Sean the Baptist (in the UCA)

Welcome to Monica Melanchthon

My soon-to-be colleague in Old Testament, Revd Dr Monica Melanchthon will be moving to Melbourne very soon, and we will be welcoming her into the community of the Centre for Theology and Ministry at our worship service on the last Friday of semester. If you are around Parkville that day, then please come and join us. Details below:

PhD Scholarships at MCD University of Divinity

News through from the MCD University of Divinity about funding for 2 Australian Postgraduate award scholarships and 1 International Postgraduate Research Scholarship. Spread the word!

PhD Scholarship Opportunities in Theology and Religious Studies - Call for Applications

MCD University of Divinity invites applications from suitably qualified candidates for Australian Postgraduate Awards (APA) and International Postgraduate Research Scholarships (IPRS). This is an extraordinary scholarships round, and presents an exciting opportunity to undertake fully funded doctoral research at Australia’s newest university. MCD intends to offer 2 APAs (valued at $23,728 pa each). These are open to Australian and New Zealand citizens, and to Permanent Residents of Australia who have lived in Australia continuously for 12 months, and who are eligible to apply for entry to a doctoral program at MCD University of Divinity. MCD also intends to offer 1 IPRS. This is open to any overseas student who has, or is intending to apply for, a student visa to study in Australia, and who is eligible to apply for entry to a doctoral program at MCD University of Divinity. The awardee will have her or his tuition fees and medical insurance covered, and will also be eligible for a stipend of $23,728 pa. Further details about MCD University of Divinity, including eligibility requirements, and application forms for scholarships and candidature, are available at http://www.mcd.edu.au/forms-hdr-students Applications should be submitted to the Director of Research, Dr Mark R. Lindsay, by Friday 29 June 2012.

 

Creation, Conflict and Cosmos: Watch the Presentations

As some will have noted, I had started to post my own summaries on some of the papers I heard at the excellent conference in Romans 5–8 at Princeton Theological Seminary last week.

I am now back in Australia, and am delighted to note that videos of the presentations have been made available. At the moment only the opening sermon (a rhetorical tour de force if ever there was one), and presentations from Thursday and Friday are avaialble. I hope the presentations from Saturday are also posted, especially that by Lou Martyn which I had to miss in order to catch a plane home.

So rather than me offering inadequate summaries, go and look at/listen to the papers themselves here.

God's Earth, Our Care: Eco-Theology Conference 2nd June 2012

I have just recieved information about a helpful looking one-day conference that will be held at the Centre for Theology and Ministry here in Melbourne on Saturday June 2nd.

Flyer can be found here: Download Eco-theol day flyer

Registration form can be found here: Download Registration form

 

Creation, Conflict and Cosmos: Short Paper 1 (Douglas Campbell)

The afternoons of the conference have been largely made up of a choice of either workshops or short papers. Given the fact that these sessions were preceded by three plenary sessions, I chose just one of the short papers on each afternoon.

One of the great aspect of this conference for me has been the chance to talk at some length to Douglas Campbell about his work. His paper on 'The Deliverance of Justification in Romans 6:7­–8'. In this text Paul says the following:

Romans 6.7 ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας.  8 εἰ δὲ ἀπεθάνομεν σὺν Χριστῷ, πιστεύομεν ὅτι καὶ συζήσομεν αὐτῷ,

Romans 6.7 For whoever has died is freed from sin.  8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. (NRSV)

The basic claim of the paper was that the reference in 6.7 is actually christological. 'the one who has died' is Christ, δεδικαίωται refers to God's deliverance of Christ from the realm of sinful existence. This christological affirmation grounds the account of the believer's participation in the resurrection which is in turn the true reality now for believers (not just the nature of future eschatological hope - Campbell regards the future tenses in this section as referring to present, not future reality).

The paper received the inevitable push back from those (including me) who were not convinced of this reading of 6.7, not least in the light of the 'bodies of sin' in 6.6 cf 6.12 which seem clearly to have an anthropological referent. In later discussions with Doug and in the light of the ῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ ἀπέθανεν ἐφάπαξ of 6.10 and Paul's words in 2 Cor. 5.21 I am slightly more amenable, but the key will be to see whether the christological reading of 6.7 really does do better justice to the overall argument of 6.1–10.

 

Creation, Conflict and Cosmos: Plenary 3 (Susan Grove Eastman)

Next up was Susan Grove Eastman who gave a presentation on ‘Double Participation and the Responsible Self in Romans 5–8’

The paper aimed to explore the ways in which human existence is construed by Paul in Romans 7 using the category of 'double participation', namely participation in the Adam and Christ narratives. Eastman argued that in Romans 7 (where the turn to the self is explicitly marked by use of the 1st person singular) Paul offers a sustained account of the self by means of which the self is reconstituted as 'responsible' in the light of the Christ-event or 'under the agency of grace.' Especially interesting was the concluding connection to recent therapeutic approaches to eating disorders, in which, rather than allowing the human subject to be defined by disorder, the disorder is construed as a hostile occupying power against which the self must wage war. The resonance of this approach to enabling recovery from eating disorders with the apocalyptic dimensions of Paul's construals of the self are clearly apparent.

