Featured in yesterday's Morning Star, the weekly newsletter from Wycliffe College, is an editorial by Chris Seitz. Appropriate to the venue, it includes a few personal reflections. And it sounds a familiar theme in Seitz's work—"accordance," as the title indicates.

Brevard Childs' death is mentioned. St Andrews is remembered. Richard Bauckham's Eyewitnesses book is commended, and this leads into a brief discussion of Irenaeus on the accordance of eyewitness testimony with the scriptures.

Read it all. It's not long.

Tags: St Andrews

What does it mean that "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Cor 3:6)? Dawson, through Origen, explores several suggestions. And a fellow student of mine at St Andrews, who successfully defended his PhD mid-December, focuses a different but related set of considerations through an "Augustinian" reading of Jer 31.

Restitutio ad Integrum: An 'Augustinian' Reading of Jeremiah 31:31–34 in Dialogue with the Christian Tradition Author: Johshua Moon ISBN: Publisher: PhD         Release: Oct 2007 Format: Hardcover         Pages: 325 My Rating:

Comments/Quotes: “In his anti-Pelagian writings, emerging at the height of his influence, Augustine put forward a reading of Jer 31:31–34 that contrasted belief and unbelief—a state of affairs deserving judgment and salvation ('Heil und Nicht-Heil'). The point at issue for Augustine’s reading was the claim by Julian of Aeclanum that the Holy Spirit was tied to the novum testamentum, and thus was absent in the vetus. In an argument that shifted the point of contrast in Jer 31:31–34, Augustine made a distinction in the use of vetus testamentum—the popular use (referring to the era or part of the Christian canon from before Christ), and the use of Scripture. In this latter the members of the vetus testamentum are distinguished form the novum in an absolute or ‘salvific’ sense—the possession of the Spirit, regardless of the era in which one lives. The contrast involved in Jer 31:31–34 was for Augustine the contrast of unbelief apart from the Spirit, and faithfulness with the Spirit. Though Augustine’s reading would remain overshadowed by uses of the contrast with reference to the mutatio sacramentorum or a similar contrast of two successive religio-historical eras, Augustine’s influence can be seen at a number of significant moments in Western theological history… In modern interpretations the discourse shifted significantly, so that many theological concerns of the previous era were distanced from the consideration of a ‘historical’ location of the oracle. But the central issue remained the same: to what is the ‘new covenant’ contrasted?” (284–285). Moon argues that the contrast is with the “broken covenant” (cf. in particular Jer 11, 7). “What is made the case in the oracles of salvation is an idyllic state—everything is made the way it always ought to have been. What we find in 31:31–34 is precisely this contrast: the universal infidelity bringing judgment is overturned in a promise of universal fidelity to Yhwh. The people of Yhwh are restored to their proper state (restitutio ad integrum), and a world is projected in which all is as it always ought to have been” (286).

Moon provides some really excellent details in his reading of the tradition, from Augustine, to Thomas, to the reformation period, through the break typified by Duhm, and on to Lohfink, Dohmen and Levin. I'm glad I took the time out to read through it today. Somebody needs to publish the thing soon!

Tags: St Andrews, Theological Exegesis

Back from SBL this week, tucking back into research and writing.

I didn't attend the session on Richard Bauckham's book since we'd already taken a close look here at St Andrews. If you haven't yet seen the post-SBL thread (noted by Goodacre, Davila, etc) by some San Diego panelists and many others, then I recommend you take a look at: What is to be done?

The contempt is just dripping sometimes, which guarantees that the thread will be delicious to most interested parties regardless of their persuasion.

Tags: St Andrews

As has been mentioned, Richard Bauckham retired from his post as Bishop Wardlaw Professor of New Testament this last Wednesday. I wanted to comment it sooner, but it took me a while to upload the photo of him fielding questions on his last day in the Biblical Studies seminar—a seminar he founded at St Andrews sometime after his arrival here 15 years ago. It's been a privilege to learn from him.

Jim Davila posted his speech as head of school, and supervisee Mariam Kamell comments here.

The book we've been discussing for the last four sessions is Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. If you feel you're missing out, you can have a look at the blog series Chris Tilling ran on the book, or on the same site an interview about it with Bauckham. I hear the book is about to go on tour: first at Gordon-Conwell, then at both ETS and SBL in San Diego. Details for the SBL panel review of the book are as follows:

S17-79 :: Synoptic Gospels

11/17/2007. 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM :: Room: San Diego C - MM

Theme: Panel Review of Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006)

Jeffrey Peterson, Austin Graduate School of Theology, Texas, Presiding
John Kloppenborg, University of Toronto, Panelist (20 min)
Adela Yarbro Collins, Yale University, Panelist (20 min)
James Crossley, University of Sheffield, Panelist (20 min)
Richard Bauckham, University of St. Andrews-Scotland, Respondent (25 min)

Tags: St Andrews

Professor of Old Testament: the job vacancy left by Christopher Seitz has at last been filled by Kristin De Troyer. She will take up the post on 1 June 2008.

