear, his description is more in keeping with Campbell's own here than the 'affirmed' view that the committee is referring to, unless I'm misunderstanding them.
Later on the committee describes Campbell's Paul as turning the contentions of the (hypocritical) speaker of 1:18-32 on his own head starting in 2:1. That is DC's position, but that doesn't seem to be the same as their earlier description that emphasized the same speaker between 1:18-2:4 (I am assuming this earlier description that is affirmed by "almost all the major commentators" is not unlike that of Hays in The Moral Vision of the New Testament, which happens to be the only particular reading I can call to mind--yet Hays and DC do not agree here. If something substantially different was being referred to, what commentators are we talking about?).
In short, are we saying that Campbell has one speaker in 1:18-2:4, or that he has a shift in 2:1 that repudiates the earlier claims? I understand the former to be the standard reading (a la Hays) and the latter to be DC's, which is what Siefrid was also saying. Unless I'm misreading something. But I'm getting mixed signals from these comments on his review.
Odd,
The committee suggests that Mr. Seifrid may be "patronising" in his remarks about praying for D. Campbell, before proceeding to do a fair bit of "patronising" itself in offering to pray for Seifrid (cf. The end letter; final remark).
Is this a returning of evil for evil? Or is it a more subtle form of hypocrisy (both of which come under criticism in Romans, the second of which is included in the committee's preamble for determining a right proper review)? Does someone need to write a review of the review of Seifrid's review?
It appears that the only person who truly avoids blame is Mr. Campbell!
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