Category Archives: Rochester, NY

The Lyrical Genius of Bob Marley

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As a follow-up to my post on Bob Marley’s song “One Love / People Get Ready,” let me recommend three important works (two books and one article) on the lyrics of Bob Marley’s songs.

Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius

The first is a wonderful analysis of Marley’s lyrics, album-by-album (from Catch a Fire to Confrontation), by the internationally famous poet, Kwame Dawes.

Dawes was born in Ghana, but spent his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica, before moving to the USA. Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius is published in at least two editions (Sanctuary Publishing, 2002; and Bobcat Books, 2007).

The Bible and Bob Marley: Half the Story Has Never Been Told

An excellent analysis of how Marley uses the Bible in his songs is The Bible and Bob Marley: Half the Story Has Never Been Told (Cascade, 2013), by Dean MacNeil (I read a prepublication version and wrote an endorsement for this book).

The book doesn’t analyze every biblical reference but focuses on the two main ways Marley’s lyrics appeal to the Bible. The first is his use of wisdom themes from Proverbs and elsewhere in the Old Testament and the second is his use of language from Paul’s epistles in the New Testament to articulate his mission as a Rasta / reggae ambassador to the world.

Dean MacNeil is a jazz musician who for many years taught a summer course on Bob Marley at the Berklee School of Music, which resulted in a student band doing a concert of Marley’s songs at the end of the semester. He has an MA in theology from Loyola Marymount University.

Soon Come: Jamaican Spirituality, Jamaican Poetics

One of the best essays on Bob Marley’s spirituality is chapter 7 in Hugh Hodges’s excellent book, Soon Come: Jamaican Spirituality, Jamaican Poetics (University of Virginia Press, 2008).

Hodges is a Brit teaching literature in Canada. He did his PhD at the University of Toronto with the famous Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison. His chapter on Marley is called, “Walk Good: Bob Marley and the Oratorical Tradition.” In it he suggests that Marley’s performances have a call-and-response character, where Marley functions like a Pentecostal or charismatic preacher, and his albums (especially Survival and Uprising) have the rhetorical power of charismatic sermons.

The Subversive Spirituality of Reggae

On February 17, 2023 I gave a presentation called “The Subversive Spirituality of Reggae: ‘Resisting against the System’ in the Music of Bob Marley & the Wailers,” in Rochester, NY. It was held at the Joy Gallery. Thanks to artist and RIT professor, Luvon Sheppard, for hosting us. The presentation was sponsored by the Rochester Jamaican Organization in celebration of Reggae Month.

Why I Love Creation Theology—How This Theme Is Interwoven Into My Life, Teaching, and Writing

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As anyone who has taken my classes knows, I talk a lot about the theology of creation. Indeed, in my publications (both books and articles), I keep returning to creation theology either as an explicit focus or more indirectly as a foundation for other topics. 

In this blog post, I give an accounting of the theme of creation in my life, my teaching, and my writing.

Why I Got Interested in Creation

It all started when I was an undergraduate student at Jamaica Theological Seminary. I got hooked on creation theology in my third year of studies (at the tender age of twenty). There were two main reasons for my interest.

First, as a Christian who wanted to serve God, but had no calling to pastoral ministry, I wanted to understand why God had put me in the world. What was my purpose as a human being? And how should this impact my life today as a Christian?

Creation seemed the best place to start, especially what the Bible means when it says that we are created in God’s image (imago Dei).

The second reason I was attracted to creation theology is because creation grounds the entire story of the Bible—a complicated story with many twists and turns, covering many different types of literature. Like most Christians, I was introduced to the Bible in lots of bits and pieces–a psalm here, a parable there, isolated verses from the Pauline epistles, various episodes from Old and New Testament narratives, especially the death and resurrection of Jesus. But I wasn’t really clear how it all fit together.

As a teen and young adult, I was a detail-oriented person, very focused on the concrete. I naturally noticed particularities—an interesting sentence in a book, the crinkling of a leaf, a one-legged grasshopper. But I often found it difficult to see patterns.

