His novel Byzantium is set in medieval Ireland and recounts the journeys of a young scribe, Aidan, living in an Irish monastery. He is chosen by the order to accompany some monks to Byzantium to present a gift to the Emperor. The journey turns out to more than he bargained for. Along the way he is captured and enslaved by Vikings, and his trek to Byzantium takes a long and distant detour.

At the end of the book, Aidan is back safe and sound in his native land when a lookout sees the Sea Wolves (Vikings) approaching. The abbey is in a state of panic, scurrying about to hide the treasure. They send Aidan to meet them, hoping his facility with the language would dissuade them from bringing their pirate ways to their peaceful abbey.

As they come closer, Aidan recognizes one of the Vikings as his old friend Gunnar. Soon, he is reunited with those who first enslaved him and then came to be his close friends.

As it turns out, the Vikings have come to Aidan’s land not to plunder and pillage but to seek out their friend. Throughout their journeys together Aidan had opportunities to respond with Christian love to those who at first meant him only harm.

The Vikings come bearing a very expensive gift (a solid silver embossed book cover)—only it is no gift but a first installment of a trade agreement. They want to build “a church for the Christ” and they want Aidan, who introduced them to Christianity, to come back with them to oversee the project.

In the meantime, however, Aidan’s struggles have brought him to a point of despair and unbelief, and he chides his visitors for trusting in a God who “cares nothing for us.”

Gunnar responds that it is their gods who “neither hear nor care.” What makes the Christian god different, Gunnar explains to Aiden, is that he came to live among the fisherfolk and was hung up on a tree to die. “And I remember thinking,” says Gunnar, “this Hanging God is unlike any of the others; this god suffers, too, just like his people….Does Odin do this for those who worship him? Does Thor suffer with us?”

Gunnar, as an outsider, zeroes in on something distinctive about the Gospel: the Christian God is a “Hanging God,” who does not observe suffering from a distance but takes part in it. A suffering God is a disorienting thought, if we let it sink in for a moment. It is also logically inexplicable. If true, however, it is, as Gunnar concluded, “good news.” In our darkest moments, we are not alone.

[This is an edited excerpt from my forthcoming commentary on Ecclesiastes due out in October.]

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I am very proud to announce the release of Eyes to See and Ears to Hear: Essays in Memory of J. Alan Groves. I, along with my former colleagues Doug Green and Mike Kelly, worked for three years bringing these essays together, and we are thrilled to be able to honor Al’s memory in this way. Al taught all of us Hebrew during our student years at Westminster Theological Seminary, and he was our colleague as well until he succumbed to cancer on February 5, 2007, at the age of 54.

In addition to the three editors, contributors include Tremper Longman III, Bruce Waltke, and Karen Jobes, and various blessings and reminiscences are offered by former friends and colleagues, including Sam Logan, Ed Welch, Sinclair Ferguson, and Steve Taylor.

We were able to present Al’s widow Libbie and their four children with a mock copy of the book this past summer at a surprise gathering of many of the contributors. But today is a proud moment for all of us.

Pete

View endorsements; table of contents; foreword by Moises Silva; preface by the editors; personal words about Al Groves from Sinclair Ferguson, Samuel T Logan, Jr., Eep Talstra, and Ed Welch; Al’s own letter written to be read at his memorial service; and the full chapter “Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? A Biblical-Theological Approach” by Tremper Longman III (PDF)

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Rachel Evans thinks doubt is a part of faith. In fact she thinks doubt can save your faith–provided you have the faith to doubt and the courage to learn from it what God may be showing you.

I agree with Rachel, and I wish I could say it as well as she does in her just-published memoir Evolving in Monkey Town.

Like a lot of people out there, I picked up the book (actually, Rachel gave me a copy at a conference –yeah me), and I couldn’t put it down. It struck a cord with me (here and here), but more importantly, it became quickly clear to me that there are a LOT of people who will benefit from Rachel’s honesty and insights.

Rachel connects with Christians who believe the Gospel, or think they do, or want to, but whose inner-theological gatekeeper collides with their life experience. Evangelicalism and fundamentalism are losing steam for many young people–not because they are rebellious or naive or unlearned–but because the ecclesiastical and theological paradigms with which they are familiar have lost their explanatory power.

