Adventures in Theology

Moved...

2007-08-16T11:34:00.000+01:00

I've moved all my stuff onto my other blog. I won't update this one any more.

Encouragement

2006-11-12T00:00:00.000Z

The other day, I realised that I'm over halfway through studying for my Old Testament paper here, and though I won't be examined on it until 2008, it's the only time I will study some large sections of the Old Testament during my course.

That was quite scary. In some respects, I've been learning a lot. Last week's very intensive study of and reading about Wisdom Literature, for example, really seemed to set me up for preaching it. I'd feel a lot less intimidated doing a 5-part series on Job, for example.

But on the other hand, I don't feel as if I've really been equipped to do much in terms of preaching Old Testament narrative, for example. I've spent quite a bit of time learning how to answer difficult questions and confronting some issues I'd put on the back burner for quite a while, but virtually no time on the nitty gritty of how to preach it. I've read some decent books preaching through OT narrative, and since saying this to some friends have had some good ones on how to preach the Old Testament recommended.

And then I went to church this morning. I'm still looking round churches in the morning, and I saw the one I usually go to in the evening had a sermon on 2 Kings 3 (well, i misread the termcard and thought it was 2 Kings 2, but same idea), so I went there. And this is where it gets encouraging.

I read the passage, and immediately a few things from my course popped into my head (if you must know, it was observing the probably ecstatic (bad word for it, but it's the normal one) nature of Elisha's experience in v15, and analysing the political relationship between the four kings involved in terms of the social-political situation in the area at the time. That's as well as various fairly obvious stuff in the passage

The sermon was pretty good, but it didn't really use anything I didn't know or any skills I didn't have (other than remembering to look for typology, which I sometimes forget to do). I thought "I could do this", which was very encouraging for me, coz I'm meant to be able to do that without much more training.

What was really encouraging for me was that some of the random stuff I'd noticed (the socio-political stuff, mostly) can be used to bolster the preacher's main point still further. So that's what I'm going to try and do in my next post...

Commentaries

2006-10-31T16:12:00.000Z

My number one piece of advice to people studying academic theology at doctrinally mixed or liberal universities is to read good evangelical commentaries on the relevant passages. I find here a good place for recommending evangelical commentaries on books, though I disagree with some of their selections.

A while ago, I was asked about the NIV Application Commentaries series. I've recently had occasion to skim quite a lot of commentaries, and I can make the following points:

They're probably more consistently solid as a series than Tyndale (or even BST). Some of that is down to the format. On the other hand, I don't think there's anything spectacularly amazing in the series - I think that's also down to the format.
They're not heavyweight in terms of textual stuff, translation issues, etc but they do mention them. A few of them are shortened versions of other stuff in print (e.g. Smith's very good commentary on Amos).
They're ok at applications (better than Tyndale / BST) - they probably make it a lot easier to preach a decent sermon on a passage, but not much easier to do an excellent one

God and Canaanite Religion

2006-10-31T16:11:00.000Z

Here's a thingy I wrote on my other blog about God and Canaanite religion, which kind of ties in with some of the reading I've been doing lately.

Approaches to Old Testament History

2006-10-22T12:39:00.000+01:00

I've been spending much of this term so far studying Old Testament history. And one of the interesting things has been the range of different approaches people take to it. Here's a quick guide from three weeks of studying it...

The Fundamentalist Approach

The first approach, which I'll label "fundamentalist" is to say that the historical sections of the Old Testament (Genesis - Esther or Job, + bits in the prophets) are intended, at least in part, to communicate history accurately and that they do so truthfully. There are loads of people who think like this out there in the world, but their main function in academia seems to be being used as a stereotype so other people can dismiss what the Bible says.

An example of this would be saying that Israel conquered the Promised Land by invading with a huge army, killing all the inhabitants fairly quickly, destroying all their cities and settling down and living there, and we'd expect archaeology to back that up. If that isn't what the archaeologists say, then they've obviously got it wrong.

