February 14, 2012 at 5:02 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: fear, love, lst, OT, theology, wisdom
Why is it that my brain switches on whenever I get in the shower in the evening? It never does that in the morning! All sorts of things go through my mind, seemingly completely unconnected with whatever’s gone on in the day – ideas for blog posts, questions about books that I read, even ideas for short stories I might one day write!
A thought that began a year ago and has come back to me recently is about wisdom and fearing God – quite a strange one to write about on Valentine’s day!
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Proverbs 9:10 (NIV)
This text (and the similar parallels in Job 28, Psalm 111, Proverbs 1 and 15) obviously came up last year, studying Wisdom in the core module of the MA at LST. I think there are two different ways of reading this verse that say a lot about the different approaches of Evangelical Christians today.
The first is to take it at face value: we need to fear God. There is some room for a more nuanced understanding of what is meant by fear, perhaps speaking of a ‘reverent awe’. After all, it’s not just in the ‘wisdom books’ that the idea of fearing YHWH comes. Through the penteteuch and history books it is used to describe a life lived in a godly way – it’s even in the New Testament a few times. This posture of fear is the source, the origin of godly wisdom.
‘Beginning’ could be read differently, though – it could mean that it is the start of a journey. That journey could be a personal one, or in keeping with the process thinking I’ve been grappling with recently, it could be a journey that humanity as a whole is on.
In a talk titled ‘Touching the Stove’, Shane Hipps used the way his daughter is learning about the cooker in the kitchen as a metaphor for how human interaction with God has developed. While fear is a good attitude for a toddler to have toward the hot oven, for a teenager or an adult to have the same response would not be good. Despite the possible utilitarian, objecctifying direction this illustration could take us in, it brings in the idea of development. Whether we understand development individually (each of us taking a journey from fear of God to mature love) or corporately (the dominant metaphor of our communities moving from fear to love), it is the key to this alternate reading.
This choice of readings is about more than the kind of God we follow, though it is that. Is the judgement of God unrelenting punishment – is forgiveness only possible through spilling blood – or is it something closer to discernment? Is God dangerous, an untameable deity who must be placated somehow, or is he genuinely ‘on our side’ (aside: I mean all of humanity by ‘on our side’, not ‘my side’ – that really can be a dangerous teaching!)
It’s more than that – huge as the idea of what God is like – because it speaks to our understanding of how the universe works. Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors while history points a finger saying ‘you should have learned’? Is it genuinely possible to learn from those who have gone before and shown us what God is really like and explored how we can have a relationship with him? If the latter, then progress is possible, we need not continue to just fear God, but grow to a deep and respectful love.
I choose to believe today that progress is possible, that there is some directionality to the human existence - both on a micro, personal level, and on a macro, all-of-humanity level. I choose to believe that God does not want us to remain terrified, or even at an awe-filled respectful distance, he wants us as close as the tightest hug.
What do you think? Is fear a helpful way of considering your attitude to God?
February 10, 2012 at 2:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: apologetics, dissertation, essays, love wins, lst, postmodern, rob bell, theology
Here it is. The big one – I know at least a few of you have been waiting to have a chance to read this, I hope you find it as interesting to read as it was to write. Despite the unassuming title, the subtitle gives away the potential controversy in the content of the dissertation:
A Critical Apologetic Appraisal of Rob Bell’s Love Wins
Despite the huge furore of early 2011, I’ve chosen not to focus on the argument over heaven and hell that erupted over Love Wins and take a rather more holistic view of the book. I particularly wanted to put it in its context and assess on its own terms whether it met its aim. On reading (and re-reading…) Love Wins, I suggest that the best way to read it is as a work of postmodern apologetics, which is something that the reviewers I read either ignored (most of them) or denied as a possibility (a very tiny minority). This means taking in both its postmodernity in style and context and its apologetic content, realising that the book is aimed at those on the fringe of Christianity, wondering if they could ever be/remain a Christian because of some of the beliefs that are described as Christian. Bell wants to show that there can be different Christianities, that it is a ‘broad stream’.