Looking back, I have sometimes said that my developmental task as an adolescent was to find coherence—in my experiences, in life, in society, in history. Also in the Bible.

As Inigo Montoya said in The Princess Bride, when things go wrong, you have to go back to the beginning.

So grounding the complexity of the Bible in its beginning—God’s creation of the world—was a most helpful way to understand what was going on in the biblical story.

Teaching Creation—In Southern Ontario

I started teaching biblical creation theology a couple years into my graduate studies, when I became an Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) staff worker. I had the opportunity (facilitated by Brian Walsh) to develop and teach informal (non-credit) courses on the Christian worldview at various universities in Southern Ontario (University of Toronto, McMaster University, and the University of Guelph).

The initial course title was “The Christian Worldview in a Secular Culture.”

After an introduction to worldviews and the rationale for the course, the first substantial topic was the Bible’s view of creation and the human role in God’s world. I was exploring the topic for myself as I taught the course. I grew in my understanding of creation theology year by year, through this teaching.

Teaching Creation—In Upstate New York

Later, while living in upstate New York and studying at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, I continued teaching non-credit worldview courses as a chaplain at the University of Rochester and at some local churches.

I was also invited to teach a more focused non-credit course on the Bible and science, specifically for Christian graduate students (and some professors) in the sciences at the University of Rochester and Cornell University. This opportunity was facilitated by Bob Fay, who was then Professor (now emeritus) of Chemistry at Cornell.

In these courses on the Bible and science I was able to explore further the role of creation in grounding the scientific vocation and how the sciences studied the world God created. While I taught the Bible and an overview of the history of the Bible and science, my “students” (all aspiring or practicing scientists) taught me a great deal about what science was and how it actually functioned.

Teaching Creation—In Formal Credit Courses

Once I enrolled in doctoral studies at the Institute for Christian studies (Toronto), I began teaching adjunct courses to students in the masters program, including a year-long introduction the Bible, along with courses on the Bible and Postmodernity, Humanity as God’s image, and Creation in the Bible and the ancient Near East. I was exploring various facets of the topic of creation in all of these.

When I began my formal teaching career at Colgate Rochester Divinity School (now Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School), a decade after I had been a student there, and then at Roberts Wesleyan College and Northeastern Seminary some years later, creation continued to be an important topic in many of my courses.

These included introductory courses on the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, the Wisdom books, and the Psalms; creation theology was also central to seminar courses I taught on Genesis, Humanity as the image of God, and Creation in the Bible and the ancient Near East.

I even continued to teach my original course on the Christian worldview, significantly revised, under different names, such as “Worldview Foundations” (at the Institute for Christian Studies), “Faith, Culture, and Calling” (at Colgate Rochester Divinity School), “Exploring the Christian Worldview” (at Roberts Wesleyan College), and “Biblical Worldview: Story, Theology, Ethics” (at Northeastern Seminary).

Because of a recent curriculum revision at Northeastern Seminary, “Biblical Worldview” has been renamed “Being in the Story.”

And, of course, much of this teaching grew into writing.

Writing about Creation and Worldviews

The early non-credit Christian worldview teaching for IVCF led to the first book I wrote with Brian Walsh, The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View (IVP, 1984), where we had a chapter called “Based on Creation.” It was our shared understanding of creation theology that grounded our exposition of redemption and our critique of worldview dualism and modern idolatry.

This is still the most widely read book I’ve written, with translations into Korean (1987); French (1988); Indonesian (2001); Spanish (2003); Portuguese (2009); new Korean edition (2013); new French edition (2017); new Indonesian edition (2020).

When Brian and I wanted to revise The Transforming Vision to explicitly address the postmodern condition and the role of suffering in the Bible, IVP suggested that we write a follow up book, which we did.

Truth Is Stranger than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age (IVP, 1995) contains a chapter on the biblical view of humanity (“The Empowered Self”) and one on creation more generally (“Reality Isn’t What It’s Meant to Be”). This book has been published in a UK edition (SPCK, 1995) and released in two different Korean editions (2007, 2020).