There have been a few academics like this, but I don't know any current ones who teach Old Testament.

The Evangelical Approach

Another approach is to say that the Bible is true, but in a more nuanced sense. So the Old Testament narrative books do provide true descriptions of what actually happened, but that isn't necessarily their main agenda. They are very selective, often one-sided, often polemical.

Archaeology can then help us understand some details of what happened, how the writers were being selective, and hence help us to see the point they were making with the details they included. If there are discrepancies between archaeology and what the Bible says, they might be due to us getting bits of archaeology wrong, or they might be due to us getting our understanding of the Bible wrong, and we'd need to do work at both to see what actually happened.

This is pretty much my point of view, and there are some academics like this as well, but not that many...

The "Believing Academic" Approach

A more common approach among academics seems to be the idea that archaeology, etc is our primary source of knowledge about the events in the Old Testament. The Bible may have some factual errors, or may be changing details to make a point. Some books might be fictionalised retellings of what actually happened.

On the other hand, this approach can still be held by Christians, and often is within Old Testament studies. Some might say, for example, that the story in the book of Joshua is a story told by the Israelites about how they came to be in the Promised Land, though actually the reality was different - a few people who might well have left Egypt and one of whom might have been called Joshua, entered the land, bringing the religion of Yahwism and sparked some kind of revolt, which then led to at least a hundred years of fighting between small groups of revolters and the established order.

My reaction, though, is that this approach comes from being (epistemologically at least) an academic first and a Christian second - running Christianity as software within an academic operating system, so that the academia undergirds, permeates and changes the Christianity. That might be completely wrong and unfair, but it's how I read the situation.

The "Neutral Academic" Approach

Another common viewpoint seems to be that of the "neutral academic" (but no-one is really neutral). They'd tend to say that while the historical interpretations of the evangelical are possible, the more likely interpretation is that given by archaeology or by attempting to take the Bible texts apart in various different ways. In practice, their reconstructions of history are often pretty similar to the "believing academic" ones, except that "neutral" academics often completely discount the possibility of miracles, which isn't very neutral at all.

What they are "neutral" on, however, is the importance of the Biblical text. Sometimes they'll say it's useful, sometimes they won't or will say it reflects reality at the time of writing, which they'll put at 700 years after the event, usually because they've rejected miracles and predicting the future or something. Some might say that the Bible is roughly as useful for talking about history as the film Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

I can see where people with this sort of view are coming from - they are trying to investigate the history of ancient Israel the same way as they'd go about investigating any other history. The big problem is that Israel is pretty much unique in the world in having a written account which has been passed down as Scripture through a community (rather than through being buried in the ground or through libraries of people who thought it was an interesting but largely irrelevant document) for at least 2500 years (and bits of it 3500 years). And it's really difficult to know therefore how reliable it is as history. Well, they're happy that it's fairly reliable back to about 1000BC, but from there back to Abraham (sometime 2000-1500BC) is more difficult to gauge.

The main reason I think it's reliable before that is that Jesus is God, so he's in a position to know, and he treated it like it was pretty reliable. But if other people don't agree that Jesus was God, I don't see why they should treat it as reliable.

The "Liberal Academic" Approach

This approach seems to have as one of its prior assumptions that what the Bible seems to say is inaccurate in almost every possible respect. They then try constructing an alternative scenario which bears as little resemblence as possible to the Biblical one, but which tries to explain how the Bible came to say what it did. Sometimes they do this on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.

For example, the classic "liberal academic" approach to the question of what Abraham believed is that he must have been a polytheist (or a tribe of polytheists) who worshipped a whole load of gods (using all the different things God is called in Genesis as the names for these gods). They'd also say that "the God of Abraham", "the God of Isaac" and "the God of Jacob" are three different gods, and that the authors / editors of Genesis (over 1000 years later) messed about with it to combine all these different gods to make them look like one god, but somehow keeping all the different names.