My approach to assessing whether Bell has done an effective job of encouraging those postmoderns on the fringe of Christian faith that there is a home for them within is based on a ‘Triangulation’ from Kevin Vanhoozer. In an article entitled ‘On the very idea of a Theological System’, he describes the three points of ‘the Spirit’s speaking in Scripture, the belief-practices of the church, and the world made new in Jesus Christ’, which must be kept in view, triangulated, in Christian life.
If you take nothing at all from my dissertation, if your mind is made up on Rob Bell, or if you just don’t care at all, at least take this bit seriously. We have to keep in view the three points of triangulation to live a balanced and full Christian life – what God is saying through the Bible, the way the church (in its many forms) is acting and thinking and the culture around us, with all its potential for transformation and redemption in Jesus. Under-rating any one of these leads to serious defects in our spiritual life and our witness will suffer.
Taking the three points as section headings, I look at how Bell’s book can be seen in these three contexts, how well it sits in them. I took in a wide range of sources, as you would expect in writing a 20,000 word dissertation, from those who stridently opposed Love Wins to others that leapt to Bell’s defence, from postmodern philosophers to reformed theologians. I look at the way he uses scripture – both which passages he selects (and, tellingly – as is so often the case – ignores) and how he handles exploring them. Then I explore how Bell relates to the church, contemporary and historical – those whose writing he has borrowed from, those who agree with him and those who have opposed him. Finally, I explore how postmodern apologetics seeks to convince contemporary culture of the believability of Christianity, and how Bell fits in with this.
My conclusion was to draw out some strengths of Bell’s writing and suggestions for how other apologists might take his work further in giving reasons for faith to those at the edge of Christianity.
Bell’s understanding and interaction with the world is certainly a strength. He reads the concerns and questions that those on the edge of the church have and paints a picture of God in a style that they recognise that emphasises the aspects of His character that they want to see. Doing this has a high apologetic value as it removes obstacles to faith, showing that Christianity makes sense for postmoderns.
Bell’s handling of scripture and the traditions of the church have some greater weaknesses, however. He is not always honest in his selection of scriptures and his depiction of the sources he has used, which at least raises questions over the conclusions he comes to in some chapters.
Bell has met many of the suggestions made earlier in the paper on what postmodern apologetics should be like. He writes to postmoderns as a postmodern using a postmodern style. However, we can suggest that a stronger apologetic could be written based on the analysis of Love Wins in this paper.
Firstly, Bell’s overemphasis on experience can be balanced with other epistemological bases; revelation, reason and faith. This is not to say that Bell ignores them, but developing them more could strengthen the apologetic. This has particular application when Bell is using scripture; in the terms of our triangulation, it would strengthen his apologetic case if he made sure that scripture was seen to be privileged over experience.
Secondly, apologists must take care in their interaction with the church. While we can learn from Bell’s positioning as inside the church yet sitting beside those at the edges, his treatment of some of his sources, especially those that cannot be considered contemporary leaves something to be desired. Honesty is required in naming some views as traditionally fringe, while others were mainstream and clearly showing where your ideas invert that.
Love Wins can be seen as transforming apologetics, demonstrating a new approach to making Christian faith seem plausible and believable in the postmodern world. Our desire is to see more postmoderns creating apologetic works that take seriously the Spirit speaking in scripture, the belief-practices of the church and the world being transformed by Jesus.
I have published the dissertation as an ebook – on Amazon for Kindle and on Smashwords for other e-readers (also including Kindle, as well as .pdf and other formats for easier consumption). For a limited time (a couple of weeks), you can download it from Smashwords for free if you use the code WT94F (enter the code at the checkout). 
February 8, 2012 at 3:13 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: Acts, biblical, Corinthians, essays, Holy Spirit, lst, Luke, Paul, Romans, theology
Now here was a module well outside my comfort zone – brought up in a cessationist context, I’ve come to think that’s not right, but I’ve never done any real Bible study on it. So a Pentecostal tutor who’s written a book on Baptism in the Spirit - a challenge to say the least!
