IVP - Addenda & Errata - February 2008 Archives

The Vast Domain of Theological Studies

Have you ever considered the staggering range of knowledge—and bibliography—we allude to with the words “theological studies”? For one thing, with the pervasive character of religion and theology in history, societies and cultures, it is difficult to know where to draw the line and say “this is no longer theological studies.” And actually, once one has drawn that line, the broader historical, social and cultural context is still relevant.

What then does theological studies encompass. We have biblical studies, systematic theology, historical theology, church history, ethics, spirituality, liturgics, ecumenics, missiology and “practical theology” (which is more than homiletics). That’s a rough list, and let’s just say that it’s close enough.

David F. Wright (1937-2008)

We just learned that David F. Wright died last week. You can find some details in The Scotsman. Wright was for many years Senior Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at New College, University of Edinburgh, and later Professor of Patristic and Reformation Christianity. He had a deep knowledge of patristic and Reformation history, and was also known for his writings on baptism and sexuality.

On Using the Terms (Theological) Liberal and Conservative

I don’t always make a point of this with authors (and academic authors are at the forefront of my mind right now), but truthfully, I don’t like to use the terms liberal and conservative when speaking of positions or perspectives or conclusions, particularly in biblical studies. Why not? Am I just a “compromiser” who is unwilling to name things what they are?

On Reading Karl Barth

For the past sixteen months or so, I’ve been reading Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. I set for myself the minimal goal of five pages a day, which I enjoy with my morning cup of coffee. I seldom exceed the “morning five,” though I’m often tempted. In fact, I tell myself that I’m not really committed to achieving my long-term desire of reading the entire CD—I’m just reading five pages a day to see where it takes me. Funny how these mental tricks work sometimes.

Yahweh’s Bathtub Toy

Here’s something delightful from the DOTWPW.

Kathryn Schifferdecker, in her article on “Creation Theology,” comments on Leviathan (known in Canaanite religion as Lotan, the twisting sea serpent) in Psalm 104:

Psalm 104 speaks in similar terms of Leviathan, as a creature that God created and in which God takes pleasure (Ps 104:26). In fact, in Psalm 104 God creates Leviathan as something of a bathtub toy, placing the chaos monster in the sea so that God can “play” or “sport” (shq) with it.

Later she returns to the subject:

The word used for Woman Wisdom “playing” (shq) before God is used also in Psalm 104:26 of God’s “playing” or “sporting” with Leviathan. Many English translations of Psalm 104:26 are similar to that of the NRSV: “There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it [the sea].” The verse can also be translated: “There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to play with.” In order to make the antecedent of “it” the sea, one has to go back to the previous verse. It is more likely that the antecedent of the pronoun is found in the same verse, in the name “Leviathan.” God “plays” or “sports” with Leviathan as one would with a bath toy or a pet.

So there goes Leviathan—old Lotan, the monstrous and twisting sea serpent, erstwhile bad boy of Baal epic. Fear not! He’s nothing but Yahweh’s wubber ducky!

C. F. D. Moule Again

Back in October I blogged on C. F. D. Moule and offered some links to obituaries. Now there's a Sermon for the Life and Work of the Revd Prof CFD Moule by Rowan Williams, preached at Great St. Mary's, Cambridge, on February 9.

Here are a couple excerpts:

There was the apparently limitless generosity with his time and attention for students: I am only one of scores who found their way to his rooms in Clare on Tuesday evenings to discuss the sort of issues in New Testament studies that preoccupied us and to discover that so much of what we were struggling and arguing about could be held within a calm and prayerful perspective, within the hugely bigger intellectual and spiritual world that Charlie lived in. And there was the sheer manner of the man: the unforced humility, the shy warmth - and sometimes, at the most unintentionally comic level, the way in which he would make it perfectly clear to you that someone or other's book wasn't really worth bothering with: 'Of course, it's a monument of careful work by a first class scholar, with all kinds of suggestive aspects, and I so wish I could persuade myself that it was true'...

And that takes us back to what happened in those long and apparently quiet years in Clare, in the Margaret Chair, in wonderfully active retirement in Ridley once again. What happened was Christ. Everything Charlie wrote about the New Testament began from the uncompromising and unqualified insistence that we could understand nothing about the text unless we understood that it was rooted in contact with Jesus; not memory or inspiration but contact. Paul, he writes, 'speaks of Christian life as lived in an area which is Christ' (Origin of Christology, 95): what the Spirit does (and he was always cautious about any theology that threatened to define the Spirit in abstraction from Christ) is to 'make manifold' the reality of Christ (104), so that Christ is both the territory Christians inhabit and the one who inhabits it in and with us, still personal yet never just individual, realising his infinite self in the finite soul and body, in the shared life of believers, 'growing' himself, you could say, towards the infinite and so never surpassed scope of his eternal relation with the Father.

And there's more!

The Known, the Known Unknown and the Unknown Unknown

As a very unpopular U.S. Secretary of Defense once declaimed about matters related to the contemporary Middle East:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

He was ridiculed for that. But the fact is that for interpreters approaching OT wisdom, poetry and writings, the Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings offers something in each category of Rummy’s known and unknown, and not a few things “we don’t know we don’t know.” And that latter category can make all the difference!

No Chloroform Here!

The Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry and Writings is nearing completion. And, among other things, I’m spending hours worming my way through page proofs. While it’s detailed work, it’s also gratifying to see this seventh volume in the series unfold and to be reminded of its various facets and layers of perspective.

Crossing the Disciplinary Divide

Following up my last blog on “A Nose for Theological Interpretation,” I have some more thoughts on the problem of “all Kittel and no Barth” or vice versa. As one forced to be a theological generalist (even though my training is in New Testament), it's my observation that there is an incredible amount of detailed work going on in the various theological fields. No surprise there, huh? It is beyond keeping up with. Many theologians these days are probably happy just to maintain a serviceable knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, let alone grasp the current trends and developments in OT or NT studies. Likewise, how many in biblical studies have a good grasp of current thinking and developments in systematic theology? Do they read much in systematics? Not in my experience (though I’d happily be shown otherwise).

A Nose for Theological Interpretation?

Several times a week I run the trail up to Poo Poo Point on nearby Tiger Mountain. (To clear the air, the Point’s name alludes to the steam whistle that used to sound from there in the days when it was the scene of a thriving logging operation.) Our dog Remo (I did not name him!) always accompanies me. He has run this trail with me hundreds of times, and he has closely examined and marked every rock, root, fern and tree as his own. The entire run he is thoroughly engaged, and I can only imagine the sensory feast he enjoys with his sharply tuned nose and ears. The trail is his text, and he is a close exegete of its signs, grammar and textures. And then there is wildlife to flush out and chase, from squirrels to black bear (who gladly turned the game about). He is a master of his world, and he revels in it.

But there is one thing I’m convinced Remo does not see, or at least he does not see it truly.