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.]

The Benefit of Doubt: Coming to Terms with Faith in a Postmodern Era

I want to talk to you tonight about doubt, and a very serious kind: when you doubt your faith in God. That is a very tough place to be, because faith in God is what keeps it all together when you are facing tough things—whatever it is: big and tragic or more private and emotional.

But whatever it is, faith in God is what gets us through. When God is real in your life, it makes sense of it all, it gives purpose to our whole lives no matter what is going on. Faith in God gives us stability and coherence. The world around us may be crumbling, but God, as the psalmist says, is a sure foundation, the rock of our salvation. Whatever happens around me, I know that at least God can be counted on. He is faithful.

But sometimes things happen in our lives—a big thing, a lot of little thing—and you start having a lot of doubts.  And—my experience—it’s usually the little things piling up over the years are the hardest—those disruptive thoughts you keep burying and hoping they’ll just go away. They don’t. And you feel your faith in God slipping away—and it is scary to watch it happen. You doubt that he cares, that he is listening; you doubt that he is even aware of who you are—that he even exists.

That kind of doubt is the enemy of faith, right? We all know that doubt and faith rule each other out? It is one or the other. To have faith means you don’t doubt. And if you are in a state of doubt about God, you feel like there is clearly something very wrong with you. You are moving away from God’s grace and his love. You can’t hold on, you’re weak in your faith. “Maybe I’m not smart enough. Maybe I’m a faker. Maybe I haven’t memorized enough Bible verses. Maybe I need to go to church more.” Whatever it is, you’re doing something wrong. It’s all your fault.

And this is what we have been taught to do: our only job is to get out of that state of doubt as quickly as we can. Faith in God gives life meaning, a sense of purpose in this universe. Doubt takes all that away. And if you stay in doubt long enough, your eternal state is in jeopardy.

I have known many people in my life who have been faced with these kinds of deep spiritual doubts, and given up on faith altogether. They tried to hang on, with everything they have, but nothing works. So they walk away. Others keep it in and just hide. I’ll bet you all know people like that, too: classmate, roommate, parents, brothers and sisters, friends, someone you used to go to church with. Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe your teacher is one of them.

Doubt is a spiritually destructive force. It tears you away from God. Surely, God does not want us to doubt. Right? I don’t think so.

There is a benefit of doubt. Let me put that more strongly: there are things doubt can do spiritually that nothing else can do. Doubt is not the enemy, but a gift of God to move us from trusting ourselves to trusting him. Doubt feels like God is far away or absent, but it is actually a time of “disguised closeness” to God that moves us to spiritual maturity. Doubt is not a sign of weakness but a sign of growth.

Sometimes we think of our faith as a castle. It’s comfortable and above all safe. But what if God doesn’t want us to be comfortable and safe? What if comfortable and safe keep us from pursuing God? Sooner or later God—because he is good—tears your castle down, and he pushes you out, and puts you on a spiritual journey—which always involves some deep struggle.

Doubt forces us to look at who we think God is. It makes us face whether we really trust HIM, or whether we trust what we have made God to be. Doubting God is painful and frightening because we think we are leaving God behind. But doubt—real hard deep unnerving uncomfortable scary doubt—helps us to see that, maybe we have made God into our own image. We come to discover, slowly but surely, that the “faith” we are losing is not faith in God. It is actually in the idea of God that we surround ourselves with.

Let me explain that a bit more. If we’re honest, we all think we’ve got God figured out pretty well. (I’m a biblical scholar and that is a constant danger.) We read the Bible and maybe memorize some of it. We go to church a lot. Maybe even lead Bible studies or something. We’re doing great.

It is very, very, very easy to slip into this idea that we have arrived—that we really think we’ve got all the answers and that we almost possess God. We know what church he goes to, what Bible translation he reads, we know how he votes, we know what movies he watches and books he reads. We know the kinds of people he approves of. Funny thing: God happens to like all the things we like. We feel like we can speak for God very easily.