The module was a ‘Biblical’ one, in the sense that it was primarily focussed on the texts of Luke-Acts and the Pauline Epistles, specifically in comparison between them. Yet in practice, since the actual verses up for discussion were relatively few, we often ended up having discussions that really said ‘such-and-such an author said this, but this other person disagreed, for these reasons…’ This culture of discussion was quite hard for me to engage in immediately, I found it a bit dry and detached.
My topic for the essay was anything but detached – it was on the connection between the Holy Spirit and suffering:
Compare and contrast the approaches of Luke and Paul to relationships between God’s Spirit and suffering
The bulk of the essay examined some key passages in Luke (2:25-35, 4:14-30, 12), Acts (4, 5, 6-7, 9, 20:17-38), 2 Corinthians and Romans 8. The purpose of the essay was to draw out differences and similarities between the two biblical authors, but I also wanted to briefly look at what it might mean today, as well.
We have seen some differences in the way Luke and Paul link suffering with the Holy Spirit. Luke, with his mission emphasis, has only ever described suffering and the response of Christians to it in terms of persecution because of rejection. The Spirit predicts this suffering, inspires the message that is rejected, supports persecuted witnesses and even specially commissions some to a life of suffering evangelism. In Paul’s epistles, we have found that suffering can be a mark of witnessing and his apostolic commission. But in Romans, Paul expands the idea of suffering to include the bondage of all creation, including Christians, and the yearning for eschatological redemption.
Suffering in both Paul and Luke is not personal or individual. On the one hand it is because of identification with Jesus and the Spirit-inspired but rejected gospel; on the other is is because we identify with the groaning of all creation. The question ‘why is this happening to me?’ is not on their horizons. Either way, our identification with a bigger story in our suffering brings great hope, for the Spirit is with us. The promise of the support of the Spirit when we are persecuted is to keep us from being anxious (Luke 12:11 12). And as we identify with a groaning creation, Paul says that the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groaning when we cannot express our suffering in words. All the suffering we have explored is underwritten by the remarkable idea of a suffering God. We suffer with Christ and the Spirit suffers with us.
Rather than explaining away suffering, Paul and the apostles recorded in Acts think it is something to be celebrated, an honour. Persecution is a response to the gospel and rejection is what Jesus and the apostles experienced. The authentic response to it is thanksgiving and prayer for boldness. Suffering that is not persecution is an opportunity to join with the Spirit in interceding for the redemption that we hope for to come. The deep groaning that Paul writes about can only come from experience; it is a unique opportunity to join in with the Spirit’s work.
Exploring the idea of the suffering God is something that I have recently picked up again, and will write on soon, as I explore Moltmann’s Crucified God. To me it’s a crucial idea (pun intended).
Holy Spirit Essay - download a .pdf file of the full essay.
This essay by Jon Rogers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.jonrogers.co.uk.
February 7, 2012 at 3:39 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: church, essays, lst, theology, transformation
I was hugely looking forward to this module – thinking through in a rigorous academic context how the Bible speaks to contemporary culture and can bring about social and political transformation. I brought in some ideas that I was aware of but not really fully up to speed on, like liberation theology, it was an excuse to read some Christian Marxists and Anarchists and looked in more detail at ideas like Jubilee that I’ve been involved with previously.
Because of the mix of the class, we had a good chance to challenge our own and other’s views from a whole spectrum of political views and hermeneutic approaches. However, with so many huge questions – from ‘church and state’ to slavery, to ‘just war’ – we were bound to end up with fewer answers than we started!
In a similar way to how many of the modules operated, we each were given a week to lead, which inevitably meant that the session we studied in the most depth became the source of our essay title. My session fell on my birthday – God’s new community – the Church and my title:
In what ways might the community life described in Acts be relevant to the church today?
