I found out about a periodical aimed at young theological students called Catalyst.  They offer articles from an evangelical perspective within the United Methodist Church.  The articles are very short and are geared towards the uninitiated student – the most basic information on a subject.  These work well for earnest laypeople or college and seminary students.

When I began to peruse their back issues I was amazed at the number of world renowned biblical scholars they brought on to write pieces (and not all Methodists, as I gather).  Here is a sampling (not all are well-known scholars, but some are certainly excellent topics and overviews).  Check out especially McKnight, Gorman, Watson, and Bauckham.

Joel Green on recent Gospels and Acts commentaries

D. Christopher Spinks on Theological Interpretation of Scripture

Brian Brock on his book Singing the Ethos of God

Joseph Dongell on the New Perspective on Paul and Wesleyan Theology

Brian Walsh on Thinking like a Christian

Michael Goheen and the Bible as story

Scot McKnight on the authority of the Bible

Michael Gorman on embodying the cross

Brian Russell on the need for the Biblical languages

Andrew Clarke on Church leadership

Terence Fretheim and God and the power of Vulnerability

Mark Horst on the Lindbeck/Frei School of Theology

Carey C. Newman’s assessment of Wright’s quest for Jesus

Christopher Wright on OT ethics

Craig Keener on Christ and Christian Missions

Joel Green on Scripture, Theology, and Hermeneutics

Francis Watson on Christian confession and Biblical scholarship

Richard Bauckham on the relevance of Revelation

Kevin Vanhoozer and Overinterpretation

I am trying to get together a series of three documents that offer brief summaries of N.T. Wright’s views on Paul, Jesus, and Biblical Theology.  I am writing on Paul and I have worked out who is doing Biblical Theology.  I am looking for someone to tackle Jesus and the Gospels according to Wright.

The goal is that it will prep people for Wheaton Conference (April 16-17, 2010) where Wright’s theology and hermeneutics will be discussed by top-rank scholars.  So- please post a comment alerting me of your interest in helping us out.

I hope to post the documents on my blog (probably as a link to a scribd doc) in early March.  That will put them in use for about 6 weeks in the run up to the conference.

More on this later…

In seminary, I had a church history course with Garth Rosell – one of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s finest professors.  He has such a winsome spirit and has a passionate heart for seeing God’s people grow.

Anyway, at one point he commented how we Americans are obsessed with collecting Bibles.  You have a Gideon’s Bible someone gave you, your Bible from confirmation or Sunday School or whatever.  Your “Study Bible.”  But then you wanted something with more zing so you got the Serendipity Bible or the Spiritial [fill in noun] Bible.  Oops – you don’t have a variety of translations.  Gotta get a few more Bibles.  Did you hear about the Word Study Bible….and on and on and on.  Rosell lamented how we have an abundance of Bibles while Christians throughout history have hungered for God’s Word and so many have been without.

So – when I heard about the Mosaic NLT (Tyndale), I was skeptical.  I am going to be teaching a Christian Formation course next year and I wanted to have my students use something that would give their Bibles something to aid in their character-building and in their communion with God.

I tend to shudder at most cheesy “spiritual formation” Bibles, but I also did not want to simply throw at them a study Bible with academic notes.

In comes the Mosaic NLT.  It has a running text of the New Living Translation – uninterrupted!  That means that you can read Scripture along without notes and “reflections” and fad-ish sidebars.

What makes this Bible special is the lengthy front-matter.  It is a “mosaic” of devotional thoughts and sermons and reflections from such diverse people as William Shakespeare, Horatio Bonar, Lauren Winner, Clement,  J.R.R. Tolkein, Peter Abelard, excerpts from the Book of Common Prayer, Brian McLaren, and a variety of modern everyday people.

These Mosaic bits (that form a whole which glorifies Jesus) are grouped in weekly readings; and the weeks are meant to follow (roughly) a traditional church calender.  It is done in a way that almost any church tradition (mostly mainline I am guessing) can use it.

My favorite aspect of the Bible is the use of Christian art from the Bread and Fish mosaic (4th century AD) to modern art (and everything in-between).

Rather than giving my students a “chicken soup for the soul” kind of devotional Bible, this allows a host of voices from all of Christianity (globally and temporally) to speak into the lives of Christians.