In many cases, the conclusions of the liberal academic arguments have since been shown to be complete rubbish, or at least not to fit with any of the archaeological evidence either. To me that would indicate that their approach is flawed, but a lot of their arguments are still thought of as the "orthodox" approach in academia.

The Dangers of Labels

It is of course a very dangerous thing to label people - I've tried only to label points of view here, and that because I think it's worth distinguishing them. In reality, people are probably much more nuanced than I've presented them.

So What?

Whether someone takes the first or second (or indeed third) approach to history might not make much difference to the way that they preach a passage or on the significance of the passage for the hearers. (Yes, there are clearly some examples where it would make a big difference).

But I think in a way the biggest difference is over the confidence that we can have in the Bible. If people are going into studying theology (or reading quite a bi of theology stuff) believing the "fundamentalist" approach, and not aware of the "evangelical" approach (and there are plenty of people like that) then their reaction to some of the stuff they come across will either be to reject it outright (which is bad) or to lose confidence in the truth of the Bible (which is disasterous). I, for one, am very grateful that people explained to me stuff like non-linear storytelling before I arrived.

Working Hard

2006-10-03T22:54:00.000+01:00

Well, they certainly know how to get me working here!

Most of the time so far has been spent quite usefully - we had three days of getting to know each other and the college, then a week of being introduced to the course and the idea of training for ministry.

We've had a series of Bible readings on the Pastoral Epistles, talks on topics such as "Essay Writing", "Academic Theology and Personal Faith" and an excellent Bible Overview. I've been to voice training sessions (apparently mine is "frighteningly loud" when I want it to be) and fellowship groups and random pub trips.

This week so far has been more academic - the "real" undergrads are around now and I've done 5½ hours of (fairly intensive) Greek classes over the last two days. I've also got my first essay title (and am doing a silly amount of reading for it).

Oh, and my laptop power cable has ceased to function, so I'm having to get a new one. All good fun, and more reason to trust God.

My biggest concerns at the moment are that I would spend more time in prayer and that the relationships I'm building here would be genuinely supportive ones. In a meeting early on, I identified the fact that while I hoped relationships would be deep and supportive, I didn't expect them to be so.

One really good point - my studies are a really useful way in to talking to people about Jesus. Pray that I'd be sharing my faith lovingly, boldly and clearly.

First Impressions of Wycliffe Hall

2006-09-19T08:27:00.000+01:00

The people here seem nice - helped me unloading the car, offered cup of tea, etc. Good at making me feel welcome.

There's a load of Greek grammar stuck to the wall in the bathroom - :o) I might find myself getting used to this place!

Ballard & Pritchard - Practical Theology in Action

2006-08-30T10:50:00.000+01:00

The reading list said "an excellent guide to the fundamental task of theological reflection". Hmmmm...

The first thing that annoyed me about the book was the way that it read like all that social sciences stuff and educational psychology I read during my teacher training.

As a physicist, I like to understand things using models - simplified versions of reality that might or might not bear any resemblence to what is actually going on, but which produce much the same answers. I have a very arrogant and hideously unfair model of how social-sciencey types work. Here is it...

When people don't understand something properly, we (as a group) have a tendancy to come up with lots of theories. What this will actually consist of in practice is usually lots of individual people having their own flawed ideas and insisting strongly on them. Because the ideas work, at least in part (like all convincing lies), there are some things about them that are valid and true. The people who push those ideas are quite often, but not always, arrogant.

But there are other people too in the "interpretative community". Usually these are the ones who aren't quite arrogant enough to insist that their own way is the only truth, but also aren't imaginative enough to think of a better explanation and aren't discerning enough to realise that all the other ideas are partly true and partly false rather than just true in some nebulous post-modern sense. On the other hand, they are well-read enough to be able to regurgitate half a dozen contradictory views on any given topic and believe all of them. In my (arrogantly conceived) little conceptual universe, it's people like those who write books like this one.