Writing about Creation—Up to The Liberating Image

Just before Truth Is Stranger was published, I wrote an exploratory article in anticipation of my doctoral dissertation, called “The Liberating Image?” The question mark indicated its exploratory character. 

  • “The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago Dei in Context,” Christian Scholar’s Review 24 (1994): 8–25.

But when I published my dissertation with the same title (and a different subtitle), I left out the question mark.

I also wrote some other articles on the way to The Liberating Image that addressed creation theology; some of this material was incorporated into various chapters of the book.

  • “Is Creation Theology Inherently Conservative? A Dialogue with Walter Brueggemann,” Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994): 257–277. Published with Walter Brueggemann’s “Response to J. Richard Middleton,” 279–289.
  • “Creation Founded in Love: Breaking Rhetorical Expectations in Genesis 1:1–2:3,” in Sacred Texts, Secular Times: The Hebrew Bible in the Modern World, ed. by Leonard Jay Greenspoon and Bryan F. LeBeau, Studies in Jewish Civilization 10 (Creighton University Press, 2000), 47–85.
  • “Created in the Image of a Violent God? The Ethical Problem of the Conquest of Chaos in Biblical Creation Texts,” Interpretation 58 (2004): 341–55.

Creation theology was important even in an article I wrote on Bob Marley and the Wailers, where I cited song lyrics to show that appeal to creation was one of their strategies for challenging the “Babylonian” status quo.

  • “Identity and Subversion in Babylon: Strategies for ‘Resisting Against the System’ in the Music of Bob Marley and the Wailers,” chap. 9 in Religion, Culture and Tradition in the Caribbean, ed. by Hemchand Gossai and N. Samuel Murrell (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 181–204.

Writing about Creation—After The Liberating Image

Then, once The Liberating Image was published, I started getting requests to contribute Bible dictionary or encyclopedia articles that addressed some aspect of creation theology (especially the imago Dei); even the article on “Salvation” that I wrote with Michael Gorman drew on creation theology as a significant component of the topic.

  • “Salvation,” in the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 5, ed. by Katharine Doob Sakenfeld et al. (Nashville: Abingdon, 2009), 45–61. Co-authored with Michael J. Gorman.
  • “Image of God,” in Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics, ed. by Joel B. Green et al. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 394–97.
  • “Image of God,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Theology, vol. 2, ed. by Samuel E. Balentine et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 516–23.
  • “The Genesis Creation Accounts,” in  The T&T Clark Companion of Christian Theology and the Modern Sciences, ed. by John P. Slattery, Bloomsbury Companions (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2020), 15–31.
  • “The Image of God in Ecological Perspective.” Chap. 20 in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and Ecology, ed. by Mark Harris and Hilary Marlow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 284–298. 
  • “What Does the Bible Mean When It Says We’re ‘Made in the Image of God’?” Answer to question #44 in 101 Great Big Questions about the Bible and Science, ed. by Lizzie Henderson and Steph Bryant (Oxford: Lion Hudson, forthcoming). A children’s book sponsored by the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

There were invitations to write other dictionary/encyclopedia articles that I had to turn down due to time constraints. These included:

  • “Image of God” for The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Ethics.
  • “Creation” for The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Theology.
  • “Concept of the Image of God in the Old and New Testaments” for The Palgrave Handbook of Image Studies.

Writing about Creation in the Psalms, Job, and the Caribbean

I also began to explore aspects of creation theology that were spin-offs from The Liberating Image, such as creation in the Psalms and Job, and the application of creation theology to Caribbean life.

  • “The Role of Human Beings in the Cosmic Temple: The Intersection of Worldviews in Psalms 8 and 104,” Canadian Theological Review 2. no. 1 (2013): 44–58.
  • “Islands in the Sun: Overtures to a Caribbean Creation Theology,” in Islands, Islanders, and the Bible: Ruminations, ed. by Jione Havea, Margaret Aymer, and Steed Vernyl Davidson, Semeia Studies 77 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015), 115–134. Reprint from A Kairos Moment for Caribbean Theology (2013).
  • “Does God Come to Bury Job or to Praise Him? The Significance of YHWH’s Second Speech from the Whirlwind,” St. Mark’s Review no. 239 (March 2017): 1–27. Published with a response essay by Jeanette Mathews.