Lest one think this is all words of wisdom from spiritual gurus and not from bona fide academically-trained Christians, I was encouraged to see these people’s excerpts:  Karl Barth, Bonhoeffer, Albert Einstein (?), J.I. Packer (of course), Miroslav Volf, and Kallistos Ware.

Also….the word of Sufjan Stevens makes an appearance…

Anyway, I don’t think this needs to be the 10th Bible you own, but I am both a fan of the NLT and I think the idea of a Mosaic of readings and artistic impressions is useful.

If you do buy one, as my students will probably be required to do, perhaps you can give away one of your (probably many) old Bibles to someone that doesn’t have one.

This is a special ecological Expository Times.  Looks like it includes a nice piece by Edward Adams and a review of the Green Bible by David Horrell.  Do check it out.

The 2010 New Testament group of the Tyndale Fellowship summer conference has selected the theme “Remembering Martin Hengel” on the basis of which a number of scholars will be giving papers in honor of the great German historian and theologian.

Observe some of the papers:

Andrea Kostenberger – “The Use (or Non-Use) of John’s Gospel in Historical Jesus Research: Neglect and Possibility”

Richard Bauckham – “Eyewitnesses and the Gospel of Mark”

Donald Hagner – “The Parting of the Ways Once More”

Steve Walton – “How Mighty A Minority Were the Hellenists?”

Rainer Riesner – “Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels”

Jorg Frey – “A New History-of-Religions School? Martin Hengel’s work on Christology and its Impact on Recent Research”

Seyoon Kim – “The Son of God”

Wow!

The University of Durham has invited Morna Hooker (Cambridge) to give the second-annual C.K. Barrett lecture on February 16.  The title of her paper will be: “Scriptural Holiness: Paul’s Understanding of Sanctification.”  Last year’s lecture, the inaugural presentation, was given by Richard B. Hays and it was a very happy occasion (as Barrett was present) and the paper was well-received.

Morna is a nice choice as she (informally?) worked a bit with Barrett on her doctoral research (if I recall correctly) and she is a fellow Methodist (as is, of course, Hays).  And her topic is quite interesting – a subject close to the heart of all Methodists and certainly will be of interest to Barrett if he is well enough to be present.  I am sad that I cannot be in attendance for this.  Perhaps I can persuade Morna to send me a copy!  In any case, this lecture is open to the public, so if you are anywhere in England, consider stopping by.  And tell me how it goes!

In a previous post, I shared the beginning of a conversation that I was privileged to have with NT professor Craig Keener.  Here is the second and final portion.

NKG: Based on your work on this commentary, can you give us a one-sentence summary of Paul’s message in Romans?

CK: How about something like: “The good news is God’s power to save everyone who believes, whether Jews or Gentiles, for God’s righteousness is revealed in it …” (Rom 1:16-17)… Oops, that doesn’t sound very original.  How about: God’s way of righteousness is the same for both Jew and Gentile: depend on God for transforming righteousness.

The problem for an exegete is that every word I just said is loaded and debated, and I can’t say it without remembering that!  There is a heavy emphasis on “believe” (I can’t type Greek letters in this email program), but I think modern western Christians have a terrible time with that word because of its subjective connotations for us since Kant and Kierkegaard.  We try to work up a feeling of faith or suppress doubt, and miss the point.  Faith is not its own object.  When Jesus talks about a mustard seed of faith (sorry, remember I am still transitioning from my work in Gospels), his point is that it’s not how much faith you have, but in whom your faith is.  The faith may be tiny but if it is in a very big God, God is more than big enough to make up for it.  The point is not to have some subjective experience of undirected faith, but to put our trust in the One who is ultimately trustworthy.

NKG: What commentators on Romans did you find yourself returning to again and again?  Or, put another way, which Romans commentary in your personal library has the most underlinings, scribblings, and marginal exclamation points?

CK: It’s hard to single one out, because Romans is blessed with a lot of significant recent commentators.  I will some that immediately come to mind: Jewett, Fitzmyer, Dunn, Moo, Schreiner … (on a shorter level also Talbert and others—where does one stop?)  I have heard that Beverly Gaventa is working on a Romans commentary and I expect that one to be very significant also.  I enjoy most of all working through Paul and seeing how he employs his words, where he echoes the LXX, and so forth.  Nevertheless, there are many insights one gets only by engaging with a broader range of interpreters, and Romans has quite a lot of them.

