Jesus, Paul and the People of God

Wheaton College has announced the 19th Annual Wheaton Theology Conference.

Jesus, Paul and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N. T. Wright

April 16-17, 2010

This year’s conference engages the thought of one of the most prolific Christian thinkers of our generation, N.T. Wright, a premiere New Testament scholar and Bishop of Durham. The conference is designed to explore the meaning and implications of Wright’s work, featuring a dialogue between various scholars and Dr. Wright. A series of speakers will probe key features of Wright’s thinking about Jesus and Paul, with responses from Wright and panel discussion.

Other speakers include:

Jeremy Begbie

Markus Bockmuehl

Richard Hays

Edith Humphrey

Sylvia Keesmat

Nicholas Perrin

Marianne Meye Thompson

Kevin Vanhoozer

Brian Walsh

Resurrection of the Dead: Bible Traditions in Dialogue

An International Conference
Université Catholique de Louvain
Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

April 7–9, 2010

Scholarly debate over the significance of Biblical traditions concerning resurrection from the dead has been lively. The current conference allows for a continuation of research and discussion on the topic. Presentations will include both invited guests (main papers) and paper proposals in response to the « Call for Papers ». Presentations will be made in English or in French.

Main Papers:

Claire Clivaz (Lausanne/Genève)
Adela Yarbro Collins (Yale University)
John J. Collins (Yale University)
José Costa (Paris III –  Sorbonne)
Gerd Lüdemann (Göttingen)
Odette Mainville (Montréal)
Daniel Marguerat (Lausanne/Genève)
Tobias Nicklas (University of Regensburg)                     
Heikki Räisänen (Helsinki)
Tom Shepherd (Andrews University, MI)
Geert Van Oyen (UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve)
André Wénin (UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve)

Call for Papers:

The conveners of the international conference, « Resurrection from the Dead : Biblical Traditions in Dialogue » invite paper proposals for 25 minute presentations at the conference to be held at the Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium), April 7-9, 2010. Papers may approach the topic of the conference utilizing any scholarly methodology or combination of methodologies. Depending on the proposals received, they will possibly be grouped in six sections :
The resurrection in :
1. the Synoptic Gospels and Acts; 2. the Johannine literature; 3. Pauline and deutero-Pauline literature and in the Catholic Epistles; 4. apocalyptic literature (Jewish and Christian); 5. the literature of Qumran; 6. non-canonical literature of early Christianity; 7. Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic
literature.

Send French proposals to Geert Van Oyen at geert.vanoyen@uclouvain.be and English proposals to Tom Shepherd at trs@andrews.edu. Proposals must be received by October 31, 2009. The conveners will send verification of reception of proposals and acceptance or rejection of the proposals by November 30, 2009.

Conference Fees:
Attendance at the conference:
us$ 100.00 / € 70
Students  us$ 50.00 / € 35

Accomodation  at Hotel Mercure
Single € 85 / night
Double  € 98  / night

2009 SBL Program for Theological Hermeneutics of Christian Scripture

Session One: Romans as Christian Theology
A. Katharine Grieb, Virginia Theological Seminary, Presiding

• Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Princeton Theological Seminary: “Reading for the Subject: Conflict and Lordship in Romans 14”
• Richard B. Hays, Duke University: “Spirit, Church, Eschatology: The Third Article of the Creed as Hermeneutical Lens for Reading Romans”
• Michael J. Gorman, Saint Mary’s Seminary and University: “Romans: The First Christian Treatise on Theosis”

Session Two: The “Rule of Faith”: Relic, Refuge, or Resource?
Joy J. Moore, Duke University, Presiding

• Tomas Bokedal, Aberdeen University: “The Rule of Faith: Tracing its Origins”
• Kathryn Greene-McCreight, St John’s Episcopal Church, New Haven, CT: “A Chord of Three Strands Is Not Easily Broken: Three Functions of the Rule of Faith”
• Nathan MacDonald, University of St. Andrews: “Irenaeus’ Rule of Truth and Scripture”
• Ephraim Radner, Wycliffe College: “Applying the Rule of Faith: Herbert Thorndike and the Scriptural Church”

Hebrews and Christian Theology

A new book of interest:

The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology, edited by Richard Bauckham, Daniel R. Driver, Trevor A. Hart, and Nathan MacDonald (Eerdmans, 2009).