This last article, which addresses the debate between Job and his friends about the status of humanity as degraded or elevated (and God’s answer to the debate), is now part of a new book that links Job with Abraham in Genesis 22):

Writing about Creation in the Garden of Eden

My most recent research has been on creation in Genesis 2–3, exploring the account of human origins in the Garden story. So far I’ve written two essays on this.

  • “From Primal Harmony to a Broken World: Distinguishing God’s Intent for Life from the Encroachment of Death in Genesis 2–3,” chap. 7 in Earnest: Interdisciplinary Work Inspired by the Life and Teachings of B. T. Roberts, ed. by Andrew C. Koehl and David Basinger (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017), 139–67.
  • “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.

The plan is for this material to become part of a book I am working on for Cascade, an imprint of Wipf and Stock:

  • Life and Death in the Garden of Eden: A Theological Reading of Genesis 2–3 (Eugene, OR: Cascade).

Creation to Eschaton

Creation theology has also been significant for my understanding of eschatology, since the beginning (creation) is profoundly connected to the end (eschaton). This is what led to the name of my blog site, Creation to Eschaton.

Most recently, I’ve written a chapter for a new book on eschatology (scheduled to be published in Spring 2021), where I develop the connection between creation and eschaton, with an explicit focus on the coming of the Shekinah, the Rabbinic term for God’s holy presence in the world.

  • “The New Earth: Cosmic Redemption and the Coming of the Shekinah,” in Four Views on Heaven, ed. Michael Wittmer, Counterpoints: Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, forthcoming). Chapters by John Feinberg, J. Richard Middleton, Michael Allen, and Peter Kreeft. With authors’ responses to other essays.

The Defining Theme 

Of course, I’ve been writing on other topics besides creation, especially the book of Samuel, the problem of suffering, and the lament psalms (more on that another time).

But creation has clearly been the defining theme of my teaching, research, and writing.

Note: For those interested, most of the articles listed in this post are available as PDFs here.

Essays Celebrating Paul Livermore—an Incomparable Faculty Colleague

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In a previous post I introduced an essay I wrote, entitled  “The Blessing of Abraham and the Missio Dei: Reframing the Purpose of Israel’s Election in Genesis 12:1–3.”

A Festschrift for Paul Livermore

The essay has been published in a volume of twenty-five essays that I co-edited with Doug Cullum, the Vice President and Dean of Northeastern Seminary. This volume is a Festschrift in honor of our retired colleague Paul Livermore, one of the founding faculty members of the Seminary—indeed, the person who first came up with the vision to start the Seminary.

Paul Livermore retired in 2013, after thirty-three years of faithful service to both Roberts Wesleyan College and Northeastern Seminary. This short video commemorates his life and ministry at both institutions.

 

 

The video is interspersed with Livermore’s comments. Three things he says stand out to me.

One is his comment that in a given class lecture, only one-tenth of what a professor knows is visible (often it is students’ questions that uncover some of the hidden nine-tenths). This was very true for Paul, who had an amazing wealth of knowledge about a wide range of subjects.

Another is that hell for a professor would be a huge stack of bad student papers to grade (how honest can you get!). But that heaven would consist in reading some really excellent papers.

The third thing I note about Paul is that there is a recording of his reciting the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4–9), which plays over the opening video scenes; this shows how deeply grounded he has always been in the Old Testament.

The title of the Festschrift is Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis, which suggests something of the range of intellectual and practical interests that have characterized Paul Livermore throughout his career. These interests have spanned theological scholarship (in different academic disciplines) and a commitment to the life of the church.

Here you can read a brief four-page biographical sketch of Paul Livermore’s career, from the Introduction to the Festschrift.