Tags: St Andrews

In preparing for the seminar discussion I'm leading tomorrow, I dug up some papers I haven't looked at for a while, including the very rare transcript of Karl Barth and the Future of Theology: A Memorial Colloquium Held at Yale Divinity School January 28, 1969—held barely a month after Barth passed away. Brevard Childs and Hans Frei were among the panelists.

Charles Scalise made a lot of the piece in his dissertation on Childs and Barth (1987), and again in a follow-up article in SJT 47 (1994): 61–88, which has sometimes been cited by those wishing to criticize Childs by associating him with Barth. (The Childs essay in question is: “Karl Barth as Interpreter of Scripture.” Pages 30-39 in Karl Barth and the Future of Theology. Edited by D. L. Dickerman. New Haven: Yale Divinity School Association, 1969. When I first tried to get my hands on it, the librarian at St Andrews told me there was no copy in Britain.)

Childs' essay was reworked in 1989, though it remains unpublished. (It was pulled out again at the Beecher lectures, where Childs filled in for Lee Keck, who had been in a car accident.) But what Scalise, and to my knowledge everybody else too, fails to mention about the YDS colloquium volume is that, at the back, it includes a transcript of the Q&A which followed the paper session.

It's really illuminating stuff. A while back I OCRed it (it appears to have been transcribed from a cassette tape by a research assistant way back). As I think virtually nobody has seen this, and it's chatty and informal, and it highlights a number of important points, I'm posting the script here.

Points of note:

1. Childs lines up with Frei (indeed, partly learns from Frei) on "the heart of the problem: that for Calvin, the sensus literalis IS Jesus Christ. And it was only when you have the eighteenth century identification of the literal sense with the historical sense that you’re just hopelessly lost."
   
   
2. When they say this (Frei: "That's right.") nobody knows what they're talking about.
   
   
3. Allegorical readings can't be dismissed out of hand for either Childs or Frei.
   
   
4. But when it comes down to a few finer details, Childs differs from Frei on the matter of reference.
   
   
5. Specifically, for Childs the "ontology" issue at stake means "the scope of the canon; namely, the reality which is in dialectic with the text, defined by its canonical context. I don’t see how you can avoid a dialectic between text and reality, in some sort."
   
   
6. For Childs, this is why "the new hermeneutic is not only mistaken, but it one colossal cul de sac."
   
   
7. 1969 is incredibly early—the year before Childs' Biblical Theology in Crisis, and five years before Frei's Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.

The full discussion (minus a few digressions):

STUDENT: I have a question. You’ve commented tonight on the truthfulness of Barth’s use of scripture. You’ve commented on the wide-ranging homiletical force of much of his writing. But when you look at it closely enough in some respects in some places, it is not textually predicated or warranted sometimes, and may even sometimes be allegorical. How do you appropriate, still, some of this live genius that’s there, and yet at the same time remain more controlled by the text? That would probably be one question.

And the second question would be, Do you see any person on the horizon who shows promise of being as crucial, as forceful, and yet takes more seriously what the text is saying—controlling himself at this point more than Barth?

BREVARD CHILDS: Well it seems to me for the last twenty or thirty years people have been trying to combine the orthodoxy of Barth with the historical-critical approach. It seems to me that this enterprise has now come to and end and has proven unfruitful—that you are now at the turn of the road, you have to go either right or left; that the type of move that said Barth is right in seeing theological dimension, but now we have to take history more seriously and bring in the whole baggage—I don’t think this can—

In other words, I’m suggesting that the problem is far deeper than this. It’s a problem that certainly didn’t just arise with Barth. (And much of what I’ve learned about this has come from talking with Hans Frei.) But it has often bothered and puzzled me. You see, when you read Calvin, he fights against the whole medieval tradition by saying it’s the sensus literails that counts—it’s the literal sense—and you have page after page against the whole church dogma. But then you read Calvin on the Old Testament, and here’s Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ. How could it possibly be? And everybody just says that Calvin is just inconsistent.

It seems to me that this doesn’t at all touch the heart of the problem: that for Calvin, the sensus literalis IS Jesus Christ. And it was only when you have the eighteenth century identification of the literal sense with the historical sense that you’re just hopelessly lost. And it seems to me that it’s something along that line—that we’ve just been unable to understand what Barth is doing.

HANS FREI: That’s right.

JULIAN HARTT: Would you mind repeating that?

CHILDS: It sounds better in German, though.