A significant dialogue between biblical scholars and theologians.

The contributors to this substantial volume examine a number of key theological themes in the letter to the Hebrews: the person and nature of the Son, his high-priestly work, cosmology, the epistle’s theology of Scripture, supersessionism, the call to faith, and more.

Contributors: Edward Adams, Loveday Alexander, Harold W. Attridge, Richard Bauckham, Markus Bockmuehl, Daniel Driver, Douglas Farrow, Trevor Hart, Richard B. Hays, Stephen R. Holmes, Morna Hooker, Edison M. Kalengyo, Mariam J. Kamell, Bruce L. McCormack, Nathan MacDonald, I. Howard Marshall, R. Walter L. Moberly, Carl Mosser, Mark Nanos, Nehemia Polen, John Polkinghorne, Ken Schenck, Oskar Skarsaune, Daniel J. Treier, John Webster, Ben Witherington, Terry J. Wright.

2009 SBL Program Schedule (updated)

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Universalisms And Theological Exegesis

9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
11/21/2009
Room TBD

Cherith Nordling, Grand Rapids, MI, Presiding (10 min)
Benjamin Sommer, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Panelist (25 min)
Joel Kaminsky, Smith College, Panelist (25 min)
Markus Bockmuehl, University of Oxford, Panelist (25 min)
J. Ross Wagner, Princeton Theological Seminary, Panelist (25 min)
Discussion (40 min)

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What is “Historical Criticism?”

1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
11/21/2009
Room TBD

Kathryn Greene-McCreight, Presiding (10 min)
Alan Cooper, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Panelist (25 min)
Peter Machinist, Harvard University, Panelist (25 min)
Francis Watson, Durham University, Panelist (25 min)
Michael Legaspi, Creighton University, Panelist (25 min)
Discussion (40 min)

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Hagar and Sarah in the Bible: Session 1

9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
11/22/2009
Room TBD

Mike Michielin, Toronto School of Theology, Presiding (10 min)
Paul Borgman, Gordon College, Panelist (20 min)
Nathan MacDonald, University of St. Andrews-Scotland, Panelist (20 min)
James Andrews, Aberdeen University, Panelist (20 min)
Cherith Nordling, Panelist (20 min)
Discussion (45 min)

See abstracts here.

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Hagar and Sarah in the Bible: Session 2

9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
11/24/2009
Room TBD

AKM Adam, Duke University, Presiding
Benjamin Laugelli, University of Virginia, Panelist (20 min)
Hubert Keener, Baylor University, Panelist (20 min)
Gregory Lee, Duke University, Panelist (20 min)
Gesila Uzukwu, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Panelist (20 min)
Discussion (45 min)

See abstracts here.

Fowl on History and Historical Criticism, pt. 8

This is the eighth in an eight-part series of excerpts from Stephen E. Fowl’s forthcoming volume in the Cascade Companion series. Theological Interpretation of Scripture will be released later this summer by Cascade Books.

Contents
Introduction: What Sort of a Companion Is This?
One – Scripture: Its Nature and Place in God’s Drama of Salvation
Two – Theological Interpretation and its Relation to Various other Concerns
Three – Practices and Habits of Theological Interpretation
Four – Prospects and Issues for the Future
Five – Guests at a Party

The series of posts will follow Fowl’s sustained discussion of history and historical criticism in the second chapter. Feel free to comment.

Part one Part two Part three Part four Part five Part six Part seven

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If there is to be a revival of theological interpretation of Scripture among scholars and students, we must re-learn how to grant theological concerns priority over other concerns. I recognize that this is a somewhat open-ended aim. This openness is because it will not always be clear how and in what ways the priority of theological concerns will need to take shape in specific times and places. Theological interpretation will always to some degree be constituted by ongoing arguments and debates about how to bring theological concerns to bear on scriptural interpretation. At the very least, however, granting theological concerns priority will involve a return to the practice of using Scripture as a way of ordering and comprehending the world rather than using the world as a way of comprehending Scripture. Although this was the standard practice prior to the 18th century, we today will have to re-learn this habit for our own time. Before exploring this in more detail, I want to discuss other concerns that impinge on theological interpretation. In particular, I want to now take up the discussion of biblical theology, which I started above.