Given the feedback from the marking, it seems I spent too much of the essay trying to understand how the community life in Acts came to be and what it was like, and not enough time talking about what it might mean in our contemporary context. I found it fascinating to look at the connections between the life ‘on the road’ that Jesus practised with his disciples (not just the 12, a group that included women too), the Essenes and the early church. It’s also interesting to look at the arguments as to whether this was a temporary, one off thing or a model for the future, since the sharing of goods seems to be found only in the first few chapters of Acts, and almost not at all in the letters.
It’s my suggestion that the radical sharing of property is both a hard thing and a rewarding thing to do. I’m not sure that we have the cultural position to do it on a large scale in the UK church, perhaps as Paul found in the gentile contexts he founded churches. But the attitudes behind are just as important and resonant with contemporary culture. Starting simply, by sharing food and time makes the ‘communion’ service into a real meal of fellowship with one another and with God. It removes barriers of exclusion, in the spirit of Jesus and Paul, building a family atmosphere that would be welcoming to anyone who comes in.
BST Essay - download a .pdf file of the full essay.
This essay by Jon Rogers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.jonrogers.co.uk.
February 6, 2012 at 3:39 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: drama, essays, improvisation, lst, postmodern, theology, wisdom
Semester 2 was a different beast to the first one. Two new modules, a new direction in the core and beginning to think about the dissertation (more of which later!)
The core Wisdom module moved from the Old Testament to the New, then on to look at how Christian Wisdom is found in later years, taking in philosophy, art, music and science. While it’s hard to pinpoint how the module could best be improved, given that the first essay had to be ‘biblical’ and the second had to connect wisdom with a more contemporary discipline, I feel that the balance of sessions was not quite right – and I know it has been altered. I had not opportunity to write about the connection between the New Testament writings and Wisdom because the fascinating NT sessions (on Jesus and the Beatitudes and on how Paul’s writings draw on the Wisdom books of the Old Testament and Apocrypha) came after the Semester break. I think there’s a lot there that I would have found fascinating to write about, but my eventual choice of essay title came closer to my more usual interest in the postmodern:
In your opinion does biblical wisdom resonate best with a premodern, modern or postmodern worldview? What implications arise for a transformative use of the Bible in the current postmodern worldview?
With just 3000 words to play with again, I think I took the ‘route A’ approach of looking at premodernity, modernity and postmodernity, giving a very broad characterisation of how each connects with wisdom. However, with the last third of the essay I went off in a more unusual direction: drama. It was a thought sparked by reading Grenz and Vanhoozer among others
“In a sense, the theater is perhaps the most appropriate artistic venue for the expression of the postmodern rejection of modernism … Postmoderns view life, like the story being told on the stage, as an assemblage of intersecting narratives.” (Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, p26)
This multiplicity of narratives acts as a check or even a deconstruction of the metanarative(s) derived from scripture, as an acknowledgement of the nuanced approach to life that is needed – it is wisdom.
But I went further than drama, suggesting that there is an inherent danger of just re-running the struggles of those who have played their part in the ‘theodrama’. Improvisation, whether musical or theatrical provides and extended metaphor for how we live the Christian life with wisdom in a postmodern era of ‘suspicion of metanarratives’, where each ‘church’ or community of improvisers works out their response and continuation of the drama of God.
On reflection, this reminds me of the ‘five act play’ metaphor that N.T.Wright often uses (for example, see halfway through this essay on the authority of scripture)
Suppose there exists a Shakespeare play whose fifth act had been lost. The first four acts provide, let us suppose, such a wealth of characterization, such a crescendo of excitement within the plot, that it is generally agreed that the play ought to be staged. Nevertheless, it is felt inappropriate actually to write a fifth act once and for all: it would freeze the play into one form, and commit Shakespeare as it were to being prospectively responsible for work not in fact his own. Better, it might be felt, to give the key parts to highly trained, sensitive and experienced Shakespearian actors, who would immerse themselves in the first four acts, and in the language and culture of Shakespeare and his time, and who would then be told to work out a fifth act for themselves.
