IVP - Addenda & Errata - August 2007 Archives

Required Hermeneutical Reading!

Wayne Grudem has published a book suggesting that evangelical feminism, or egalitarianism, is perhaps a new path toward theological liberalism. Among other things he offers a critique of William J. Webb’s Slaves, Women and Homosexuals (InterVarsity Press, 2001), which argues for a redemptive-movement hermeneutic. This hermeneutic, which asks us to take full and nuanced account of the redemptive direction of Scripture, is in Grudem’s view too subtle and complex by at least half. And it places the true interpretation of Scripture in the hands of experts.

May We Borrow Your Pope?

August might be a “down” time for some professions, but if you are in academic theological publishing here in North America, it can be a busy time. It’s the season of final preparation to send books to the printer so they will be released in time for the ETS and AAR/SBL conventions in November. One of these books in my bailiwick this August is The Legacy of John Paul II: An Evangelical Assessment, edited by Tim Perry (author of Mary for Evangelicals). It consists of essays by leading evangelical intellectuals who examine the pontiff’s major encyclicals. This is a book that I have been watching develop for over two years—since John Paul’s death—and I’m eager for it’s debut this fall. Today I have been reviewing the page proofs, and that eagerness is renewed.

Banned in Malaysia!

Silverfishbooks.com recently posted a list of books banned in Malaysia. There are sixteen books on the list, most of them having to do with either sex or religion. The religion in question is Islam, of course, and the list is said to be drawn up by The Internal Security Ministry. Further, the secretary of the ministry's Publication and Quranic Text Control Division is cited as saying that some of the books deviate from Islamic teaching and might endanger the morals of readers—and even bring about public disorder. Among these banned books is Terrance Tiessen’s Who Can Be Saved? (IVP). As Tiessen commented when he pointed it out to me, “I'm not surprised that they did not like it, only that they thought it significant enough to bother with!”

If you spend much time thinking about his book appearing on the list, you might come up with an interesting backstory. Anyway, for the Malaysian government, this book is on the errata list. For us, this falls under addenda. And as the book’s editor, I’ll assure you: the book is definitely significant enough for you to bother with! And you’ll now get the additional frisson of reading a banned book.

What’s in a Map?

I recently ran across two comments on maps. One was while editing Rediscovering Paul, a forthcoming textbook by David Capes, Rodney Reeves and Randy Richards. Randy cites an incident from his time as a missionary in Indonesia.

[I] was quite lost among a cluster of islands in the South Pacific. I had a map. I asked a local where I was. He looked confused and then pointed to the ground. “No,” I said, “where am I on this?” pointing to the map. He looked confused and said I was holding it, not standing on it. I explained it was a picture of this island. He wondered where the trees and rocks so clearly around us were in the picture. “If you were a bird flying high in the sky,” I explained, “and you looked down, which of these islands would you see?” “I have never been a bird,” he replied in disgust and walked off. Maps and other visual representations of the world are not as natural and self-explanatory as we often assume.