All Christians who take their faith seriously sooner or later get caught up in that problem. We begin to think that God really is what we happen to think he is. There is little more worth learning learn about the creator of the cosmos. No need. There is no real mystery. After all, God has become a reflection of ourselves.

The good news is that God doesn’t leave us there. God doesn’t just want us to “get saved.” He wants us to know him and enjoy him—here and now. Here is the paradox: doubt is God’s way of helping that happen. Doubt is God’s way of tearing down our idols. An idol is a false representation of God, something that gets in the way of the real thing—and that includes the idols we have in our minds and hearts.

You see, doubt doesn’t mean that God is dying for us. Doubt signals that we are beginning to die to ourselves and our ideas about God. Jesus talks about that: taking up your cross daily, losing your life so you can find it (Matt 10:38-39); Paul talks about being crucified with Christ—I no longer live, Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20); or you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3).

I wish I knew what all that meant, but I don’t. I’m learning. But I do know that this is about a lot more than “getting saved.” God wants us to know him, but that means a death has to occur. All that talk of dying and being crucified and hidden is not getting saved language, and now you’re done with all of that. It is “being an every-day Christian” language, the path of the Christina life, dying daily.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German Lutheran theologian, executed for a failed plot to kill Hitler), in his book, The Cost of Discipleship has an often quoted line: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Dying is a way of talking about conversion as well as a daily process of Christian living.

Christians never stop dying.

That process can be very painful and frightening—dying usually is. Why would we ever think it is easy and nice? At times in our lives doubting gets the dying process moving. And when you are in that process, God feels far away—but that is when he may be closer to you than he ever was.

This is a one of the points I want to make tonight: Don’t try to run away from doubt. Don’t try to fix it. Try not to think of it as the enemy. Pass through it—patiently… and honestly… and courageously…. When you are in doubt, you are in a period of transformation. Welcome it as a gift—which is hard to do to if your entire universe is falling down around you. God is teaching you to trust him, not yourself. He means to have all of you, not just the surface, going to church and daily devotions part. Not just the part people see, but the part no one sees—not even you.

Now, let’s bring the Bible into this. If you know your Bible, at this point you might be saying, “Well, the Bible doesn’t talk like that.” For example, John 20:31: “These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” John seems to be saying that if you know your Bible more, you won’t doubt but believe. So Christian, if you doubt, you just don’t know your Bible well enough. Your faith is weak. Maybe go to one more Bible study that week.

But think of this from another angle. Jesus himself had his moments where he doubted God and God was very distant from him—God abandoned him—and he knew his Bible very well. In the garden and on the cross, Jesus said what psalm after psalm says: God where are you? I don’t see you anywhere. Are you even there? I am giving up all hope.

I get John’s point, but when he says “these things are written so you may believe,” it doesn’t cover everything. It just means that John wrote his Gospel so people could see how great Jesus was and put their trust in him. It does not imply “henceforth thou shalt be a perfect faith machine and never doubt.”

Also, I don’t expect the New Testament to say “doubt is God’s way of making you grow.” The New Testament doesn’t answer every question we might have for all time. It describes the early mission of the church. It’s like a missionary or evangelist today: they go out and proclaim the good news. They don’t say “sooner or later you may wind up doubting everything you’ve ever believed.” Doubt is something that comes in during a more settled time, after you’ve been at it for a while. It’s like when someone converts to Christianity: things are great for a while and then it gets complicated.

That is what you do find in the Old Testament—doubt, God feels absent from your life—especially the Psalms. The Psalms present us not with a “missionary moment” in the life of Israel, but a time when Israel was settled in the land and the day-to-day work of living in God’s presence was the issue. So, you have 150 psalms, and in about half of them something has gone wrong—some barrier has arisen between Israel and faith in God. The psalmist feels abandoned by God and he is holding on by a thread.

One example is Psalm 88. In summary, here is what the psalm says: God, I have been on my knees to you night after night. I am so troubled, and in so much agony, I might as well be dead. I am absolutely without hope…and you don’t care. All night and all day I call to you—I’m on my knees—but nothing. I am in absolute pain and the only friend I have is darkness.

