Daniel Kirk’s New Book: Unlocking Romans

This is a re-post, of sorts…

Daniel Kirk’s new book, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God, is now available.

Many of the contributors of this blog, and certainly some of its readers, know Daniel Kirk. Daniel is a MDiv graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary (2000). He subsequently completed a PhD in New Testament from Duke University’s Department of Religion, studying under Richard Hays, E.P. Sanders, and Joel Marcus, among others. He wrote a fascinating dissertation on Resurrection in Romans, how Paul re-understood and re-told the significance of Israel in the light of Christ. His advisor was none other than Richard Hays, whose writings certainly molded my thought on Paul and the communal significance of Paul for the church more than anyone else’s writings. Daniel started his job as a professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary this Fall.

During and since his time at Duke Daniel has written a fair amount concerning Paul and the significance of recent scholarship on Paul for the contemporary church. He penned a helpful response to Doug Kelly (Professor of Systematic Theology at RTS-Charlotte) on the New Perspective and Reformed Theology for the PCA’s online news site. He also published a two-part article in the Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology (24 [2006]: 36-64, 133-54) arguing for a passive-obedience-only position both as Scriptural and within the bounds of the Westminster Standards. A shorter version of these articles is available online, as are google-documents versions of the original articles (1 & 2), which require some cleaning-up. Many of you have read, and probably frequent, Daniel’s blog. There, when he has time, he has continued to post refreshing communally and missionally-oriented reflections on Christ, the Bible, hermeneutics, and contemporary scholarship. His reputation as a cutting-edge but church-oriented scholar apparently grew enough that he was asked to present a paper on the New Perspective on Paul at last year’s meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. Daniel has written and published other reviews, essays, and articles in more academically oriented contexts as well.

 

A Parable from Art Boulet about Our Current ‘Debates’ about the Bible

I want to call everyone’s attention to a fascinating and helpful Parable, of sorts, Art Boulet posted on his blog the other day: dark caves and differing perspectives.

 

Reflections on Faith

Over the past year, as I have been posting, lurking, and chiming in here at Conn-versation, and reading and occasionally commenting on Art Boulet’s personal blog, I have continually found myself brought back to the question of what Christian faith really is.

 

The Bible has a good bit to say on the subject, but it’s really a New Testament concept. The OT explicitly addresses faithfulness, but it’s usually in the context of a quality of Yahweh and the desired quality of his people. The aspect of belief and trust that we typically mean when we talk about faith makes its first appearance in the gospels. Jesus observes faith in the people he encounters, and tends to evaluate it on a quantitative scale: little or great. He seems to be addressing their specific willingness to trust in him personally to accomplish in-real-time salvific acts, manifest most often in healing and life-restoration miracles, which then serve as object lessons pointing to his greater purpose. For the most part, it’s not until the epistles that we get a fuller-blown explication of faith as belief and trust in the person and work of Christ for salvation and eternal life.

 

In light of this, what does it then mean when we talk about hanging on to faith or losing faith as we ask questions of the Bible? It has occurred to me that conservative reformed Christians have worked hard to ensure that faith is so underpinned by certainties that – well – it doesn’t require all that much faith. To be one of the people of Yahweh requires faith in Jesus, which requires faith in the Bible, which believers can trust completely because the church has doctrinally declared to be inerrant, wholly trustworthy, and perfect down to its very words. Start asking too many untidy questions of the Conn-versation sort, and the whole system, it would seem, is at risk of collapsing, bringing the faith of the faithful along with it.

 

This is where I’ve had difficulty. Does my faith in the Jesus of the gospels really hinge on Genesis 5 being literally true, as opposed to an Israelite retooling and repurposing of the Sumerian kings list?  On insisting as true that Samson was a historic figure and his deeds were accomplished as recorded or that David wrote the Psalms bearing his name?  On intentionally burying my understanding of the very different looks of Jeremiah in the MT and the LXX in favor of one Jeremiah only?  If these things are equivocal, must it follow that Jesus is equivocal?

 

Faith requires an element of trust in the absence of concrete proof. It is, as the writer of Hebrews puts it, “the conviction of things not seen.” Given that, to what extent does the church’s admittedly well-intended insistence on the perfection of Scripture as a bedrock of faith begin to work at cross-purposes with trusting in things not seen? It strikes me as requiring a greater measure of faith to go with the kind of Bible we’ve actually got than the kind of Bible we may have at one time thought we had, or the kind that arch-conservatives continue to insist we must have. Is there room for the Holy Spirit to infuse the believer’s soul with the truth of the gospel resulting in faith even when Genesis 1-11 is understood to be literature rather than history?

 

I think it’s time for some reflections on exactly what we as Christian believers mean when we say we have faith. Is the Bible we have, the one that God in some mysterious way caused to be written, assembled, translated, and passed down by generation after generation of Christians, robust enough to withstand detailed secular and academic scrutiny and still contribute to the creation and growth of faithful believers in the person and work of Jesus to salvation? If it’s not, what are we really saying? Is it, as the conservatives would argue, that God is less than fully God? Or, is it, as I have begun to think, that our faith is less than the faith that Jesus himself commended?  Or, is it something else?  What do you think?