Critics will say that subjective experience does not determine theological truth. This is false, since any articulation of theological truth involves an inescapable subjective dimension. My proof for this is the theological diversity that has existed throughout the history of the church and continues today throughout the world.

Subjective experience, such as Rachel’s, actually exposes the inadequacies of any theological tradition when it holds itself in too high regard. It reminds us, sometimes painfully, that these traditions are not the Gospel itself but impermanent ways of understanding it. They are provisional, always in need of refinement, adjustment, augmentation, deletion–and when and where need be, abandonment.

Rachel’s critics will likely mistake her criticism of the paradigms with criticism of the Gospel itself–which precisely misses the point of the book.  Rachel’s crisis of faith was fueled by her religious education, which failed to distinguish between the two--to question one is to question the other.

In a word, this book is about how Rachel learned to stop doing that. Such a journey is risky, because it involves moving away from all that is familiar and comforting. But for Rachel and many like her, staying put is not an option.

The realization of that place of tension should create humility and patience with ourselves and with one another in the work of theologizing in context. it reminds us of the ease with which our perceptions of the gospel can be deeply influenced by unconscious impositions of cultural and socio-structural perspectives on the biblical data. Contrary to Alfred Krass’s opinion, biblical theology does not pride itself on its “objectivity,” its “presuppositionlessness,” its “value-neutrality” [Alfred C. Krass, Evangelizing Neopagan North America (Scottsdale, Pa.: Herald, 1982), 95]. The “not yet” of biblical theology should make us “pervasively suspicious” about our ideas, our ideologies, our value judgments. (EWCW p. 226).

At the same time, that history of special revelation is organic in character. The Bible is not merely a heterogeneous collection of oods [sic] and ends, nor a symposium of biblical theologies. Biblical theology seeks to do justice both to the diversity of the divine testimony within the diversity of human settings and to the underlying unity of that testimony. It studies the data of revelation given in each period of cultural history in terms of the stage to which God’s self-revelation progressed at that particular time and place. But this unifying element is always the end point of the process, not the process itself. Its wisdom is always defined in terms of the administration of the mystery hidden in ages past, revealed in Christ, made known among all the world’s cultures, and consummated at his return (Eph. 3:8-10; Rom. 16:25-26; Col. 1:25-27). (Eternal Word and Changing Worlds, pp. 225-26).

But, during my teaching years at Westminster, I began turning more and more to Harvie’s writings, for various reasons. Mainly, I wanted to make sure that current students would be exposed to one of the most creative and eclectic theological minds WTS has ever produced.

As I began rereading his works, especially Eternal Word & Changing Worlds, I began to realize something else, namely the extent to which Harvie’s mature reflections on the nature of Reformed theology and theological education overlapped with my own developing thoughts.

I would like to believe that my thinking reflected Harvie’s direct influence, and that may be the case, although if so, it would have been more through osmosis. More likely, my own spiritual/academic track forced me to do some synthetic thinking of my own. Harvie’s development as a thinker grew in no small measure out of his 20 years as a missionary in Korea and his work with prostitutes.

My own “trial by fire” at Harvard—which parallels that of many, many other evangelicals over the last few generations—was far less memorable, but no less personal and meaningful. What I share with Harvie is an experience of being forced to do synthetic, creative thinking by watching my own theological formulations leave a rather insulated world and interact with humanity. To put it more positively, EWCW is an example, too few and far between, in my opinion, of the WTS tradition moving beyond its defensive boarders and bringing its perspective to much-needed arenas—not to “correct” others but to engage them and so be more Reformed and Christian in thought as a result.

There are numerous literary high-water marks in the WTS tradition, and EWCW is one of them. In my opinion it is the single most penetrating and insightful theological work the WTS tradition has ever produced. One of the things that distinguishes this book from any other written by a WTS professor is the book’s missional (or as Harvie called it in the lingo of the day, “missiological”) focus, and how missional concerns should and in fact invariably do affect our theological constructs and how, as a result, we need to rethink the task of theological education.