I can’t believe, thinking about it now, that I (a) forgot about N.T.Wright having said it all before and (b) got away with not including it – how did the markers not call me out on that one! Still, it’s this discussion of drama and improvisation that is the most valuable part of the essay and has shaped my thought a lot on how to live the Christian life, especially how we relate to the Bible. My characterisations of premodernity, modernity and postmodernity are undeniably flat and one-dimensional, partly because of the constraints of words and what I wanted to say about each in the essay.
Wisdom Essay 2 - Download a .pdf file of the full essay.
This essay by Jon Rogers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.jonrogers.co.uk.
January 31, 2012 at 2:06 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: essays, exegesis, fig tree, gospel, lst, Mark, temple, theology
I have to be honest and say that Exegesis of Mark’s Gospel was one of my favourite modules of the year. While this was at least partly down to the content – Mark’s gospel is probably my favourite book of the bible – it’s also partly to do with the teaching method of Conrad Gempf. He extensively used Socratic questioning, put lots of responsibility to lead on us as learners and was actually funny! (I know, a funny theologian, they do exist!) You might think that I agreed with almost all he said, but no! He has a much lower view than I of a certain bishop theologian that dominated at least one of our seminars, but I learned a lot from our discussions.
The module worked by each of the class selecting a week; doing all the preparation, preparing handout notes and questions, recommending specific reading and preparing to lead the seminar. The topic of that week was the natural choice of topic to select for the essay, and Conrad asked us to write our own title and run it past him. This eliminates the horrible bit before writing an essay of ‘I really want to write on that topic but the question sucks’ and replaces it with ‘I want to write about this, but what to I actually want to say’.
My week was a particularly challenging one: the part of Mark where Jesus first curses a fig tree, then clears out the temple, then returns to the withered tree. I titled my essay
Cleansing or Destruction? Jesus’ Temple Action in Mark 11
The first thing to notice is the ‘sandwich’ – the two halves of the fig tree story on either side of the ‘meaty’ cleansing story. The sandwich (as part of a larger ‘chiasm’, a multi-layer sandwich) indicates that the Temple action is the point of what Mark is saying, but helps us to understand its meaning. I examined a lot of different commentators’ readings of the stories, eventually coming to the conclusion that, rather than a massive riot, Jesus’ action was largely symbolic and is to be interpreted in the context of the fig tree.
The essay argues that the fig tree is an illustration of the temple – ‘the appearance of abundant life but no prospect of fruit’ and that Jesus aim was to direct people to worship, while enacting a prophecy of destruction in a very ‘Old Testament’ way. The shift in people’s attitude to Jesus indicates that they understood his message – before the fig tree, they are welcoming him with singing and palm branches; after, the temple leadership challenge Jesus credentials to teach. However, the title ‘cleansing’ is still somewhat appropriate, since Jesus’ action points people to worship and pray, exactly what they need to do to repent and avoid the judgement prophesied.
Mark Essay - download a .pdf file of the full essay.
This essay by Jon Rogers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.jonrogers.co.uk.
January 30, 2012 at 2:07 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: apologetics, essays, lst, postmodern, theology
Transforming Contemporary Apologetics, though not a core module to the MA was taken by every student in my entry year. It had by far the heaviest reading load of any of the modules and it covered a lot of ground – taking in a range of apologetic techniques from across the centuries (but mainly Western), looking at contemporary approaches, especially relating to postmodernity. As you might guess, postmodernity was the bit that appealed to me the most and was what I focused my essay on.
Explore the transformative function of apologetics in postmodern society. Your essay should include key ways in which today’s context is different from other historical periods, the contemporary challenges and suggestions for transformative action.