So this book spends a large portion of its length, mainly at the beginning and end, merrily prancing through all kinds of ideas - all with something slight to commend them and all either hopelessly arrogant, stupid or naive. Some of the ideas say that it's very important to realise that some of the ideas we're sampling from all over the place might not be Christian. Sometimes they remember that, sometimes they don't, never do they apply it to their owm methodology, even when their failure to do so means they end up denying the uniqueness of Christ (2nd ed, p154).

There's also an annoying flawed-ness to many of the arguments and appallingly naive stereotyping of more conversative arguments. Here's an example (the one which ends up implicitly denying the uniqueness of Christ).

There were, not unexpectedly, some, though only one or two who took an 'exclusivist' position, claiming that Christianity was the only true religion. It was certainly an attitude found strongly in the independent evangelical congregation and, in a pragmatic, less doctrinaire way, in the black-led church. Not was it a stance... that should be lightly dismissed. Christianity had always made universal claims for Christ as the revelation of God. But it had not, until the emergence of what has been called Christendom, been absolutely exclusivist, assuming, in the West at least, no salvation outside the Church. Rather, there had always been a strong strand that had recognised truth and wisdom in religious and philosophic traditions other than its own.

That is wrong, naive and stupid. It assumes that if I recognise a non-Christian to be right on anything, I must think they're going to heaven. I recognise that a lot of physics, even the majority, has been figured out well by non-Christians using the brains that God gave them. Does that mean that I think they're somehow saved? No.

Quite often, the chapters are full of annoying waffle and comparing different wrong views, concluding that they are all correct and then summing it up in something mind-numbingly obvious that I'd have been happy starting with as an assumption.

Take, for example, the Pastoral Cycle, which is the key idea in the book. It's quite sensible actually - the idea is that if you want to know how to respond to something, you look at the situation, look at the priniciples involved, think about it, do something about it, then reflect on whether or not it worked. It's not exactly rocket science, even though rocket science is easy. (It's rocket engineering that's difficult).

Now the book does spend quite a while explaining it and applying it usefully to, for example, learning from placements at theological college. That was far and away the best bit of the book.

Personally, I think the Pastoral Cycle is incredibly obvious and what I'd have done anyway without thinking about it. But sometimes it's useful to have the obvious spelled out. It's just a shame that the rest of the book is such utter rubbish.

Paul McKechnie - The First Christian Centuries

2006-08-22T21:38:00.000+01:00

This is a book basically covering Church history from Pentecost (circa AD 33) to Constantine making Christianity legal in AD 313.

McKechnie is generally coming from a background that I agree with - he says the New Testament is a good source for early church history, though he argues his case well rather than just assuming it.

McKechnie pays particular attention to the dating of the New Testament, the relationship between the Church and various heretical sects and other groups, as well as the role of women in the early church (which was jolly interesting). Where there's a debate on something, of course, he outlines the main positions and states and explains his own view, which I usually found persuasive.

I guess the area I'd most like to see strengthened in this book is the theology. Not that it's dodgy - just that there's not much of it and I'd have been interested in some of the theological discussions and relationships between groups, etc.

As fairly basic (250-odd pages) introductions go, it seems informative and very good. There are certainly issues I'd like to know more about, but at least I now know what the issues are and have a better general picture.

Stambaugh & Balch - The New Testament in Its Social Environment

2006-08-18T12:40:00.000+01:00

Another book on New Testament background...

This basically reads like a non-narrative history textbook, which is probably because it is. It seeks to describe the social, political and economic structures of the Eastern Roman Empire between about 300BC and 100AD, with particular attention to the situation in Palestine.

And they're pretty good at that. Where they get ropey is when they try dealing with the gospels or letters and getting theology or history out of them. They don't seem to be especially good at dealing with subtlety, and would be better sticking with ancient history.

Generally pretty interesting on the historical background front.