The general point of EWCW is expressed in the subtitle: Theology, Anthropology, and Mission in Trialogue. Harvie’s goal was to produce a piece of synthetic, cross-disciplinary theology. His method is to look at the dialogue between cultural anthropology and theology in the past (18th-19th centuries), how present challenges affect the nature of that dialogue, and, Harvie’s vision for the future of theology and theological education. One of things I so appreciate about this synthesis is Harvie’s recognition that theology is not an isolated discipline, but should, and in fact invariably is, affected by general developments and progress in human thought. Harvie’s work was focused on the social science, but the same tenor of dialogue and mutual interaction is also relevant for theology and the physical sciences. (For example, see my review of The Bible, Rocks, and Time)

The book is divided into three parts, each part containing three chapters. Parts one and two, which Harvie entitles “Shaped by the Past” and “Challenged by the Present,” form the context within which his programmatic statements in part three (“Reaching for the Future”) are to be understood.

Parts three is where the money is. Parts one and two form the theoretical basis. My quotes will come from part three, and I will leave it to you who are interested to see how he supports his observations from parts one and two.

From time to time, I will post some quotes from EWCW. I won’t comment on them; I don’t need to. I hope it will encourage students of theology especially to familiarize themselves with Conn’s work and to be challenged in their own thinking about the task of theology.

I left off in the middle of a series of posts on responses to some general criticisms of I&I. I will continue that series very shortly, but first I wanted to make some brief comments on the topic of Genesis and Evangelicals.

On September 16, I spoke at Messiah College, invited by Professor Ted Davis, Distinguished Professor of the History of Science. Ted is also the vice president of the Central PA Forum for Religion and Science. The audience was made up of many members of this organization, plus faculty and students. All in all, I had a wonderful time and I was thankful for the opportunity to address this group.

Specifically, I was asked to address issues concerning Genesis from a biblical scholar’s point of view that scientists would benefit from. Now, at first, I was somewhat alarmed that I would be addressing a group like this on such a topic, since my work doesn’t come within a million parsecs of science. Like many people, I am very interested in scientific models of origins, what happened the first 10-43 seconds after the Big Bang, etc., etc. But I am not a scientist, I do not play one on TV, and I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express that night.

So, I took an approach that I think was found to be helpful and that I very much felt comfortable with. I lectured on three issues, all of which either developed or came to fruition during the nineteenth century, that significantly affected our understanding of Genesis. These three issues are summarized well by three names: Julius Wellhausen, George Smith, and Charles Darwin. The three names mentioned above represent three significant factors that come into play in the nineteenth century, all three of which have affected and continue to affect traditional views on Genesis.

I won’t recreate that lecture here (it was an hour long, I spoke only from sparse notes, not a manuscript; plus it was recorded), but it might be interesting for some of you if I give a synopsis of the major points.

First, Wellhausen’s influence is well known in the world of biblical scholarship, and even beyond. His genius was not so much innovative as it was synthetic: his Documentary Hypothesis was the culmination of over 100 years of activity where the question of the authorship of the Pentateuch was being investigated.

Wellhausen’s influence has been essentially two-fold. First, he crystallized source criticism in a form in which it is still largely found today, although not without some very important developments and qualifications. Regardless of these changes, it is not an exaggeration to say that Wellhausen has been the most influential OT scholar in the modern era. I have heard some quip that OT scholarship since Wellhausen has been a “footnote” on his work. This may be overstating a bit, but the point still holds, that both agreement and disagreement with Wellhausen require thorough interaction with, if not his own views, then at least with the views of the generations of scholars who came after him.

The issue here is not the strengths and weaknesses of Wellhausen’s synthesis, but simply a historical retrospective on his influence, and the trauma it caused. He is best known for dividing the Pentateuch into four sources, known by the letters JEDP (in that order), but his work is far more important than just a literary exercise. His real contribution (getting to the second point) is that his literary hypothesis led him to formulate an historical hypothesis, namely, that the law was a post-exilic rather than a pre-monarchic phenomenon.

This last view has been seriously nuanced in subsequent scholarship, but a general insight has maintained its influence. The Pentateuch is a post-exilic phenomenon—not that it was written from scratch then, but that the Pentateuch we have reflects significantly the times in which it was compiled. This is now a fairly common position among Evangelical scholars, not because of a softening of resolve, but because this model helps explain numerous elements of the Pentateuch that remain unexplained in older models.