Creation, Conflict and Cosmos: Plenary 2 (Ben Myers)

Ben Myers gave what, if the length of applause at the session was anything to go by, was a brilliant presentation on "Christ, Adam and the Self: Revisiting Augustine’s Interpretation of Romans". The paper relates to Ben's wider project on Augustine as a reader of the Psalms, and aimed to contribute to a certain 'rehabilitation' of Augustine who, for many Pauline scholars who have read Krister Stendahl's reading of Augustine as the theologian of the 'introspective conscience', is often read as someone who imposes his own hangups onto Paul.

Ben set out to show how Augustine's account of the self is not a pre-determined theological imposition on the text of Romans, but arises out of Augustine's struggles to understand the letter in the late 390s culminating in the Confessions.

The two garden scenes in the Confessions are, Ben argues, essentially an autobiographical rendition of the narratives of Adam and Christ in Romans 5 and thus Augustine's account of the corporate, relational, non-autonomous self is an account reached by interpretative work on the text of Romans. Thus the account of the self in the Confessions is not dominated by the introspective conscience, but instead by the only two possible personae that shape human identity: the face of Adam and the face of Christ,

Creation, Conflict and Cosmos: Plenary 1 (Stephen Westerholm)

The first plenary session in the Princeton conference on Romans 5–8 was by Stephen Westerholm on the topic of "Righteousness: Cosmic and Microcosmic"

Taking his cue from Paul's dikaiosune language in Romans 5:1 and 5:19 Westerholm sought to spell out the overall meaning and purpose of Paul's righteousness and faith language within his theology. The argument would be unsurprising to anyone who knows Westerholm's work. Righteousness is a category of cosmic morality: the ordering of the universe towards which human life (individual and communal) can be directed, or not, and in line with which human behaviour can (or can not) correspond. God's dikaiosune is God's action in re-ordering a disordered world. Paul's contribution lies in the largely pessimistic assessment of human capacity to be righteous, an assessment that is retrospective in the light of the Christ event, as well as the emphasis on faith as the believing response to the word of the gospel.

This soteriological framework, present in Romans 5.1 and drawing out all that Paul has been saying about the exemplary role of Abraham as 'believer' in Romans 4, is really what makes Paul tick. The language of 5:19, and the more objective, inclusive, perhaps even universal dimensions of Paul's soteriology, are to be read in the light of the basic righteouness/faith paradigm as outlined above.

As usual, Westerholm steered a path between aspects of the 'traditional' (pre-New Perspective), New Perspective and apocalyptic readings of Paul. The first question was asked, as one might expect, by Douglas Campbell who, rightly in my view, challenged the 'having your cake and eating it' aspects of Westerholm's presentation. Does God's 'No' to a disordered universe ground God's 'Yes' in the Christ event, or is it the other way round? My own concern was especially around Westerholm's use of wisdom literature as the primary matrix for understanding the meaning of righteousness within Judaism. By appealing to notions of 'the order of the universe' as something epistemologically and theologically prioor to notions of covenant, election and, of course, Christology, Westerholm continutes to read Paul primarily as a theologian of the human condition.

New Book: Simon Perry, Resurrecting Interpretation

My former BUGB colleague Simon Perry has published a revised version of his doctoral thesis on theology and hermeneutics:

Resurrecting Interpretation: Technology, Hermeneutics, and the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Wipf and Stock, 2012)

Hermeneutics is the work of Hermes, the Greek demigod, a messenger from the gods and from the dead. Simon Perry sets out to explore the contemporary face of Hermes through a reading of Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). This parable has one distinguishing feature that marks it out from other ancient stories following the same basic storyline: that a visitor from the dead is not granted leave to return with a message to the land of the living. In order for Scripture to be heard, Hermes is not necessary.

Where does this leave the role of hermeneutics? Perry looks to philosophers, ethicists, and theologians for an answer.

I wrote an endorsement for the book, which I enjoyed reading and wrestling with:

"Simon Perry offers a sustained and strong account of the difference that the resurrection of Jesus Christ makes to theological hermeneutics. Biblical interpretation and the practice of discipleship, the world of the text and the real world of human striving and suffering, are inextricably linked in Perry's vision of the interpretative task. Elegantly structured and demanding both intellectually and existentially, Perry's work offers a new voice into the conversation about biblical interpretation today."

Other endorsements and details can be found here.