Fowl on History and Historical Criticism, pt. 7

This is the seventh in an eight-part series of excerpts from Stephen E. Fowl’s forthcoming volume in the Cascade Companion series. Theological Interpretation of Scripture will be released later this summer by Cascade Books.

Contents
Introduction: What Sort of a Companion Is This?
One – Scripture: Its Nature and Place in God’s Drama of Salvation
Two – Theological Interpretation and its Relation to Various other Concerns
Three – Practices and Habits of Theological Interpretation
Four – Prospects and Issues for the Future
Five – Guests at a Party

The series of posts will follow Fowl’s sustained discussion of history and historical criticism in the second chapter. Feel free to comment.

Part one Part two Part three Part four Part five Part six

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First, theological interpretation of Scripture never really stopped. Although it was largely exiled from academic biblical studies, Christians have been interpreting Scripture theologically because their identity as Christians compels them to do so. Reading Scripture theologically is first and foremost a practice of the church. It does not depend on the support of academics for its survival. Nevertheless, disciplined, scholarly attention to interpreting Scripture theologically can only benefit the practice within the church. Second, numerous generations of scholars came of age when historical criticism was the dominant form of academic biblical studies. Thus, the interpretive practices and strategies that arise when theological concerns and aims are given priority in Scriptural interpretation fell into desuetude. Moreover, the academic practice of theology was separated from the practice of academic biblical studies. These two disciplines came to jealously guard their autonomy, making it difficult for scholars to try to work in both fields. It has only been in the past two decades that the scholars have started to bridge the gap between theology and biblical studies with the aim of re-invigorating the practice of theological interpretation.

Fowl on History and Historical Criticism, pt. 6

This is the sixth in an eight-part series of excerpts from Stephen E. Fowl’s forthcoming volume in the Cascade Companion series. Theological Interpretation of Scripture will be released later this summer by Cascade Books.

Contents
Introduction: What Sort of a Companion Is This?
One – Scripture: Its Nature and Place in God’s Drama of Salvation
Two – Theological Interpretation and its Relation to Various other Concerns
Three – Practices and Habits of Theological Interpretation
Four – Prospects and Issues for the Future
Five – Guests at a Party

The series of posts will follow Fowl’s sustained discussion of history and historical criticism in the second chapter. Feel free to comment.

Part one Part two Part three Part four Part five

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Let me be clear at this point. The recognition that we all view the world and its past through a set of lenses and not immediately does not mean that all lenses result in 20/20 vision, that all lenses are equal. For my purposes it is sufficient to note that if the dominance of historical criticism depended on the assumption that the world and its past were immediately available to us, then the recognition that the world is not immediately available must also affect the claims of historical criticism. As a result, in the past thirty-five years, professional biblical scholarship has seen an explosion of interpretive strategies driven by scholars with particular sets of interests and commitments that go beyond presenting the past as it actually was. The most prominent of these are feminist and Marxist/liberationist strategies for interpreting the Bible.

As a result the field of biblical studies today appears much different, and more fragmented than it did even fifty years ago. The concerns and practices characteristic of historical criticism are still around. They exist in a chastened form, however. Historical critics can no longer claim to offer us an immediate view into the past. Rather, they pursue their specific historical investigations as one among many sets of scholarly interpretive interests. The demise of the conceptual apparatus that allowed for the dominance of historical critical interpretation of the Bible has not led to the elimination of historical criticism, nor should it. It has, however, opened the door to critical approaches to the Bible that do not grant those particular historical concerns priority over all others. This means in theory that there is now room for theological concerns to re-enter the scholarly realm. This has been slow to happen for a variety of reasons.

Fowl on History and Historical Criticism, pt. 5

This is the fifth in an eight-part series of excerpts from Stephen E. Fowl’s forthcoming volume in the Cascade Companion series. Theological Interpretation of Scripture will be released later this summer by Cascade Books.