Sounds to me like this guy has a problem. You might call it a faith crisis. Maybe he doesn’t know his Bible well enough. Maybe he needs to go to another Bible study so he can learn you shouldn’t feel this way, let alone talk this way. I mean, what’s wrong with him and his weak faith?

Don’t let the obvious pass you by: this sort of thing is in the Bible. Why? Because this “abandoned by God” business is part of normal Christian experience. John Calvin said that the Psalms are a “mirror of the soul.” Sometimes the soul looks like this. Does your soul ever look like this? If so—yes, it is painful and difficult—but you are good company.

Another example is Psalm 73. Basically this is what the psalm is about: “Yeah I know God blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked. I know how it’s supposed to work. I’ve read the Bible. I’ve been to Hebrew school. I get it. My problem is not that I have forgotten what the Bible says. My problem is that what the Bible says doesn’t work.”

And so this writer goes on and on about how the Bible says that God is supposed to bless the faithful and punish those who are not. But he looks around him and sees the exact opposite. The wicked and arrogant, they are healthy, strong, they prosper. But he’s doing his best, and—nothing. I am wasting my time. Why bother? The world makes sense without you. Hey God, if you were there Donald Trump wouldn’t own half of new York City and homeless shelters wouldn’t be struggling for every dollar.

I love that the Bible is so—not shallow. It really connects with even the dark places of our souls. And I know a lot of people raised in the church who are like the writer of Psalm 73—but they are afraid to talk about it. They have heard sermons and Bible studies their whole lives where they were taught to think of the world in a certain “Christian” way, and then maybe in high school, maybe in college, they begin to see that it’s more complicated. Then there is a major disconnect between what they had been taught and what they see. Faith is no longer a convincing way of explaining the world, and so they leave it.

Doubt is usually cumulative; it creeps in. God, the Bible, your faith, stop making sense, and so you toss it all away. But here is the point. You say that God and all that Jesus stuff just don’t work in the world you live in. But maybe the God and Jesus that aren’t working aren’t the real thing. What if what isn’t working isn’t God at all, but our version. Maybe doubts are the first step to stripping off the old getting at the real thing.

When you go out into the world and say “it’s not working,” maybe that is a signal. It’s not God who no longer works, it’s your idea of God that needs work. Maybe you are for the first time being called, as C. S. Lewis put is so well in the Narnia books, to go “further up and further in.” That’s where doubt plays a powerful role.

I know what I am saying is counter-intuitive—it might even sound a bit bizarre and even dumb. Deep doubt about God is about the worst feeling a Christian can have. It is dark, unsettling, frightening. And I am saying not only “it’s OK, it’s normal.” I am also saying, “Welcome it as a gift of God. Don’t run from it.” Because once doubt occurs, it won’t just go away—you can try to bury it all you want to. Embrace the doubt. Call it your friend. God is leading you on a journey.

I’m not just winging it here. Spiritual masters of the Christian church caught on to this long ago. It is not a part of the contemporary Protestant scene as much, which is a shame. We tend to intellectualize the faith—we live in our heads. Our faith tends to rest in what we know, what we can articulate, what we can defend, how we think—our intellects. We tend to place “thinking” over “being” rather than the other way around.

That is why doubt for people like us is the great enemy. We spend a lot of effort in removing doubt. Our world is flooded with books and apologetics organizations whose job it is to give the answers quickly and easily—no struggle, no doubt—all this Jesus stuff, piece of cake. That attitude robs us of a spiritual experience that you can’t avoid anyway and that wiser Christians, since almost the beginning of Christianity, have told us is vital for the Christian life.

This experience of deep doubt is sometimes referred to as the “dark night of the soul.” That expression has come to us through the writings of two sixteenth century Spanish Catholic mystics: John of the Cross and his mentor Teresa of Avila. Many, many people have spent their lives thinking about what these and other mystics wrote concerning their experiences of God. I am not one of them, but I am learning. Let me boil down what they are saying.