 

Considering Ancient Contexts: Ancient Near Eastern Views of “Creation”

Reading Jon Levenson’s Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence several years ago radically impacted the way I read much of the Hebrew Bible. Parts of the Bible came alive in new and exciting ways, especially as I saw things charged with a new significance. Parts of the Hebrew Bible and topics within it became connected for me in new enrichingly deep ways. Challenging new ways for viewing God’s ultimate work in Christ opened up for me.

 

What did Levenson’s work do for me years back? Among other things, he introduced me to some of the dynamics and functions of ancient Near Eastern mythic-cosmic views of reality and how thought about temples, kings, creation, and “salvation,” all function interconnectedly in such views of reality…

 

What if we find a lost letter of Paul?

This is one of the first questions that came to mind when I first heard a doctrine of canon, and I have revisited it from time to time ever since.

What would we do if we unearthed another letter that (somehow) could be authenticated and verified as being penned by the apostle Paul?

How would we treat/use it?

Would it find its place with the Apocryphal writings?

Would another letter from Paul’s hand be permitted to enhance or adjust our understanding of the letters we already attribute to Paul?

Would its usefulness depend on whether or not the recently discovered epistle coincided with the interpretation of Paul given by the theologians of our tradition?

Some of you, doubtless, have no interest in hypothetical scenarios. Even so, I think this hypothetical is helpful to expose and sharpen our beliefs about the Scriptures.

What do you think?

 

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the Revelation of God

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways [or, in various parts], God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son.” Hebrews 1:1-2 (ESV)

The following is an attempt to help us think about the idea of God’s ‘progressive revelation.’

Consider one of the great masterpieces of Western classical music, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In the first three movements we hear a number of different themes and ideas produced by a variety of instruments.

 

The Humanity of Scripture: From where does this Quote Come?

In this context, I shall argue that if it was necessary for evangelicals in response to liberal theology to emphasize the divine speaking, it is time to redress the balance by saying more about the human authors of Scripture. I shall further demonstrate that, far from weakening an evangelical doctrine of Scripture, this move actually strengthens it.

 

And the winner is…

 

On “Kingdom Come: The Public Meaning of the Gospels” by N.T. Wright

An article by N.T. Wright, entitled “Kingdom Come: The Public Meaning of the Gospels,” appeared in Christian Century on June 17, 2008.

Regarding common approaches to the gospel, Wright notes how approaches to the Gospels (in the West, in recent history) have tended to give exclusive attention toward either Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom (and, so, social gospel readings) or Jesus’ death and resurrection (and, so, individual salvation-of-souls readings). I appreciated his “third way,” so to speak, of looking at the Gospels. He avoids a private/public dichotomizing of these Scriptures. And he goes on to ask how the church should live out its kingdom calling–its “biblical commitment to ‘doing God in public’” (33).

I thought this was a worthwhile read for someone who does little reading these days. And I was glad to see it appear in Christian Century. I’ll be interested to hear what others have to say.

 

On Aggressively Misreading and Misrepresentation: A Critique of One Part of Peter Lillback’s Essay Against Peter Enns

I have modified this post slightly from its original version. Though I did not write this post in anger or as a rant, I realize how some of my repeated charges throughout it could come across that way. My goal was to be honest about my thoughts on Dr. Lillback’s work not only as scholarship, but as a Christian leader of a Christian institution. As I hold a strongly negative view of Dr. Lillback’s essay, the work of a respected leader, I struggled to express this in a respectful but at the same time honest manner. I would like to thank everyone for their advice thus far, both on and off the blog.

 

About a month back Art Boulet posted a critique of WTS President Peter Lillback’s essay (at the end of the documents released by WTS in April). Lillback’s essay was published in the recent festschrift for Richard Gaffin. For those who do not know, Art is the WTS student who was told on Monday to withdraw from the seminary or face disciplinary action that could lead to a twelve-month suspension. He was not given an opportunity to repent, to apologize, etc. See the post and discussion on his blog.

 

Getting back to Art’s critique of Lillback, a 73 comment (as of now) discussion ensued in which no one took up any of Art’s points. Furthermore, various people and bloggers, some of whom are aware of Art’s critique, continue to recommend Lillback’s essay as helpful in establishing Peter Enns as outside the Reformed Tradition. Some such comments can be seen here.

 

I thought I would write at least one post focusing on a specific place in Lillback’s essay, illustrating what I consider to be the deficient nature of his scholarship. At the same time, since Dr. Lillback is the head of an explicitly Christian institution and would see his writing as more than simply scholarship, I will try to engage it also on the level of Christian responsibility.

 

John Frame’s Review of Peter Enns’ “Inspiration and Incarnation”

John Frame has posted a gentle-negative review of Pete Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation on his website. Perhaps sometime soon I or someone else on the Conn-Blog can do a more detailed post on it.

 

I commend this review to everyone.