NKG: Now, you are known to be a New Testament generalist, comfortable in Paul, Jesus, and the rest of it (I particularly learned from your Revelation commentary!).  But you have spent a concentrated amount of time in recent years in the Gospels (correct me if I am off here).  What does someone who is well-versed in the Gospels, its background, and its history of interpretation have to offer to the often myopic world of Pauline exegesis and research?  How did you find that recent Gospels work useful or stimulating in your Romans research?  Here is a good chance to plug the generalist mentality!

CK: Paul is actually where I started (e.g., Paul, Women & Wives), but Duke’s NT faculty was particularly heavy in Gospels when I studied there (Ed Sanders did both, but I had Moody Smith and Dan Via particularly for Gospels; I was too early, unfortunately, to get a course with Richard Hays) and it was inevitable that my graduate work influenced me.  But Pauline studies has changed a lot since I was working in Gospels!

Pauline studies actually is less myopic in a sense than Gospels studies.  With Paul, you have hard evidence of contact among a variety of Christian congregations in the Mediterranean world, and you take seriously the voice of the undisputed letters as a firsthand voice in early Christianity.  There is a lot of loosely anchored speculation about communities in some sectors of Gospels studies that could profit from the concrete discipline of Paulinists.  But perhaps my positive experiences have left me overly optimistic about Paulinists.

Narrative criticism, emphasized in some Gospels study as well as in Paul, does help one to approach Paul’s letters as cohesive wholes, reading them in dialogue with their situation and not fixating so much on details that one misses the forest for the trees.  Theologically, moving from the Gospels (and questions about Jesus) to Paul also invites disciplined thinking about how Paul draws not only from the Septuagint but also from the early movement that had so recently sprung from Jesus of Nazareth.  The language is often very different, but I am finding that some common concepts are there on the experiential level (e.g., Jesus’ teaching and practice of faith, of dependence on God, noted above).

When addressing historical issues, Gospels studies can get very polarized into camps, with some members of each camp reading only the work of their fellow campers.  Coming from that background into Pauline studies, I am happy to shed that polarization over historical issues.  There are other camps, such as divisions over the meaning of pistis Christou (sorry again about my lack of Greek font here), but it appears to me that most Paul scholars are not going to suppress or ignore other scholars just because of such disagreements.  Again, I might be too optimistic, but it looks as though even if there is some polarization and stereotyping, it is less than in some historical Jesus studies.  That seems a refreshing change.

NKG: I know that you just came out with a book on the Jesus of history (which just arrived at my doorstep today!) and you have a three-volume commentary on Acts coming in the not-too-distant future.  From the Romans commentary, I got the impression that you plan to do more work on Romans.  Is that correct?  What other major and minor writing projects are on your horizon – would you be willing to share with us?

CK: Thank you for noticing these other works.  The Historical Jesus of the Gospels drew especially on my work in Matthew, and some in my work on Luke-Acts for the Acts commentary.  Its sequel, which required a separate volume, is a work on the plausibility of miracle reports in early Christian historical narratives; perhaps that will be out in 2011 (with Hendrickson).  I finished the Acts commentary a couple years ago, after six years of writing (not including prior research), and it is still not out because it is taking awhile to edit (and then typeset and index).  (Hint: Don’t write long commentaries.  They cost more, also.)  I love Acts and love every bit of the commentary, but next time I am going for a shorter NT book to write commentary on!  It has felt so relaxing to write a couple books (since completing Acts) that could be measured in months rather than years.

As for what is next but not yet started: I would love to write in greater detail on Romans and 1 Corinthians, as I implied above and in my shorter commentaries on each of those books.  I do not intend to supplant what others have done on those works, but my file of research is bursting with many thousands of unused tidbits from ancient sources ready to be applied here.  Over the years, as I have read through ancient material, I have filed most of the materials under the NT references where it could be useful.  At my current rate, I would be 100 by the time I finish publishing it all, so I am having to narrow my focus on what to publish.  I have so much material useful for Romans and 1 Corinthians that those seem obvious targets, although Ihave a glut of material for some other books as well.  At the very least, having all that material on hand made writing the short commentary on Romans very quick.  My greatest difficulty was screening out the vast majority of material for which I lacked space.  The publisher and my coeditor were generous in allowing me a bit of extra space; I joked that if they didn’t I would end my commentary at Romans 14, like some early manuscripts of the letter!  (Smile)

Speaking of generous coeditors, if I may add this: Michael Bird has been such a joy to work with.  He actually initiated the idea for the series, but brought me in quite early, and we have gotten along wonderfully.  I asked him why he was so laid back and he responded that it was part of Australian culture to be laid back.  Wipf & Stock/Cascade have also been very supportive and they publish their works very quickly.