The “dark night” is a sense of painful alienation and distance from God that causes distress, anxiety, discouragement, despair, and depression. All Christians experience this sooner or later—some more than others, some for longer times than others. Everyone feels this way, though different intensities and for different lengths of time. But the feeling is the same: they lose their sense of closeness to God and conclude that they no longer have faith. And so they despair even more.

This is the dark night of the soul. Not too pretty. St. John’s great insight is that this dark night is a special sign of God’s presence. Our false god is being stripped away, and we are left empty before God—with none of the familiar ideas of God that we create to prop us up. The dark night takes away the background noise we have created in our lives in order to prepare us to hear God’s voice later on.

When the dark night comes upon us, we are asked simply to surrender to God and trust him anyway. The reason St. John calls this a dark night is very important: it is because you have no control over what is happening. That is a very important piece in all of this, because people want to control. Imagine, like the Chilean miners, being all alone in a deep dark cave, miles down, with absolutely not a single ray of light—utterly pitch black. You have no idea where you are or how to get out. All you know is that you are helpless. You try to find your way, you grope, but nothing. You start walking slowly at first, and then you realize that wherever you are, it is big, dark, flat, and you can’t do anything about it. So you sit down in this quiet, out-of-your control totally dark nothingness. You are totally OUT OF CONTROL. You can’t do anything about it. The point of the dark night is to take away your sense of having control.

There is a wonderful story of Jesuit philosopher, John Kavanaugh. In 1975 he went to work for three months at the “house of the dying” in Calcutta with Mother Teresa. He was searching for an answer about how best to spend the remaining years of his life. On his very first morning there, he met Mother Teresa. She asked him, “And what can I do for you?” Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she asked. And he answered with the request that was the very reason he traveled thousands of miles to India: “Pray that I have clarity.” Mother Teresa said firmly, “No. I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh said, “You always seem to have clarity,” she laughed and said, “I have never had clarity. What I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

The point of the dark helpless place is to strip us of absolutely everything so that only surrender and trust remain. That is the daily and severe Christian calling

She spoke from true experience. By the way—are you one of those people who wonders why you can’t just be a happy Christian like your roommate or that lady in church? Listen to Mother Teresa. Apparently, she was in her dark night from 1948 until near the time of her death in 1997, with perhaps some interludes in-between. You know all that great things she did? Don’t think her dark night wasn’t somehow connected to how she spent her life. You might even say that “spiritual greatness” and the dark night go hand in hand—you must pass through the one to get to the other. She learned trust—not certainty—trust in God. And all of that poured out to the people around her.

I love that story. It summarizes really well what I am trying to say here. We’ve heard this many times: “Let go and let God.” It’s true—but “letting go” might be more than we bargained for. We must be taught, for we will not willingly go there ourselves. When we are not letting go, when we try to stay in control of something, cling to something as Mother Teresa says, that’s when God turns off the light and makes it dark—not because he is against us, but because he is for us.

Being out of control is another way of saying “dying to yourself.” When we are out of control, that is when God can speak to us—without all of the layers of stuff we have piled up inside of us. God puts us out of our control so that we can learn to trust—like Mother Teresa said—not “believe” or “have faith” but something deeper and harder: trust.

You can only trust when you have let go completely, when you don’t try to control. When we learn to trust God out of our emptiness, when God is out of our control—when God…becomes God more deeply in us—when we surrender and trust…well… we become liberated from our attachments, from our fears, and we learn to live with freedom and joy. That is the Christian journey.

We see this even in our relationships with each other. You cannot have a truly growing, intimate relationship with another if one person is trying to control the other. That destroys true intimacy. Now, if we are trying to control God, what do you think he is going to do? Rather than leave the relationship entirely he may initiate a period of separation, a period of absence, a period of darkness—so that we can learn that in this relationship we have to surrender, we have to let go of control.