STUDENT: Is it something we can do today?

FREI: Sure, because you see [tape unintelligible] in his exegesis he’s looking at the text. He’s not looking through the text at the person who wrote it. He is, I think, a highly literal reader—what’s set before you there—whereas I noticed that one goes back (in questioning his exegesis) constantly to and earlier version of Barth that he pretty clearly forsook very soon: namely, the Barth for whom the letter became transparent and pointed him to something deeper, something else.

I think, because one thing about Barth is that he’s very much controlled by the letter—no spirit without letter—very much controlled by the letter, and in regard to that and historical criticism, he simply made the move: when you’re doing historical criticism, you’re doing a pretty fine thing, I’m sure. But it’s just logically different from reading the text, burrowing under it, and cropping out all over it, lots of nice things. And I’m sure that there’s an awful lot of illumination to be gained by that. But you’re not reading the text, you see. Barth reads the text. It cannot be qualified with other things.

In Scripture we know that when we read a story, a historical investigation of the story is a very good thing to do. But we need to know how that text works, what’s in the text. And though we have a hard time describing how we do that, in fact when we compare about what we think it says we often find that we can agree on things, and I think fundamentally it is as simple as that. That’s how it works for Barth.

SALIERS: . . . [But the] assumption that we can treat things as a literary whole which gives us a certain critical concept of literalness, which we can then employ, is a thing that the Biblical people, at least the ones who knit their brows when you said that, are probably worrying about.

CHILDS: Well, it’s a real problem. I wouldn’t go quite with Hans in this direction. It seems to me that the problem came up very early in church history when Jerome attempted to translate the Bible from Hebrew. Augustine called him into question. He said the New Testament and the Church is receiving the Old Testament in terms of the Septuagint, and therefore this is the context and there’s no use going behind it. You can’t go behind it. And Jerome of course just killed him at this point in defending the need for seeing the original context.

Here, it seems to me that both had a point. Obviously, Augustine was right in taking seriously the fact that the Old Testament had taken another form and had assumed another context by being passed through the Septuagint. But Jerome obviously was right in claiming that the next context of the church did not obliterate the older context in which it was seen. In other words, what I’m saying is that the problem that remains the most thorny one is how the various contexts relate. And Barth, in criticizing the historical critics’ insistence that you read the original context but take seriously the theological-confessional context, it seems to me, is in the danger—just as Augustine—of obliterating the need for dealing with the original context.

[. . . After a few minutes, the discussion returns to Childs’ differences with Frei.]

CHILDS: But you see [Barth] doesn’t use the term “context,” but he talks about the canon, namely: that Scripture is the apostolic, prophetic testimony all linked together. Don’t go behind this, don’t separate it. And this is a context; in other words, this is a theological context—

ROBERT JOHNSON: You’re speaking, then, of the historical context that Barth says is in the word “history.”

CHILDS: No, no. That’s the whole point: that Barth objects to everyone who does this.

JOHNSON: So, from the point of view of what Hans is arguing, what he’s really talking about is not the historical context but the literary context.

CHILDS: That’s where Hans and I differ somewhat. I move in a little different direction here. In other words, it seems to me that there are problems when you get—I would agree fully with Hans when he’s combatting those historical critics who would want to go behind the text, but it’s interesting when you begin to deal with the narrative text, as a context. One has to keep in mind that the early church, in the controversy with Judaism, took quite a different move. When the Jews were saying, read the text! read the text!, the Christians said, there’s something behind the text. It’s what the text points to, namely: Jesus Christ. And there was a dialectic between the reality and the text.

It seems to me, what buttresses this from getting into the kind of ontology you’re talking about is the scope of the canon; namely, the reality which is in dialectic with the text, defined by its canonical context. I don’t see how you can avoid a dialectic between text and reality, in some sort.

[. . . The conversation turns to a student, Johnson and Frei momentarily.]

CHILDS: It seems to me that this question about the Jesus that Paul—excuse me, that Barth—raises, was very much a part of the mood of the early churchmen. They are concerned: How do you know what the Old Testament is talking about? You hear the Gospel; that is, the dialectic between old and new. Who is Jesus? You don’t get it just from reading the narrative of the Gospel. That’s the whole point that the early church worked on: He’s the Servant; He’s Suffering Israel; He’s the eye of the Sun; all this sort of thing. It seems to me, therefore, that I fully agree that the new hermeneutic is not only mistaken, but it one colossal cul de sac.

[This is Childs’ last comment for the evening.]

Tags: Childs, Theological Exegesis, Frei, St Andrews

I confess I don't know what category to put this in. Late last month the NYT ran a piece on the New St Andrews, the one in Moscow, Idaho. As the piece explains:

Doug Wilson, 54, the pastor who spearheaded New St. Andrews’ founding, puts the college’s purpose simply: “We are trying to save civilization.”