Craig Keener (Prof. of NT at Palmer Theological Seminary) has recently published a very insightful Romans commentary in the New Covenant Commentary Series. It is as if you have been invited to a party to hear the keynote speaker (Paul), but you don’t really know anyone that will be at the party.  Well, Keener is your party guide who gives you the scoop on everyone in the room.  His knowledge of ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman parallels and backgrounds is astounding and the commentary is busting at the seams with references which will become the student’s treasury.  Craig has so much knowledge of the ancient world and it is a no-brainer that we can all benefit from having some access to some of the connections he is able to make between a host of ancient religious leaders, philosophers, and leaders.  Also, he is very sensitive, in the commentary, to pastoral issues.  Too many scholars focus squarely on “historical” issues and never really address the ethical and theological aspects of the text.  Not so with Craig’s work.  You really get the best of both worlds!  I highly recommend buying it, but at least encourage your library to order it!

Craig was kind enough to answer some questions in an interview as we have a premier exegete of the NT taking on Romans.  This interview will be in two parts. [Update: The second part is HERE.]

NKG: Can you tell us about this New Covenant Commentary Series and why you decided, not only to participate, but also to co-edit the series?

CK: Mike Bird, the other editor, actually conceived the series and proposed it to Cascade/Wipf & Stock, but when he invited me to participate I was excited about the idea.  Several authors were already chosen before I came on board, but for the most part I got to participate close to the beginning.  We wanted to make good scholarship available at an accessible and affordable level.  We also wanted to give the authors the flexibility to play to their strengths—for that reason you will see differences in the approaches even of Michael and myself in our respective commentaries.  One of the most distinctive elements of the series, however, and perhaps the element that most excites me, is the cultural diversity of our authors.  Most commentaries are still being written in the west, but the global church has exploded over the past century, and most theological reflection in the world is therefore taking place outside the west.  We wanted to assemble a team of scholars from various parts of the world, to hear more of the voices of the global church and gain insights that many readers might not otherwise have access to.

NKG:  I presume that you had your pick of which book you might like to do.  Why Romans?  I am sure some scholars would find it too daunting to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) to develop a new commentary alongside so many Romans scholars.  What inspired you to take this particular book on?

CK: Hubris (smile).  Actually, I have long planned to write a commentary on Romans, though eventually a much larger one.  In this version I could employ only a very small percentage of my research, especially on primary sources from the ancient world, even though my coeditor kindly let me run over my assigned word limit!  Though I have been working in the Gospels for a number of years, I worked in Paul earlier.  I spent years working through Acts (a commentary that is unfortunately so long that it is taking a long time to appear), and my plans were to return to Paul afterward.  From my work in Greco-Roman sources, I found that 1-2 Corinthians made perfect sense (and had worked on these letters for a short commentary for Cambridge that came out in 2005).

When I got to Romans, though, I realized the difficulty to which you refer.  I thought that leaving the Gospels meant that I was leaving the realm of severe controversies, and was looking forward to the break.  But the “New Perspective” with which I was familiar earlier has become the “new perspectives,” and is a matter of serious debate.  I had to rethink a lot of issues and try to come to the most balanced conclusions that I could.  I guess it is not possible to avoid controversy!  At least in Pauline studies, though, I think that most scholars are willing to read other scholars who disagree with them.

NKG: What did you discover, in the course of your research for this Romans commentary, that surprised you?  Put another way, what presumptions did you have that were disabused?  Were their issues and texts that were seen in a completely new light?

CK: Many of my ideas were changed along the way.  I am glad that a lot of shifts and debates took place before I returned to Pauline studies, often involving ideas I took for granted a decade or two ago.  They serve as a warning to think cautiously about other issues and not to make sweeping claims based on consensus, since consensus is rarely constant.  I’ll give a few examples.