You can’t have the joy and peace of the Christian life without the darkness coming first. Jesus himself is our model for this. He suffered, died, and rose from the dead, but dying and rising isn’t just something Jesus did. Our conversion is also described as dying and rising from the dead (Romans 6). But death and resurrection is also a pattern for the whole Christian life. (Those passages we looked at earlier.) We don’t experience resurrection (the joy) in our lives without first suffering and dying to ourselves. Dying is the only path to resurrection, and that is the only way of knowing God.

This is why TV preachers drive me crazy. They say God wants you to avoid the pain—the suffering, the dying. He wants you to be happy, rich, successful, whatever. No. God wants you to be joyful—but dying is part of that. There is no shortcut. I think that is the heart of Paul’s mysterious words in Phil 3:10. Knowing Christ means both the power of his resurrection in our lives and participating in his sufferings, being made like him in his death. Death and life. Both are part of the Gospel life.

This past summer, Rachel Held Evans published her memoir Evolving in Monkey Town. Rachel grew up in Dayton TN, the setting of the Scopes Monkey Trial in the 1920s. She grew up in a strongly fundamentalist home, where she was taught all the firm and final answers to life’s most difficult and complex questions. Early on she was quite the zealous know-it-all apologist As she got into high school and later, she began to realize that not only were her answers inadequate, but she may not even be asking the right questions.

A couple of things pushed her out of her comfort zone, out of her control, into her dark night. One was traveling and seeing other parts of the world and seeing intense poverty and suffering. Rachel began to question some beliefs about God that she had never questioned before. She could not imagine a just and loving God sending to hell a young woman, who spent her days roaming the streets trying to feed her starving baby.

This woman couldn’t help where she was born, what she was surrounded by her whole life. She couldn’t help she was born in Dayton TN so she could have all the right answers about how these types of heathen women are going to hell. This kind of experience can really make you question how you were raised to think of God; it is a very common wake up call. And if you were taught that there is no other way to think about God, these kinds of experiences can generate a faith crisis very quickly.

The other issue was very different, a modern one and a common one, and it is reflected in the title of the book. She felt she could no longer dismiss the evidence for evolution—even though she spent her entire life in the epicenter of anti-evolutionism. This meant for her she had to rethink a lot of how she read the Bible.

Her understanding of God and of the Bible were being cleared away. She became unglued. She went through a period of darkness, a period of doubt. She had been taught that what her church and parents said about God was what God was really like. That was handed to her, never to be questioned. That’s how you remain sure and fixed. If you doubt any of this you are doubting God, and when you doubt God you are taking the first step to eternal separation from God. Doubt—even questioning—destroys faith.

But Rachel eventually learned a different lesson, although it took time. She says, “In the end, it was doubt that saved my faith.” She learned that the questioning is part of the journey. She learned that letting go of the need to have all the answers right away—living in the questions—was spiritually healthy. She could not and did not have to provide all the answers to the mystery of life on this planet. She learned that God was not at her beck and call. In fact, God doesn’t promise to give us the right answers to all of our questions when we ask them. He promises to grow us, to move us out of our carefully protected comfort zones to a true intimacy with him. The Christian life is a journey to be taken, not a fortress to be defended.

Since postmodernism is in the title of the lecture, I suppose I should say something about that and tie it in with what I am saying here. I am not interested in defending or attacking postmodernism. Partly because I don’t fully understand what it means or what people mean when they use the term. I will say, though, that a postmodern mindset is less interested in final answers to ultimate questions and more comfortable with framing questions, celebrating differences, etc. Truth is not absolute, but local.

Postmodernism is not a reaction to religious authority as much as it is a reaction to modernity (hence, post-modern). And in some respects, I think the postmodern critique has been necessary and effective, and many people write about this. Modernism has been guilty of some arrogance—often seen in the scientific or scholarly world, where there can be a tone of having “figured it all out.” New Testament scholar N.T. Wright refers to modernism as a “rival eschatology,” meaning a sense that “we have arrived at the destiny of humanity.” That eschatology rivals the Christian claim that Christ is actually the summation of the human drama.

Modernism has been in the business of saying that reason, science, etc., tell you what the world is really like; all of that medieval superstitious nonsense is passé. In other words modernism is skeptical of anything else and probably needs to be knocked down a few pegs.