From Biblical Studies to Patristics

Paul Livermore was formally trained in New Testament and Second Temple Judaism (he was a doctoral assistant to Bruce Metzger at Princeton). His doctoral dissertation was called “The Setting and Argument of Romans 1:18–3:20: The Empirical Verification of the Power of Sin” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1978).

Although he started out teaching Biblical Studies at Roberts Wesleyan College, Livermore eventually became an expert in Patristic theology. As someone in the Wesleyan theological tradition, he was drawn to the Church Fathers (especially the Eastern Fathers, as John Wesley himself had been) and he crafted an influential interdisciplinary course at Northeastern Seminary that addressed the development of doctrine, spirituality, and the church in the centuries after the New Testament.

Originally called “The Formative Era,” the course is now called “Being Christian,” and focuses on the attempt of the early church to clarify what it meant to be Christian in the first few centuries of the Common Era.

Since Livermore retired, the course has been taught by Dr. Rebecca Letterman and (in its current configuration) by Dr. Josef Sykora. The Seminary offers this course as part of six foundational courses, called The Great Conversation.

Contributors and Essays in the Festschrift

Paul Livermore’s impact on a range of faculty colleagues, church leaders, and students is confirmed by the wide variety of essays in the volume, which span Old and New Testament studies, theology, history, pastoral ministry, the Apocrypha, and the ancient Near East.

The essays are grouped into three sections:

  • Part 1: Grappling with Scripture in Ancient and Contemporary Contexts (eleven essays).
  • Part 2: Insights from the History of the Church (nine essays).
  • Part 3: Exploration and Reflections—Theological and Otherwise (five essays).

There are essays by current and former faculty at Northeastern Seminary and Roberts Wesleyan College, including:

  • Jeffrey Altman (Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, Roberts Wesleyan College)
  • David Basinger (Professor of Philosophy at Roberts Wesleyan College and Northeastern Seminary, and Chief Academic Officer, Roberts Wesleyan College)
  • Douglas Cullum (Professor of Historical and Pastoral Theology, Vice-President and Dean, Northeastern Seminary)
  • Timothy Dwyer (Professor of Bible and Ministry, Chair of the Ministry Department, Warner University)
  • Elizabeth Gerhardt (Professor of Theology and Social Ethics, Northeastern Seminary)
  • Rebecca Letterman (Professor of Spiritual Formation, Northeastern Seminary)
  • Wayne McCown (Provost Emeritus of Roberts Wesleyan College and Founding Dean Emeritus of Northeastern Seminary)
  • J. Richard Middleton (Professor of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis, Northeastern Seminary)

There are essays by past students of Paul Livermore, including:

  • David Belles (Academic Dean, International Fellowship of Christian Assemblies Bible College, Richmond Heights, OH)
  • T. L. Birge (Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies, Azusa Pacific University)
  • Margaret Flowers (Professor Emerita of Biology, Wells College, Aurora, NY)
  • Joel H. Hunt (author, Athens, GA)
  • Mark McMonagle (Vicar, St Brendan Orthodox Mission, Honeoye Falls, NY)
  • John Miller (Professor and Program Chair, Elim Bible Institute and College, Lima, NY)
  • Suzzane Pearson (Spiritual Director, Rochester, NY)
  • Linda Schwab (Professor Emerita of Chemistry, Wells College, Aurora, NY)
  • Louis Stulman (Professor of Religious Studies, University of Findlay)
  • Thomas Worth (Pastor, Community Covenant Church, Manlius, NY)

There are also essays by colleagues of Paul Livermore from various academic and church contexts, including:

  • Donald Bastian (Bishop Emeritus of the Free Methodist Church)
  • Joseph Coleson (Professor of Old Testament, Emeritus, Nazarene Theological Seminary)
  • Eugene Lemcio (Professor Emeritus of New Testament, School of Theology, Seattle Pacific University)
  • James McNutt (Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History, Thomas More University)
  • Frank Anthony Spina (Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, Seattle Pacific Seminary and School of Theology, Seattle Pacific University)
  • James Sweeney (J. Russell Bucher Professor of New Testament, Director of the Master of Divinity Program, Winebrenner Theological Seminary)
  • Karen Winslow (Professor of Biblical Studies, Chair of Biblical and Theological Studies, Director of Master of Arts in Theological Studies, Azusa Pacific Seminary)

You can see the full Table of Contents here.