The lesson, then, for Evangelicals is simply the recognition that within the Pentateuch, we see not a document written more or less at one time and place, but a document that reflects a history of transmission and reception. The Bible reflects development over time. This is no longer as controversial as it once was, but the paradigm shift is one that should not be lightly glanced over.

George Smith represents another nineteenth century issue: biblical archaeology. He is known for his work in translating what came to be known to us as Enuma Elish, the famous Mesopotamian creation story that immediately drew the attention of biblical scholars for its similarities to Genesis. Rarely do scholars talk today about the Bible’s dependence on this ancient text, but that is hardly the point. The conceptual overlap between them (without minimizing the clear differences) indicates that Genesis 1 fits very well in the ancient context of creation stories, which are often times referred to today as “myth.”

This is an electric term for many, and is unfortunately routinely misunderstood, but the term itself is not important. The larger issue that biblical archaeology raises is the importance of understanding something of ancient literary genres for how we handle Scripture, which is itself an ancient document.

This was a challenge very different from that represented by Wellhausen. His theory was driven by an analysis of internal evidence, i.e., a creative handling of the biblical data in an attempt to account for why the Pentateuch looks the way it does. It met with strong resistance and left itself open to equally creative counter-arguments (even though these counter-arguments essentially failed to account for the diverse data that led to Wellhausen’s theory in the first place).

But what Smith represented was very different. He dealt with outside evidence to which the Bible was inevitably compared, thus stimulating a “comparative religions” approach to studying Israel’s history. This was evidence that was not so easy to neutralize. Of course, the evidence needed to be interpreted and models needed to be debated that did the best job of explaining the evidence. But what is curious is that conservative scholars had little constructive to say about this evidence. Mainstream scholarship was quite willing to discuss how this new evidence affected older paradigms, and so you have, for example, the “pan-Babylonianism” of the nineteenth century, where Mesopotamian culture was (mistakenly) claimed to be the potential explanation for much of the Bible. This was a proactive model. Conservatism was more often than not reactionary.

So, both Wellhausen and Smith presented significant challenges to traditional views of Genesis. As if that were not enough, Darwin added yet another level of difficulty: a scientific paradigm of human origins that could not be squared with the story in Genesis. Of course, this is the well-known development of the evolutionary hypothesis, which first made its way to the public sphere with the Scopes trail and has received recent attention in the Intelligent Design debate.

I am well above my pay grade when I begin discussing this issue. (For a wonderful and constructive online resource, see science.drvinson.net). My point here is simply to state what is certainly obvious to everyone, that scientific inquiry into origins of the world, of humanity, and the flood, put the biblical stories in Genesis 1-11 into a conversation that many people find it difficult to have.

In brief, with the three factors mentioned, challenges to Genesis have come from within Genesis itself (Wellhausen), from the world in which the Israelites lived (Smith), and from scientific models concerning the origin of the universe, our earth, and the human species that do not square with biblical models (Darwin).

After discussing these three factors, I came to what was the heart of the lecture, at least as far as I am concerned. Evangelicals would benefit immensely by Evangelical scholars sitting down and discussing these issues with a deliberateness and intentionality that, in my view, has been missing. Too often fear reigns, or a desperate clinging to the safe and familiar haven of tradition.

There are no doubt wonderful and gifted Evangelical scholars working in all three areas, but we have yet to move beyond the uneasy relationship between Christian faith and serious modern developments in human thought. What is needed is a synthesis of Christian faith and developments in human thought that draws out the implications of the latter upon the former, and make overtures as to what adjustments need to be made. Another way of putting it is to articulate what we really have a right to expect from Scripture. This is a complex but needed area of discussion.

Well, that’s the heart of it. The actual lecture was peppered with some concrete examples and recycled jokes. (My former students who came to listen sat in embarrassed, stunned silence.) The visit to Messiah was topped off by a chance to speak on Genesis to the class “Issues in Science and Religion” team taught by several of the science faculty, including Ted Davis. I was honored to be asked to speak and I had a wonderful time.

Listen to it here.