It has been said that postmodernism is simply modernism taken to the next step: it’s being skeptical about modernist skepticism. So, modernism celebrates the triumph of western rationalist positivistic Enlightenment ways of knowing, and postmodernism says that there are different ways of knowing that aren’t western but just as legitimate.

Here is the point. Some careful thinkers have said—and I agree—that the war between Christianity and postmodernism is so intense because Christianity in our culture is comfortable in the modern paradigm. Fundamentalism is modernist Christianity. A cocky Christianity that has all the answers, can casually sweep away pressing problems in the world with a wave of the doctrinal hand isn’t “pure” Christianity but a modernist version of it. And so people like Rachel Evans come along and say “live in the questions and go on the journey.” That is criticized as being “postmodern” because, as we all know, Christianity doesn’t live in questions, it gives answers.

Of course, this is a huge issue and more complicated than I have laid out here. But I would rather take my cue from the Psalms, New Testament, St. John of the Cross, and what I see as common Christian experience. Doubt, struggle, suffering, are part of faith, not impediments.

Faith and doubt are inseparable. There is a long history, and common experience, that back that up. When your faith has no room for the dark night of the soul, then you are just left with—religion, something that takes its place in your life among other things—like a job and a hobby, something soft and comfortable.

Doubt is God’s way of helping you not go there. But it is a tough road. I mentioned the Narnia stories earlier. As for a lot of people, they capture for me a lot of what faith is about. Let me end with that well known and often quoted line from Mr. Beaver when Edmund asks whether Aslan was safe. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”

Doubt shows us that God is unsafe—and that he is good.

**********

Here is my interview about my chosen author: C. S. Lewis (with a little shout out to Stephen Lawhead, as well).

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 have a lot of back-logged ideas for posts here, but I just got back from a week long trip to Seoul. Now, my intention remains to keep this website as a place for biblical theological reflections in our contemporary world, and a post like this might appear to be somewhat off topic. In my view, however, it is not.

First, I should say that this was not my first trip to Korea. I had the privilege of visiting twice before, in 1998 and 1999. Both were a week long and both times I was accompanied by my friend, and former professor/colleague, Tremper Longman III (plus I needed someone to hold open the doors for me). It’s been nine years since my last trip, so when I got the invitation in February, I was very eager to accept.

My main host was Torch Trinity Graduate School of Theology (TTGST) and the invitation came through the chair of the Biblical Research department, Dr. Yoon-Hee Kim. (Dr. Kim’s father is the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, and has a rather harrowing story about survival in Japanese occupied Korea.). TTGST is the only theological school in Korea where English is the language of instruction (although accommodations are certainly made for Korean speakers in certain situations). TTGST is an interdenominational school with students from all over the Far East and elsewhere with a wonderful faculty educated in a variety of schools, many of them western. They are celebrating their 10th anniversary and I am honored to have been asked to speak.

I stayed on their campus for the entire week while, in addition to speaking at TTGST, I made excursions to lecture at: International Theological Seminary, Seoul Presbyterian Seminary, and the Korean Bible Society (all in Seoul). I was also one of three keynote speakers at the 51st annual meeting of the Korean Evangelical Theological Society (KETS). I also gave a second paper at KETS in their Old Testament section.

Accompanying me for much of the week was Professor Bernard Combrink, NT professor from the University of Stellenbosch. He has quite the Reformed pedigree, with a wonderful Afrikaans accent to boot. He gave papers on salvation in Mark as well as Socio-Rhetorical Criticism and Reformed Theology. (The man knows his Ridderbos, by the way.)

My lectures were on Ecclesiastes and the Gospel, Exodus and Historiography, Theological Exegesis, and (stop me if you’ve heard this one) the NT’s Use of the OT. All told I lectured six times, spoke in chapel at TTGST, and preached at a church on Sunday before returning home. I was also treated to a wonderful day of sightseeing and shopping by members of the WTS Korean Alumni Association, topped off with a dinner at Outback Steakhouse. (Don’t laugh: Australia is closer to Korea than it is to Philadelphia. Plus I had mistakenly eaten eel the day before and I figured I needed a worry-free dinner.)