First, we overdo rhetorical criticism when we arrange letters as if they were speeches (and speeches designed like the models in rhetorical handbooks at that!).  On the other hand, Paul’s letters are not by any means typical letters–most of them, most prominently Romans, are full of argumentation.  So what we learn from rhetoric about argumentation, rhetorical devices, and so on is still profitable.  But I don’t think you can outline Romans as a speech.

Second, I excitedly embraced E. P. Sanders’ argument about ancient Judaism in Paul and Palestinian Judaism when I first read it over two decades ago.  Because I studied with him at Duke afterward, I also have an ingrained loyalty to my professor as a scholar and a friend.  But a number of serious criticisms have been raised (Avemarie, Gathercole, etc.), and they have to be taken into account..  I think Ed’s central argument–that Judaism taught grace–is solid and has won the day; even those who argue against aspects of his thesis almost always agree with this point, and we often forget that this was not the case when he wrote.  But the details are still being debated, and we can learn from this discussion.

Third, let me comment on an area where I still think what I thought before but for better reasons: having worked again through Romans, I think that the question of Jewish and Gentile relations is a central issue in the book.  What got my attention in a new way was the first part of chapter 15, to which I hadn’t paid enough attention before.  I do not by any means limit the theological implications of Romans to its original concrete situation (I believe some commentators have lent that impression of their approach), but I do believe that grappling with the concrete contexts that Romans addressed helps us to grapple with the sorts of concrete situations we face today, including some that reflect many analogies with the setting of Romans.

NKG: While reading your book, I was stunned by the level of your knowledge and interaction with ancient Greco-Roman and early Jewish literature and how you interconnected related material.  How does a broad and deep knowledge of ancient extra-biblical texts (from the same time period) contribute to one’s understanding of a New Testament document such as Romans?  (One can certainly see you at work on the relevance issue in the commentary, but what would you say to someone with the mentality that the text’s message is perspicuous as is – or, as I sometimes call it, the ‘just give me Jesus’ approach?)

CK: I have tried to take to heart Martin Hengel’s warning that the NT is a short book, as far as scholarly disciplines go, and NT scholars ought to know its context better.  I actually read a lot of ancient Mediterranean sources—Tacitus, Plato, Homer, Virgil, the Greek tragic and comic dramatists, and so forth—before my conversion to Christianity, as a young atheist.  I hadn’t read more than a chapter of the Bible before I was converted.  As a young Christian, I ditched these other sources and just immersed myself in the Bible—many weeks reading 40 chapters a day.  But as I was immersing myself in the Bible, I realized that I wasn’t taking all of it seriously, despite my stated intention.  If Paul says that he writes this letter to the “set-apart ones in Rome” (Rom 1:7), one has to take into account how they would have heard it.  To ignore that question is to fail to take seriously this passage that explicitly anchors Romans in a concrete historical setting.  It is simply naive to take a document written to a particular ancient setting, written in Greek, using figures of speech and cultural allusions that were shared assumptions by the ancient author and the author’s intended audience, and assume that we can read it without taking any of that into account.  I’m not saying that we can’t get many correct ideas from a translation without additional background, but you will also miss a lot.

That is why I have spent a couple decades collecting data, reading through ancient sources and thinking of connections with the NT documents (and, in time, how what I learned from some ancient Mediterranean sources provides context for other Mediterranean sources).  I enjoy exploring ancient literature, but I want especially to make my work useful for those who want to understand the NT better.

Yes, I had trouble believing it, but it is true.  Oh blessed Google.

Apparently it is John Goldingay (Fuller Theological Seminary) who has been slated by WJK to produce the Old Testament counter-part to the popular Wright series The New Testament For Everyone.  I must say that I have been listening to Goldingay on itunes and he is absolutely the best choice for working on the OT series of this type.  His illustrations are reasonable and insightful and often humorous.  He has a warm and charitable way, similar to Wright.  He knows his history, but has a deep interest in theology, as Wright.  Marvelous!

As you might guess, the series will begin with Genesis, in two volumes (1-16, 17-50).  I get a sense from Goldingay’s lectures that he is more “cheekier” than Wright (in the good sense!).  One chapter from the forthcoming books is entitled: “Two Guys Who Need Their Heads Banged Together.”  That is vintage Goldingay.  I get a sense that we will be seeing this out in March/April 2010.