Borg & Wright - The Meaning of Jesus

2006-08-14T10:45:00.000+01:00

A very interesting book, this one... Marcus Borg (about as liberal as a Christian can get, if not more so) and NT Wright (fairly conservative) discuss who Jesus was/is, who he thought he was, what he did, etc

In general, Borg takes the line that Jesus was a man (but not God) who in some sense after his death became "the Christ of faith", and that most of the gospel accounts are actually metaphors written back into the life of Jesus by the early church. This includes basically most of his teaching, miracles, birth, resurrection, etc. Wright takes a much more normal line - that Jesus was the Messiah, claiming to bring about God's kingdom and the true return from exile, that he was born of a virgin, raised from the dead, etc. He doesn't exactly follow the standard evangelical line, but I'd agree with everything he said, even though sometimes there's more to say as well. But you can't talk exhaustively about Jesus in one non especially large book.

What I found most interesting about the book was the difference in approach taken by Borg and Wright. Borg's liberal position is the one that traditionally is seen as more "scientific", but time and again the only arguments he uses for his position are "I think that..." and "It looks suspect to me...". They're almost all subjective. By contrast, Wright's approach is heavily evidence-based, looking at how first century Jews would have understood what Jesus was doing, examining evidence for how oral tradition works, etc.

It's also interesting looking at Borg's presuppositions - some of them are fairly clear in what he writes. He presupposes, for example, that God doesn't or can't act in the world, as he cannot see any explanation for the Holocaust otherwise. But his argument then hinges upon Jesus as a mystic, who experienced God within the world. If God cannot or does not act in the world, we cannot experience him in the world. Borg's approach is logically inconsistent.

Another example would be Borg's assumption that if something has a metaphorical meaning as well as a literal meaning, it was probably written only because the metaphorical meaning was true, rather than both being true. So, for example, Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey fulfils promises about what God's king would do from hundreds of years before. So Borg seems to argue that the early Christians saw Jesus as God's king, so wrote that he had fulfilled this prophecy (even though he hadn't) as a way of pointing to his identity. Which does rather raise the question, as Wright points out, of how on earth they came to believe that Jesus was God's king if he didn't fulfil the prophecy.

Borg also makes strange assumptions which almost seem designed to reinforce his position. For example, he assumes that if three gospels carry very similar stories, that one of them was written first, that the other two copied the story and made up their extra details, only leaving one source. Which makes me wonder then how anything could ever be attested by more than one source...

In some circles, the controversy over this book was because Wright acknowledges that Borg is a Christian. I don't know Borg; Tom Wright does. I'm glad it's God making the call, not me.

All in all, an interesting read and a good introduction to the whole "historical Jesus" debate. Whether that debate is worth bothering with, except to refute the sceptics, is a different question altogether.

Gerd Theissen - The Shadow of the Galilean

2006-08-07T19:22:00.000+01:00

Onto New Testament background now...

Imagine a liberal socialist theologian, of the kind who might write this about the Resurrection:

There can be no doubt about the subjective authenticity of the appearances tradition.

Imagine him writing a novel to introduce people to the idea of the quest for the historical Jesus and the background to the gospels.

This is that novel. It follows a character who is give the task of investigating Jesus (and some others) to see to what extent they pose a threat to the Romans.

As an introduction to the social background, it's pretty good. I think it assumes too much on a liberal and anti-miraculous front, too much in terms of the extent of socialist theory and too much in terms of which liberal theories of what actually happened were circulating that early.

It also has the advantage that it's short and easy to read...

Provan, Long & Longman - A Biblical History of Israel

2006-08-05T10:09:00.000+01:00

Continuing in the reading stuff about the OT theme, this is a good attempt by three scholars to put together a Biblical history of Israel, interacting heavily with the Biblical text, modern criticism, archaeology and other ancient sources.