I relied on a schema from Leithart to describe how postmodernity is different to other historical ages: its actions are ‘intensifications, inversions and unmaskings’ of modernity. I drew on Brian McLaren to describe the values of postmodernity, values that many Christians see as a threat, but that I see as not antithetical to faith. The four are:
- Postmodernism is sceptical of certainty.
- Postmodernism is sensitive to context.
- Postmodernism highly values subjective experience.
- For postmoderns, togetherness is a rare, precious, and elusive experience.
Finally, I spend the remaining bulk of the essay detailing four ways that postmodern apologetics might function, with four short maxims giving practical ideas.
- Uncertainty: Embrace uncertainty to profoundly encounter God.
- Conversation: Engage in two-way conversation where both parties grow.
- Stories: Tell and be part of stories that connect, engage and encourage further development.
- Celebration: Celebrate God’s presence with anyone who will join you.
I don’t believe that postmodernity is something to be feared or fought. It just is. It’s not a perfect context to think as a Christian, but that perfect context does not exist. Rather, we engage with the context we are in and seek to redeem it, to transform it.
On reflection, however, I’m not sure I really answered the question – despite the good feedback from my tutor who marked it! How do we transform the way we defend the rationality of faith in a context where rationality is not only no longer the only criteria, but downright mistrusted? I think my suggestions go towards how evangelism or mission might work in a postmodern context, but apologetics is a different beast.
A few brief ideas now, a year on: acknowledge irrationality, avoid argument and power plays. Postmoderns will not be battered into the kingdom by the most powerful arguments or logical trickery (I think it slightly suspect to assume that anyone really was. There’s always something else going on beyond rational convincement – the Holy Spirit, even if nothing else!) Accepting that there is more to life (and new life) than deduction or 1-2-3 arguments is essential if we are to make an impact on this generation. Arguments often look like the power plays that we’re so sick of in politics – who really care about ‘town hall style’ debates between candidates? The papers and those who see the world as a fight between us and them (whether ‘they’ are pinkos or tories!) Postmoderns don’t want to watch a husting or a far-off panel debate, they want to be drawn into conversation – and that needs to be genuine dialogue, not a contrived method of forcing ‘capital T Truth’ down an unwilling neck.
So I was wrong – apologetics isn’t mission or evangelism; it’s more specific and focused and still important. Treat postmoderns with respect and some will listen. Apologetics alone will not save them, I suppose that’s part of what I tried to say in the essay, but then it never did save anyone on its own. But in it’s job as removing the intellectual barriers that keep people from faith, it must continue, though different from the apologetics of my parent’s generation if it is to succeed.
Apologetics Essay - download a .pdf file of the full essay.
This essay by Jon Rogers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.jonrogers.co.uk.
January 27, 2012 at 2:03 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: essays, lst, postmodern, theology, wisdom
Christian Wisdom and Transformation is the long title for the core module, which we all called Wisdom. The task over two terms was to explore Christian Wisdom, how it draws on the Old Testament and its potential for transforming Christians today. The first semester started by talking about what we might mean by ‘wisdom’ and where it’s found in the Old Testament, primarily the books that are called ‘wisdom books’: Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
My title was:
Is wisdom only contained in restricted sections of the Old Testament or is it possible to argue that there is a sense in which wisdom permeates the whole of it? How does this affect the transformative potential of Old Testament Wisdom?
Phew! Quite a mouthful! In the essay, I sought to show that limiting the influence of Wisdom to those three books alone is not the best way of reading the Old Testament. I looked at various sections of scripture: Pentateuch, Psalms, Prophets and narratives in Genesis and Esther; looking to see if Wisdom was a them or a shaping force in their writing. My conclusion is that Wisdom did indeed shape the Old Testament, perhaps through redaction from a wisdom school, perhaps though those schools as a force in ancient society.