Paul Livermore, the Old Testament, and Judaism

In the video commemorating Paul Livermore’s retirement, he mentions teaching Hebrew in his first semester at Roberts Wesleyan College and the extremely bright students he had in the class. Two of his brightest students (who went on to do doctoral work in Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern Studies), were Louis Stulman and Joel Hunt. I don’t know if they were in that particular Hebrew class, but Stulman’s essay on the Hebrew Bible as trauma and resistance literature and Hunt’s essay on the meaning of an ancient Mesopotamian prayer are included in the Festschrift.

Livermore’s deep connection to the Old Testament and the Jewish tradition is evident in a 1987 article he wrote for the Wesleyan Theological Journal, where he challenged various Christian stereotypes about “legalism” and Jewish understandings of the Law/Torah. The article title is taken from a comment Rabbi Akiva makes about the Torah as the “precious instrument” (klî ḥemdah, also translated “precious vessel” or “desirable instrument) in Pirkei Avot 3:14 (Pirkei Avot or “Chapters of the Fathers” is a collection of ancient Rabbinical teaching on various ethical subjects).

You can read the full article here: Paul W. Livermore, “The Precious Instrument: A Study of the Concept of Law in Judaism and Evangelicalism,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 22 (1987) 17–37. This essay is cited in James McNutt’s chapter (see below).

Various of Livermore’s colleagues from other academic contexts have also contributed essays in Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and Judaism.

These include Joseph Coleson, who probes beneath the idea of “covenant” to a more foundational relationship between God and his people in the Bible; Eugene Lemcio, who engages in an eschatological reading of “Bel and the Dragon” (in the Apocrypha); James McNutt, who exposes the anti-Judaism in the writings of biblical scholar Adolf Schlatter; Frank Anthony Spina, who addresses the irony of reading Joshua as a Christian text; and Karen Winslow, who explores the understanding of the Akedah (Genesis 22) among Second Temple Jews.

It was Paul Livermore’s interest in the Jewish tradition that encouraged me to complete my own essay exploring a non-supersessionist reading of the call of Abraham, which is included in the Festschrift.

Tolle, Lege (Take Up and Read)

And then there are all the essays on New Testament, church history, spirituality, ethics, and beyond!

These essays pay tribute to the multidisciplinary impact of Paul Livermore, founding faculty member and Professor Emeritus of Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan College.

Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis is a book well worth owning, with essays to be mulled over and savored.

Endorsements and Reviews

Brian T. Hartley, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Theology at Greenville University:

“Paul Livermore’s deep influence over three generations of students can be clearly discerned through these twenty-five essays that span key refrains in Scripture, theology, and church history. Dr. Livermore’s character, passion, and vision for bridging the divide between church and academy all receive clear witness through probing pieces that explore central themes which lay at the heart of his own scholarship and teaching.”
David W. Kendall, Bishop Emeritus, Free Methodist Church-USA:
“I have known and worked with Dr. Paul Livermore for nearly forty years. I regard him as both friend and mentor, scholar and learner, accomplished and humble, and a lover of God and people. I am pleased to commend this volume as a fitting tribute to the breadth and depth of Paul’s character and influence for so many of us—his students, colleagues, and friends.”
Deana L. Porterfield, President, Roberts Wesleyan College and Northeastern Seminary:
“This collection weaves together multiple voices to create a beautiful tribute to the deep impact of the life and teaching of Dr. Paul Livermore. It is an accessible but rich compilation focused on his commitment to the cause of Christ through scholarship, teaching, and service to the church. Each author magnifies an aspect of Dr. Livermore’s insights, through their own lens of scholarship, to honor a life and mind dedicated wholly to God.”