What stood out for me was their honesty. There's none of the "sweeping this under the mat" that you often find with other scholars. When the data seem inconclusive, they say so. When they don't understand something, they say so. If the archaeology supports the existence of a king called David in roughly the area of Judah, but doesn't tell us anything else about him, when he reigned, what he was like or whatever, they say so. They don't stretch the evidence beyond what it will cover and they do a pretty good job of avoiding inconsistency.

They start by discussing the "liberal critics" I read about last time, specifically the consistency of their reasons for accepting some bits of the Bible as historical but denying others. The basic conclusion seemed to be that there were two possible consistent positions for historians (without assuming infallibility) - either to doubt absolutely everything, which means you can't really know anything about history (or much else for that matter) - or to take the Biblical text as one "testimony" about the past, trust it conditionally, and see how it fits in with other pieces of evidence.

They then go through Old Testament history from Genesis 12 to Ezra and Nehemiah, discussing different interpretations of the text, which bit have been confirmed by archaeology or other texts, where it is more difficult to reconcile, etc. There's a lot of stuff on the background to the texts, and a lot of stuff on the nature of Old Testament narrative as literature, how to understand the theological themes, etc. It definitely made me think that I'm going to try and get hold of Provan's commentary on Kings if and when I preach through it.

All in all, I thought it was an excellent read and a very good treatment of the material. If I was going to be critical, I'd say some of the earlier sections assume a fair bit of technical vocabulary, but mostly (and especially in the historical sections) it is explained very well.

They say early on that they think it should be applied, but don't think that book is the place to do it. I think I agree, but with that level of understanding of the text, some hard work on application would be greatly appreciated. They also tend to ignore the typological themes in the text (i.e. the way it points forwards to Jesus and the Church and so on), which is again a weakness, but completely understandable since they're aiming to put together a history of Israel from the OT, not to apply it or explain why it's about Jesus.

RE Clements - A Century of Old Testament Study

2006-07-29T11:10:00.000+01:00

It's worth clearing a few things up before I deal with the book in detail. First up, RE Clements is not the same person as Roy Clements, the formerly prominent gay evangelical preacher. Shame - that would have made it more interesting. RE Clements has a photo which takes up a quarter of the back of the book, wearing a stuffy shirt and tie, gazing slightly confusedly into the distance. Bad sign.

Secondly, this is my first real encounter with a symphathetic treatment of OT liberal criticism. My main previous one was reading Josh McDowell's More Evidence that Demands a Verdict, but that was over a decade ago.

What Clements does well is to present an outline of the views and trends of liberal criticism of the Old Testament, basically from Wellhausen (late 1800s) to the late 1970s. He also interacts with some of the views and makes his own thinking clear. And he does the whole literature review thing pretty well.

What he doesn't do, or provide any justification for, is the underlying assumptions of the liberal critical movement. Roughly, the movement seems to assume:

The development of religion in OT Israel follows broad trends put forwards in some kind of religious sociology. So the development of an individualistic conception of morality, for example, has to come quite late.
Predictive prophecy doesn't work. So, for example, the fact that Deuteronomy basically sketches out the outline of what happens in Joshua - 2 Kings (and it does) means that it must have been written after those events occurred, though it may have strands of earlier tradition in it
That the OT history is written not primarily to record what happened, but for the benefit of the original readers (I kind of agree with this one)
That the "traditional view" e.g. (Genesis - Deuteronomy written by Moses) is wrong, and most of the OT stems from around the time of the exile, or later.
If two bits are stylistically different (e.g. prose and poetry sections in Jeremiah), they must have been written by different groups of people at different times. One can only wonder what they would make of a novel by Iain M Banks or Margaret Attwood, where multiple different stylings are quite normal. McDowell applies their methods to Dante's Inferno with interesting results.
That the OT is not all about Jesus.

One of my (many) concerns about this approach is their attitude to testability. For example, originally they predicted that the wisdom literature (Proverbs, etc) had to come as a development of the work of the Prophets, and hence to be post-exilic. But then some ancient Egyptian stuff was discovered, very similar to bis of Proverbs, that predated Moses. So wisdom was then moved earlier in their conception. They had the 10 Commandments as being a late development, but then found that the Egyptians and Babylonians had similar systems of laws earlier than the traditionalists (like me) would claim they were written.