Contents
Introduction: What Sort of a Companion Is This?
One – Scripture: Its Nature and Place in God’s Drama of Salvation
Two – Theological Interpretation and its Relation to Various other Concerns
Three – Practices and Habits of Theological Interpretation
Four – Prospects and Issues for the Future
Five – Guests at a Party

The series of posts will follow Fowl’s sustained discussion of history and historical criticism in the second chapter. Feel free to comment.

Part one Part two Part three Part four

=============================

As long as biblical scholars treated the world, past and present, as more or less immediately accessible to them, then the practices, methods, and results of historical criticism confidently dominated academic biblical study. Theological concerns were largely pushed to the margins. To the extent theological concerns received a hearing among biblical scholars it was only as those concerns arose from the assumptions common to historical critics. For Christians, this resulted in the academic subdiscipline of biblical theology. Such work often generated interesting interpretations, but did not directly contribute to the interests and ends of theological interpretation of Scripture. In short, this is because biblical theology was systematically committed to granting historical concerns priority over theological ones. Interestingly, although many Jews fully participated in historical critical study of the Bible, they seem to have recognized the severe theological limitations of biblical theology and did not participate in it. There will be more on biblical theology below.

Scientific, cultural, political, and philosophical movements created conditions for the rise of historical criticism. The past century has witnessed great changes in the intellectual, social, and political climate. These changes worked both to undermine the dominance of historical criticism and to open possibilities for theological and ideological strategies of interpretation.

Recall that historical concerns took precedence over theological concerns in the 18th century only when people assumed they could comprehend the world and its past in more or less immediate ways, apart from the lenses provided by Scripture read theologically. Numerous genocidal conflicts, the rise of quantum physics, the ideological critiques of Marx, the psychoanalytical explorations of Freud, and many other factors now make it clear that we never perceive or comprehend the world and its past without some set of lenses.

Fowl on History and Historical Criticism, pt. 4

This is the fourth in an eight-part series of excerpts from Stephen E. Fowl’s forthcoming volume in the Cascade Companion series. Theological Interpretation of Scripture will be released later this summer by Cascade Books.

Contents
Introduction: What Sort of a Companion Is This?
One – Scripture: Its Nature and Place in God’s Drama of Salvation
Two – Theological Interpretation and its Relation to Various other Concerns
Three – Practices and Habits of Theological Interpretation
Four – Prospects and Issues for the Future
Five – Guests at a Party

The series of posts will follow Fowl’s sustained discussion of history and historical criticism in the second chapter. Feel free to comment.

Part one Part two Part three

=============================

Although people often speak of historical criticism as if it is a single organized whole, it really reflects three recurring and interrelated issues. The first issue concerns the policing of the scholar’s confessional stance. Once “the historical” is presumed to be an autonomous realm it is a small step from presuming that realm is providentially ordered (whether by the Christian God or the Deist’s god) to presuming that history itself must provide its own standards of meaning and intelligibility independent of one’s confessional stance. Once this step is taken historical critics must seek to root out any seepage from their own or another scholar’s confessional commitments into their historical work. This forced the vast majority of biblical scholars to learn how to separate their historical research from their private confessional commitments in order to participate fully in scholarly discussions.

The second issue concerns questions of the historical reliability of the biblical texts. Initially, this issue addressed the nature and scope of evidence about Jesus. Scholars focused on the character of the evangelists and their honesty. Very soon, however, the focus of this question shifted to the gospel texts themselves as scholars tried to develop a variety of methods for getting behind the final form of the gospel texts to find data about what really happened. Further, as more extra biblical sources became available, they too became part of the mix of possible pieces of evidence. Rather than being a set of lenses for interpreting the world theologically, the biblical texts become relatively discrete pieces of evidence for a variety of historical questions ranging from concerns with the authors of these texts and the sources they used to the insight these texts might provide into particular periods in the history of Israel and the church.

The third issue concerns the interpretive schema used to organize the evidence. Once history is thought to be an autonomous notion with its own set of methods for establishing intelligibility or meaning, then scholars must not only figure out which pieces of information will count as evidence, but they will need to develop ways of ordering and interpreting the evidence.