How does all this link up with BT and the contemporary world? Mainly, in terms of the latter. If I may state the obvious, the world is far bigger than suburban Philadelphia. Call me a slow learner, having taught at WTS for 14 years with a significant international population, but there was something about this trip that drove the point home much more so than in the past. Even in my previous two trips this did not hit home, but perhaps I am a different man than I was 10 years ago (let’s hope).

This trip I felt like the foreigner, not coming to grace the Koreans with my presence, but permitted, so to speak, to be a part of something very wonderful that will—and you may want to sit down for this—continue regardless of whether I or anyone else from the west comes to speak. Korean theological education is a multinational, sophisticated, and Christ-honoring movement. I keenly felt that I had no right to address their gatherings apart from their gracious invitation. Moreover, my words were spoken into a context where the same types of hermeneutical and theological questions many of us in the west are involved in have already been addressed and wrestled with significantly. The interaction was nothing less than stimulating and eye opening for me.

Simply put, I was struck by how the questions that engage me as I try to be a responsible biblical interpreter in a changing world are the same ones others face around the world. It stands to reason that we can learn from each other, because we face many of the same questions, even if we address them from and for different contexts. We in the west do not hold an automatic edge in the task of theological education. It was a good reminder to me of how big God is and that he is at work in places and ways I cannot understand.

I am finding that these three categories simply cannot be held apart for long. It was Al the person and biblical scholar that drove him to Biblical Theological reflections and on the nature of the OT in light of Christ. It was his Biblical Theological work that drove him to a deeper relationship with Christ, and therefore with others, as well as giving further impetus for his other academic work.

In this respect, Al was certainly a Westminster product. He combined a mature and open relationship with Christ; as a biblical scholar, he would go without hesitation wherever the text and his work lead; and he brought all of this to bear on the coherence of Scripture as it is summed up in the Messiah.

In other words, Al embodied what the biblical tradition at Westminster has represented among Christian institutions. Now, as I said about Al in a previous post I now say about Westminster: I do not engage in hagiographa (except about the Yankees). But this Biblical Theological (i.e., Redemptive-Historical) approach to the Old Testament, which I feel did not come to maturity until the work of Al’s teachers, Ray Dillard and Edmund Clowney, is an emphasis that makes Westminster unique among Reformed and evangelicals institutions anywhere. There. I said it. Let the criticisms come.

Still, I feel this is true. The particular way of engaging the OT as a redemptive-historical narrative that culminates in Christ’s death and resurrection, and, as importantly, that now demands to be reread in light that central hermeneutical event, is a hallmark of the Westminster hermeneutic. It is legacy that I and others are deeply proud of, and we are so happy to have been taught by and also to have worked with Al, whose teaching and scholarship overflowed with this rich and biblical emphasis.

Part of Al’s Biblical Theological depth was born out of his love for literature in general. As he was fond of saying “there are no free motifs” in the Bible. It is a book rich in intertextuality that is meant to be explored and articulated by the careful reader. Al’s gifts in literary analysis was also seen in his love for movies. His weekly movie discussion nights were quite the hot item. I went once or twice, but any group that can identify movies by who produced it, or what French genre it was representative of, is over my head and I quickly lose interest. If there isn’t at least one explosion every 15 minutes, even today, I think of it as an “Al film” and I turn it off. On a more poignant note, I had the privilege of being at Al’s bedside for most of the day when he died. His bed was in a room lined with shelves, each filled to the brim with movies, and each case was numbered. I distinctly remember seeing numbers well over a 1000, only to find out later “there are more.”

Al’s skills in literary and film analysis helped him see literary (and therefore theological) connections in biblical texts. To put it more strongly, Al looked for connections, themes, etc. He felt it was his job, as a Biblical Theologian to explore Scripture rather than accept mundane observations. He and I spoke on and off about the overlap between such an attitude toward biblical interpretation and Jewish Midrashim, a thought that had not escaped his alert gaze, nor one that caused him any chagrin.