All I can say to that is, wow. What I want to know is, Why St Andrews?

The school has adopted trappings of Oxford and Cambridge: professors are called “fellows,” and students dress in academic gowns for thesis defenses and public final exams. Proudly Anglophile, faculty members lead a summer tour of English castles and abbeys. C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton are ubiquitous on class reading lists — revered for their godly wit and their fondness for fine drink. N.S.A.’s campus is proudly wet, in deliberate contrast to the average fundamentalist Bible college.

Is it because students here, at the old St Andrews, sometimes still wear gowns? (It's certainly not because most here read Thomas, or in Latin.) Or because this St Andrews is sufficiently remote that a comparison doesn't strain all credulity?

Molly Worthen, who is evidently writing a book about evangelical intellectual life and who authored the NYT piece, is a good writer. Somebody remind me to take a look at her book when it comes out.

Tags: St Andrews

Next Wednesday (24 October, 9:15 a.m.), at the Scripture and Theology seminar here, I am giving a paper and leading a discussion on the topic of Brevard Childs and his followers.

Discussion will proceed on the basis of my paper and two readings, circulated in advance. The first and more involved of these is G. T. Sheppard's introduction to a Puritan commentary he edited for re-publication.  Toward the end it picks up the issue the seminar discussed yesterday—whether there is an alternative to "story" for coordinating our exegetical efforts.

•Sheppard, Gerald T. “Between Reformation and Modern Commentary: the Perception of the Scope of Biblical Books.” Pages xlviii-lxxvii in A Commentary on Galatians, William Perkins. Edited by Gerald T Sheppard. Pilgrim Classic Commentaries New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989.

The second is a short piece by C. Seitz—I think originally a review of Childs' 1992 Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments.  Among other things, it gives some feel for the minority position Childs' followers feel themselves to be in.

•Seitz, Christopher R. “'We Are Not Prophets or Apostles': The Biblical Theology of B. S. Childs.” Pages 102–109 in Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998.

If you are not a usual participant but wish to come along—on the condition I guess that you are also reasonably near St Andrews—contact me and I can circulate the readings.

Tags: Childs, Theological Exegesis, St Andrews

There's a conference taking place here in St Andrews over the first part of next week, hosted by ITIA (Institute for Theology, Imagination & the Arts).

It's called The Offence of Beauty: What can a theological perspective on beauty offer to the arts today? Not exactly my area, but I'm in to both offence and beauty, and some of the sessions look pretty good. I'll go along if I can swing it, and you should too if you're in the area. (Sorry that you're not, DW, as I'm sure you'd strike up at least three energizing conversations.) Keynote speakers will be:

Trevor Hart – 'Ugly as Sin? Beauty, Holiness and the Crucified'

Nicholas Wolterstorff – 'The Troubled Relationship of Art with Beauty'

Carol Harrison – 'Kind of Blue: Beauty and Broken Images'

Patrick Sherry – 'The Holy Spirit and Beauty'

Bernard Beatty – 'Beauty and the Opening of Distance: Defending the
Two-Dimensional'

Robert Jenson – 'Deus Est Ipsa Pulchritudo'

Inside scoop: One postgrad here giving a short paper may not make it because his wife might be in labor at this very moment.

Tags: St Andrews

There's a bit of St Andrews lore behind the anual May dip, where thousands of crazed (not always drunk) students jump into the North Sea at 5 AM. They say that if you step on the stones marking the place were martyr Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake, you will not graduate.


One can fairly easily step on these stones if walking along North Street. Fortunately it is possible to make expiation on the first of May. All you have to do is jump into the North Sea at dawn.

That's the story anyway. People seem to go along for other reasons, though. Several friends took the plunge this year (photos posted here and here). For myself, I couldn't be bothered to get out of bed.

For the reflections of somebody who was actually there this year, see Meg's blog.

Tags: Humor, St Andrews

A colleague has posted photos from the annual St Mary's BBQ and Boules tournament. Seemingly the postgrads through quite a wrench (spanner) into the works by actually coming this year. The undergrads who kindly put on the event were seen running to Tesco for more food, and the tournament itself needed not just a new bracket, but a long round of prelims to eliminate players.

Unless you're from St Mary's you'll probably not recognize anybody in the pictures. I'm only in one, I think, which is fine with me. But you may be able to pick out Ian Bradley or Jim Davila or Mark Elliott. The faculty team beat both the undergrads and the postgrads. I think it's because they had more robes. The undergrads, being more experienced, knew this and planned for it. They lost probably because only half the team remembered to wear them.

See the photos here.

Tags: Personal, St Andrews