Category Archives: Teaching the Bible

Current Issue of the Canadian Theological Review is the Best Yet

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The current issue of the Canadian Theological Review, the journal of the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association (CETA), is now at press and should be ready shortly.

The issue consists of five papers that were presented at the Fall 2013 CETA theology conference held at Northeastern Seminary in Rochester, NY, plus another paper that wasn’t presented at the conference. In my opinion, this is the best issue of the journal yet. The papers, though diverse, are uniformly thought-provoking and insightful.

This is the lineup of articles:

  • J. Gerald Janzen, “Ecce Homo: The Servant of YHWH as Imago Dei in Second Isaiah”
  • Steven Bouma-Prediger, “Eschatology Shapes Ethics: New Creation and Christian Ecological Virtue Ethics”
  • C. Cord Sullivan, “Introducing the Incarnate Christ: How John’s Logos Theology Sets the Stage for the Narrative Development of Jesus’s Identity”
  • James Pedlar, “‘His Mercy is Over All His Works’: John Wesley’s Mature Vision of New Creation”
  • Andrew Van’t Land, “(Im)Peccability amid the Powers: Christ’s Sinlessness in a Culture of Sinful Systems”
  • Anthony G. Siegrist, “Moral Formation and Christian Doctrine: ‘The Conjunction against Which We Must Now Struggle’”

Old Testament scholar Gerry Janzen engages in a superb intertextual study of the Servant of YHWH in Deutero-Isaiah to illustrate the profound theology articulated in this figure; the Servant is both the human image of YHWH (even in his suffering) and the alternative to Babylonian idols (false images).

Theologian and ethicist Steve Bouma-Prediger asks what sort of virtues we need in order to manifest the Bible’s eschatological vision of a new creation; his unpacking of this biblical vision and his interaction with the field of ecological virtue ethics provides an excellent grounding for contemporary earthkeeping or creation care.

Cord Sullivan, graduate student at Northeastern Seminary, shares part of his thesis research, illuminating the background to the Logos theology of John’s Prologue by recourse to the distinctive use of memra (Aramaic for “word”) in Jewish Targums; this background then becomes the clue to the unity between the Prologue and the rest of the Fourth Gospel (an issue that has been contested in Johannine scholarship).

The paper by James Pedlar, who holds the chair of Wesley Studies at Tyndale in Toronto, is a detailed exposition of John Wesley’s mature understanding of the redemption of creation; by examining a series of relevant primary texts Pedlar clarifies Wesley’s vision of God’s love for all creatures.

The paper by Drew Van’t Land (student at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto) won the CETA theology award for best graduate student paper. Van’t Land addresses the knotty problem of how we can understand Jesus’s sinlessness given what we know of systemic evil; how did Jesus (if he was truly human) avoid being conformed to the pre-existing societal corruption he was born into? His concluding exegesis of Jesus’s two visits to the Jerusalem temple constitutes an enlightening exploration of the paper’s central theological claims.

Theologian Anthony Siegrist addresses how we get from the truth of doctrine to ethics, arguing these are not two separate categories (as often conceptualized), but that doctrine is meant to be morally formative; his analysis of the role of teachers in the process of communicating biblical truth for life-change is both insightful and encouraging to those who embrace this calling.

These articles are followed by a series of in-depth book reviews.

This issue of the Canadian Theological Review is currently at press and will be mailed out shortly. If you are not a CETA member, but would like to purchase a copy, please check out contact information for the journal on the CETA website.

Two other issues of the journal are currently being worked on, one incorporating papers from the Canadian Theological Society meeting given at the 2014 Congress at Brock University, the other showcasing papers from the Fall 2014 CETA conference at Wycliffe College on evangelical feminism.

The Canadian Theological Review is actively seeking submissions of both articles and book reviews for future issues.

The Meaning of “Heaven” in the Bible

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Today Baker Academic uploaded my second weekly blog post in their series “Beyond the Book.” Each week during March I will be discussing something I learned about eschatology while working on A New Heaven and a New Earth; in each case, it will be a topic I haven’t explicitly blogged about before.

My first post, Preparation in Heaven for Revelation on Earth – The “Apocalyptic” Pattern, focused on the underlying pattern I came to discern in many “heaven” passages in the New Testament that seem to be associated with the Christian hope.

My second post, The Meaning of “Heaven” in the Bible, explains that “heaven” is not thought of in the Bible as an immaterial, uncreated realm; this is a later theological construct. I didn’t address this explicitly anywhere in my eschatology book, but it is implicit throughout, and requires some comment.

Due to the need to keep these “Beyond the Book” posts short, I’ve omitted much that needs to be said on this topic. Hopefully, the post will generate some questions, even challenges, to my claims, which will allow me to get into some of the important related questions that I had to omit.

Baker is giving away three copies of A New Heaven and a New Earth. The winners will be announced at the end of March and you can sign up for a copy here.

Redeeming Reason with John Mullholland

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I met John Mulholland, who works at the University of Chicago Law Library, back in 2007. Over the years John has been a consistent proponent of a holistic Christian worldview, including its relevance for the university, and has organized many conferences on the subject, helping many to reflect on what it means to serve Christ in academia.

At John’s invitation I came to speak at an event called “The Redemption of Reason” at the University of Chicago in October 2007; I gave two talks, one on God’s validation of Job’s lament in the speech from the whirlwind, a second on the meaning of the imago Dei as God’s call for whole-life service.

Recently I became aware of a Facebook page that John has been involved with, that is grounded in the heritage of Charles Malik, the Lebanese Christian intellectual and diplomat who was president of the UN General Assembly.

Malik, who was Eastern Orthodox, studied with Alfred North Whitehead and Martin Heidegger and earned a PhD in philosophy from Harvard, and later taught in both the US and Lebanon. He entered the civil service in Lebanon and besides service to that country he was instrumental in developing the UN charter of rights and served as president of the UN General Assembly from 1958-59. Malik also wrote in the area of theology and I have heard his name dropped and seen his works cited especially when I was a campus minister with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, back in the 1980s.

One of my M.A. students (Cord Sullivan), who is coming on staff with IVCF at the University of Buffalo, has a Malik quote as the byline for his email: “more potently than by any other means, change the University and you change the world.” Now you can see why this Facebook page is called the “Charles Malik Society for Redeeming Reason.” I’m glad I discovered it.

Recently, John posted some comments there about the talk on “Restoration” I gave at Jubilee 2015.

A gift of Shalom from Professor J. Richard Middleton for this little venture, where we seek to engage the university and culture as Christians with the Good News of Jesus. Middleton, NT Wright and others now see an holistic message of salvation, which empowers us to do both deeds of mercy, but also deeds of creation in science, art, medicine, et al.

Nicholas Wolterstorff echoes this work by Middleton and others with remarks about God’s call to us all to be messengers of Shalom in this world, agents of God’s mission – see esp. p.72

Then John quotes some of my blog post on the Jubilee conference, and concludes by saying:

Click around Middleton’s blog to find more resources. Here is the table of contents for his new book, A New Heaven and a New Earth.

I recommend the postings on the Malik/Redeeming Reason Facebook page for inspiration and enlightenment on seeking God’s kingdom in the academic realm.

Thanks, John, for your service in the cause of Christ that goes back a long way!