Nor, as far as I am aware, have the methods of soure criticism or form criticism been applied to books of known provenance to test them. Had they been, I suspect they would have failed. In addition, the methods produce a wide variety of different interpretations of what actually happened. The methods therefore seem to me decidedly unscientific.

It is certainly noteworthy that when they deal with Bible books that we know were compiled from a variety of sources (Samuel and Kings), their methods seem significantly less successful than when working with books that might conceivably have been the work of a single author (e.g. Exodus). That suggests to me that they find a lot of false positives.

In trying to reconstruct a theology of the OT, they also ignore the major theme of the future hope of the Christ (which is kind of hard to miss). This is especially of concern since if we are taking a Christian view of the OT, it is certainly worth seeing what Christ himself said about the Old Testament.

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
John 5:39-40

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
Luke 24:27

It is perfectly understandable that they cannot come to an integrated understanding of OT theology withouth Christ - he is the integration point of OT theology.

There are nevertheless some interesting questions raised, though I don't think they necessarily answer them too well. In some cases, Clements even recognises that they haven't really answered them:

To what extent were the historical books edited and modified by their eventual compilers? We can see that it must have happened a fair bit (e.g. by comparing Samuel/Kings with Chronicles). I think we as evangelicals sometimes lose sight of the fact that the Jews regarded Joshua - Esther as prophetic books.
What was the role of oral tradition in preserving material (e.g. patriarchal accounts in Genesis, prophesy)? To what extent was the material then shaped by the community which preserved it as well as vice versa?
What was the original purpose of the Psalms? Were e.g. the angsty ones they written as someone feeling a lot of angst, or were they written essentially as scripts for a mystery play? And what does Ps 45 mean?
Who compiled Proverbs? Why?
Why was the OT written in the way that it is, with so many different styles?

Overall, one thing that really gets to me is the subjectivity of the whole liberal criticism thing. In the summary, Clements writes:

What Wellhausen's Prolegomena achieved for Old Testament studies was a better picture of the history of Israel's religious institutions than that which had been afforded by the traditional view which is reflected in the Old Testament itself. It offered a satisfactory working basis from which it became possible to place is a comprehensible sequence the various layers of material containing references to them. That such a sequence made use of a broadly evolutionary theory of development and historical growth is undeniable, but nevertheless it was more credible than the traditional view which it replaced.

Better? More credible? Says who? On what criteria? If there is a God who raised Jesus Christ bodily from the dead, then he is more than capable of revealing his law to a nation on a mountain in the desert. And given that they came from a culture which already had a code of law and which could already write it down just makes it seem more likely that they just might have written it down in such an event. If there is not a God who raised Jesus Christ bodily from the dead, then I see no reason why it's even worth bothering worrying about what happened to Israel 3000 years ago.

The Point of This Blog

2006-07-28T20:58:00.000+01:00

I was thinking today (always dangerous, thinking!) that I need somewhere to put my more academicy posts, now that I'm meant to be reading all kinds of academicy stuff. So that's here! Coming soon - some of my early reflections on OT criticism!

Approval

2006-03-13T22:53:00.000Z

I think this is a good day to start this blog.

Today I was formally approved for training for the ordained ministry by the Bishop of Chester, and will (probably and God willing) now be spending three years at Wycliffe Hall Oxford.

My aim with this blog is to detail some of the ups and downs of the training process and getting onto it.

I suppose it'll take a while to sink in. People started talking today about "when you are ordained", which is really scary in a way but also a huge priviledge. For now, I'm setting my sights on finishing my job and getting to Oxford. Lots of hassle involved - tidying my house, selling my house, finishing off learning to drive, getting a car, sorting out all the moving stuff. Please pray.