I could continue at length, but perhaps it is fitting to stop here with one final observation. The legacy that Al represented was passed on well to many, many students, and to many of his colleagues over the years. He was a hybrid of a second and third generation Westminster student (i.e., taught by both some 1st generation and 2nd generation faculty). Al was privy to many of the nuances of the long Westminster legacy that few today can claim. And he did it with a grace that few can match. Our loss has been great, but we honor his memory and the Lord he served.

One thing worth mentioning is that it is very artificial for me to separate the two, because so many of our interactions involved some type of academic issue, whether teaching, grading, writing, scheduling classes, why I wasn’t doing what I was told, etc.

Back in the mid-80’s Al was already hard at work in an office specially set up for him. I was new to WTS, taking Hebrew, and was friends with a PhD student, John Marcott, who was helping Al in some project. I remember it having to do with something like “tagging” the Hebrew text, computers, a lot of big, noisy machines, and stacks of books and papers.

I am probably the last person at the seminary qualified to explain what Al did, exactly. Several colleagues have tried to explain it to me, but it is like explaining PCA politics to a newly converted homeless person. I do remember John taking a stab at it, and, apparently reacting to my blank stare, just saying, “Al is a smart cookie.” But I already knew that.

It wasn’t until I joined the faculty that someone (I can’t remember who) boiled it down for me in a way that even I could understand: “Whenever you open up your computer and see Hebrew, Al did that.” Of course, some of you under-enthusiastic Hebrew students may not be very happy with that, but remember this includes not just the text but the parsing aids, dictionaries, etc. See, Al was watching out for you. (I would have said, in Soup Nazi fashion, “No parsing aid for you.”)

I don’t think that means Al did absolutely everything, but it does mean that he got it started and a lot of people who sell Bible software with the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, in one way or another, owe it all to Al, who, in the early 80’s, realized that (1) he has an engineering degree, (2) he reads Hebrew, (3) computers are likely going to get more popular rather than less popular. To this day I don’t quite understand why Al did not become a billionaire, with several houses, robot servants, and part ownership in the Boston Celtics. (Actually, I know something about that story, but it is complex and beside the point here.)

All kidding aside, Al had a truly international reputation as a result of his work in Hebrew and computing. In fact, Al’s reputation was stronger in Europe than it was here. One need only hang around with Al at the national SBL conference (a yearly conference for biblical scholars, also known as the “Sea of Tweed” conference). A lot of people would be there looking for Al, coveting his time to query him on matters related to Hebrew computing. He ran special sessions at SBL where he would teach the teachers.

Al never received his PhD, but that was because he was too busy changing the face of the study of the Hebrew Bible.

Now—and this is where the professional and personal merge—it is simply startling to me to know how much time Al could put into other matters and still be able to pull off what he did academically. He was a committed and patient teacher; he was well-read in numerous fields of study, including Deuteronomy, the Deuteronomistic Historian and Isaiah (which included an intimate control of the Hebrew text); he supervised more than his share of doctoral and ThM dissertations, and Al’s level of supervision was above and beyond the call of duty; he spent loads and loads of time with students and colleagues; he was the department head from the time Tremper Longman left Westminster until he took up is duties as VP for Academic Affairs—the latter adding a considerable burden to his already full plate. And amid all this, he battled cancer for just over a year.

In all these things, I know that Al occasionally struggled with the lack of recognition he received in his own back yard, but that concern was raised only rarely and privately. His demeanor was consistently humble, self-effacing, directed towards servanthood rather than power, as lesser people in his position might have sought after.

Al had enough to do, but I still wish he could have written more. But, alas, you can’t do everything. But you know, the Lord does not call us to do everything, just to do what we do in his name faithfully and for his honor. In that respect, Al’s list of accomplishments could fill my thumb drive.

May we honor and remember Al Groves, he of blessed memory, for his long and faithful service to the risen Lord.