I also had to spend some time looking at how this would influence Christians today. I suggested that finding wisdom throughout the Old Testament was a very powerful way of reading the Bible as many of the values associated with Wisdom resonate so much with postmoderns. I concluded the essay in this way:
In seeking the wisdom of Scripture, we have found practical advice on living, centred around God. It
appears throughout the Old Testament, in all the sections we have examined. It includes the worship of God
and study of Scripture, but recognises the limits in understanding and experience and is comfortable with
the issues of God’s apparent absence and the abundance of suffering. Wisdom seeks answers, but finds
paradoxes. Wisdom has much to speak into the culture of today when we recognise that simple, dismissive
answers characterise the fool, and the honest hard work of seeking through an enigma suits the wise woman
or man.
Wisdom Essay 1 - download a .pdf file of the full essay.
This essay by Jon Rogers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.jonrogers.co.uk.
January 26, 2012 at 2:23 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: essays, lst, personal, study, theology
As many who read my blog (or know me AFK) are aware, the academic year 2010-2011 was spent studying for an MA at London School of Theology. It was awarded to my early in December, with Merit (yes, I am a little bit proud of that). All this meant submitting a little under 50,000 words in essays, including a 20,000 word dissertation. Over the next three weeks, I want to make each of the essays that I wrote available on the site for people to read, with a short summary of each so you can see if it would be interesting to you. I don’t expect anyone to endure reading all of them, but some of you might find something of interest in there, even if it’s just a big long bibliography to help add sources to your own essay!
Semester 1 was a fun time for me: getting stuck into not only a new course, but a new discipline, with new class mates and teachers, each with their own way of doing things. Each semester had three modules, including the core Wisdom module running through both. In the first semester I took a module on Exegesis of Mark’s Gospel and one on Transforming Contemporary Apologetics.
One of the difficulties we had to learn to navigate with the course in this first semester was that the assessment (the one essay) did not match up to the majority of the learning (the seminars, along with the preparation and reading for each of them). Simply put, the essay titles each covered approximately the content of one single seminar in much greater depth, so in some senses, the hours of reading required to be intelligent and on the ball in most of those seminars was ‘wasted’, or at least unassessed. As the term drew to an end, as the deadlines started to get big in our minds, it’s no surprise that the quantity and quality of reading for the seminars decreased. I don’t know the solution to this problem, perhaps it just calls out a bit more maturity in us as students to know that our learning and our assessment are not the same thing and to do both anyway.
The essays for semester 1 were due on 7 February – four days after our baby was due to be born. I knew that babies can come early as well as late (though Nathaniel was not born until the 10th), so all the essays had to be written with plenty of time to spare – I did not want to be driving to hospital panicking that I still needed to writ another thousand words! This was a tough but important discipline for me – I’ve always been a bit last-minute, using the pressure of deadlines to focus me on work. Still, most of the writing got done during the Christmas break, leaving January quite relaxed.
I will write a separate post for each of the essays, aiming to get through two semesters and the dissertation within three weeks. I’ll also aim to write some other things too – trying to make sure you don’t get too fed up of academic writing! As I write the posts, I will link to them from here.
Wisdom (in the Old Testament)
Apologetics (in the postmodern era)
Mark (the Temple and the fig tree)
August 25, 2011 at 6:06 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: love wins, lst, origen, rob bell, theology
I’m progressing well with the dissertation, over 15 thousand words written. Here’s a paragraph (with footnotes) that I enjoyed writing, and I hope throws a little light on what I think Rob Bell is trying to do.
Bell’s reference to Origen is especially interesting. Origen appears at times to have taught universalism, while at other times he seems to have tended more to particularism, where many but not all would be saved.[1] As many of his writings were lost after he was condemned as a heretic,[2] it is hard to be definite about what exactly Origen taught and how much of it was speculative questioning rather than firm belief. It has been suggested that Origen may have taught differently for different audiences, keeping the question of universal or exclusive salvation open, ‘for a greater effectiveness’ in evangelism.[3] Protraying God as ‘good, kind and just’,[4] Origen is able to suggest a situation where ‘love conquers all.’[5] Bell, from the same pastoral and apologetic heart also keeps open the question of whether all can be reconciled to God.
