Category Archives: Ethics

Biblical Interpretation for Caribbean Renewal—Theology Conference in Kingston, Jamaica (September 8-9, 2017)

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The Jamaica theology conference that I’ve been helping to plan is coming up in just over a month (I had posted a final Call for papers a while back).

KEYNOTE SPEAKER – DR. STEED DAVIDSON

The keynote speaker is Dr. Steed Davidson, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.

Dr. Davidson, who is originally from Tobago, will kick off the conference with a programmatic lecture on Friday evening (September 8) entitled “The Hazards and Opportunities of Sola Scriptura for Caribbean Biblical Interpretation.” Then on Saturday (September 9) there will be papers on a variety of topics related to the conference theme: “Biblical Interpretation for Caribbean Renewal.”

PAPER TOPICS FOR SATURDAY

We have papers lined up from a variety of theological disciplines and perspectives, especially focused on the Bible and Caribbean renewal. Here are some of the paper titles:

  • The Parable of the Good Samaritan: A Political Reading from a Caribbean Perspective
  • The Inclusive Vision of Isaiah 56 and Contested Ethical Practices in Scripture and the Church: Toward a Canonical Hermeneutic of Discernment
  • Food for Thought: The Work of the Spirit and the Dynamics of Disgust in Acts 10
  • Word, Sound, and Power: The Religious Imagination of Rastafari Hermeneutics
  • Chiastic Contours, Caribbean Hermeneutic, and the Book of Acts
  • Black Identity in Light of Slavery, God’s Sovereignty, and Scripture
  • Pastoral Priorities for Biblical Interpretation in the Caribbean
  • Contextual Interpretation and the Canonical Narrative: Toward a Holistic Understanding of the Bible
  • The Anatomy of a Church Healing
  • The Biblical Interpretation of Demonic Possession and Voodoo-Like Possession as the Identity of Evil In Haiti

You may register on the conference page at the Jamaica Theological Seminary website by clicking on the form at the bottom of the page (discounted registration is available up to August 15). Questions about registration can be directed to Dr. Winston Thompson, Vice-president of JTS. The registration page will be updated with detailed information about the conference schedule as soon as it is available.

You can find my report on the conference here.

CONFERENCE CO-SPONSORSHIP

The theology conference is sponsored by the Jamaica Theological Seminary and will be held on their campus, at 14-20 West Ave., Kingston 8, Jamaica, W.I..

The conference is co-sponsored by the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology and the United Theological College of the West Indies.

This interdisciplinary theology conference celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Jamaica Association of Evangelicals and the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

On Genesis, Job, and Psalms—Five Recent Essays Published

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Five essays I’ve been working on for a while have recently been (or are about to be) published.

I wrote this essay last year for oral presentation at the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies and then again at the Society of Biblical Literature. I conceived it as an introductory exploration of the phenomenon of vigorous prayer in the Bible, which grounds research I am currently doing for a book on lament vis-à-vis Abraham and Job. You can download the essay by clicking on its title (or here).

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  • “Reading Genesis 3 Attentive to Human Evolution: Beyond Concordism and Non-Overlapping Magisteria.” Chap. 4 in Evolution and the Fall, ed. by William T. Cavanaugh and James K. A. Smith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 67–97.

This essay was written specifically for this collection, at the invitation of the editors. It was the first piece I ever wrote trying to relate the Bible to human evolution. I presented it at a conference in Spring 2015, which led to my becoming a Theological Fellow with BioLogos, writing blog posts for them, and giving a number of related presentations on the Bible and evolution. My approach both in this essay and in the subsequent blogs and presentations on the subject has been to listen to the Bible first, then explore how this might help us understand what scientists are telling us about human evolution.

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For a long time I had been mulling over my sense that most interpreters were misreading God’s response to Job’s complaints; instead of reprimanding Job for daring to question him, I understood God second speech as encouraging him (while his first speech functioned to critique his assumptions and enlarge his vision). So, some years ago I worked up my ideas into a paper that I presented at the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies; this led to my being asked to give this paper as the Peter C. Craigie memorial lecture at the University of Calgary. Then I put it away for a while, but reworked it for presentation last year in a Biblical Studies Seminar at St. Mark’s National Theological Centre in Canberra, Australia. It is now published in their journal with the other papers from the Seminar.  You can download the essay by clicking on its title (or here).

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I’ve always prized Psalm 51 as an amazing articulation of the meaning of repentance. But like the Job paper (above), I had the sense that the traditional reading of this psalm as David’s prayer of confession did not fit the actual story in 2 Samuel 11–12. So I tried out my ideas on the topic a few years back at the Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society and then at the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. I revised the paper for presentation in 2015 in the “Biblical Theology, Hermeneutics, and the Theological Disciplines” Research Group of the Institute for Biblical Research. It is published in a volume of collected papers that have been presented in this research group over the last few years.

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This essay is an exposition of the story of the Garden of Eden, to show how it grounds the dignity of work and the equality of men and women in God’s original intentions for human life. Yet God’s intentions in both cases have been distorted by human sin (and our sinful perspective often leads to our misreading of this story). The essay was commissioned for the 150th anniversary of the founding of Roberts Wesleyan College and the title of the volume comes from the name of the newspaper (The Earnest Christian) published by B. T. Roberts, the founder of the College and of the Free Methodist Church. The essays also function as an earnest of the heritage of the College and of B. T. Roberts’s vision of socially embodied Christianity (he was an evangelical egalitarian back in the nineteenth century and wrote a booklet in 1891 advocating the ordination of women). Although the anniversary of the College was last year, the volume of essays is being published this summer.

Biblical Interpretation for Caribbean Renewal—Call for Papers Closes in Two Weeks

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This is a reminder of the upcoming theology conference that I am helping to organize in Kingston, Jamaica, on Friday–Saturday, September 8–9, 2017.

The conference is sponsored by the Jamaica Theological Seminary (and will take place on their campus).

The conference is co-sponsored by the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology and the United Theological College of the West Indies.

This interdisciplinary theology conference celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Jamaica Association of Evangelicals and the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

Keynote Speaker—Dr. Steed Davidson

The keynote speaker will be Dr. Steed Davidson, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.

Dr. Davidson, who is a Trinidadian (technically, from Tobago), will kick off the conference with a programmatic lecture on Friday evening entitled “The Hazards and Opportunities of Sola Scriptura for Caribbean Biblical Interpretation”; then on Saturday there will be papers on a variety of topics related to the conference theme: “Biblical Interpretation for Caribbean Renewal.”

Paper Proposals Welcome—For Two More Weeks

With two weeks till the deadline, there is still time to propose a paper.

Proposals are invited from established scholars and practitioners in all theological disciplines, as well as from graduate students, post-docs, and non-tenured faculty.

Both Caribbean residents and others with an interest in the Caribbean are invited to propose papers.

The Conference Theme—From Many Angles

We encourage high quality papers on any topic relevant to the theme of “Biblical Interpretation for Caribbean Renewal.”

We welcome papers from all theological disciplines, including biblical, historical, systematic, philosophical, moral, pastoral theology, and theology that engages culture, the church, or other academic fields.

We especially encourage papers that:

  • propose priorities for biblical interpretation in the Caribbean
  • address current practices of biblical interpretation in the Caribbean
  • engage particular biblical texts in light of Caribbean realities

The due date for receiving proposals is July 15, 2017.

You may access the Call for Papers, which contains further information on submitting proposals.

As we get closer to the conference date, the conference page on the website of the Jamaica Theological Seminary will be updated with information about registration and the conference schedule.