Author: Jason Goroncy

Raising Girls – A Review

I’ve just finished reading Gisela Preuschoff’s Raising Girls. Preuschoff is a psychologist and family therapist. The earlier chapters trace the developmental changes in girls, exploring why girls are different, their emotional world, and offers some thoughts on how parents could go about developing their relationship with their daughter/s in the earliest months and years. Two further chapters explore issues of social conditioning, and education (this was the most disappointing chapter).

In the final two chapters, Preuschoff turns the spotlight onto questions of family dynamics, the teenage years, peer relationships, communication styles, and self-esteem.

One of the real strengths of the book is its discouragement of a one-size-fits-all approach to parenting, an approach all-to-commonly repeated. Rather, Preuschoff encourages parents to really get to know their daughters, identify and encourage their strengths and passions. I most appreciated this.

To be honest, however, I found the book overall a weak compliment to its cousin Raising Boys. My main disappointment with the book (and it is certainly not unique here) is that I felt that it was written to mums rather to dads. Dads, of course, get the obligatory 2-3 pages, but that’s about it. I’d be keen to hear how other dads found this book.

That said, it was worth reading, and I will devote the next few posts to sharing some thoughts/quotations from it.

The Parable of the Engineers

‘Once a corps of engineers was assigned to continue the building of a magnificent cathedral which had already been under construction many centuries and which had benefited from the devout labor of great engineers of many generations. Some of the new engineers, however, began to question the architectural soundness of the plans. They said that the plans had numerous errors and contradictions in them. When asked for clarification by some of their fellows, they pointed out that architectural styles were changing and that the plans erroneously presented older stylistic characteristics and contradicted current styles. In reply, a few engineers noted that this did not make the plans erroneous or contradictory in themselves, and that it was the architect’s business to draw the plans and the engineers to follow them. The majority did not agree, but they did not want to cast direct aspersions on the architect or abandon the construction. So they had recourse to a number of stratagems.

1. First, they argued that though the plans were erroneous and contradictory this was not the architect’s fault and should be attributed to his draughtsmen. (Intransigent engineers claimed that the architect was always responsible for his draughtsmen, but this argument was brushed aside.) Endeavours were thus made to ignore the “draughtsmen’s errors” while accepting the architect’s “true ideas” as conveyed by the draughtsmen’s plans. But since the only knowledge of the architect’s ideas came by way of the draughtsmen’s plans, this endeavour miserably failed and led to more radical suggestions. (It is perhaps worth pointing out that while these discussions went on, relatively little building was done.)

2. Then the engineers argued that the purpose of the plans had been misunderstood. They were not intended to be followed as such, but contact with them would increase the engineer’s inner sensitivity to true building methods. But one engineer’s inner sensitivity did not produce the same results as another’s, considerable confusion set in, and a tower collapsed.

3. A particularly brilliant engineer now suggested that everything in the plans was symbolic of the architect himself. However, it was soon discovered that if everything was symbolic and nothing literal, no engineer could determine the real meaning of any particular element in the plans. More disputes set in, and another section of the building crumbled.

4. Now the people for whom the cathedral was being built were becoming more and more agitated and many would not enter the half completed edifice at all because of the danger of falling stones, loose mortar, and buckling floors. Some were even crying for a new staff of engineers. This made the engineers terribly nervous and excitable, and finally some of them, to placate the mob, began to claim that there was no architect at all, that the people for whom the cathedral was being built were more important than anything else, and that everyone was in as good a position as the inaccurate draughtsmen to draw up plans. Oddly enough, this seemed to infuriate the people even more, for the latter apparently considered it self-evident that the plans, the great engineers of the past who had faithfully followed them, and the earlier work on the cathedral (the work done before the present confusion) all presupposed an architect. They began to become violent and even claimed that the engineers were destroying their cathedral and making a mockery out of the engineering profession.

5. At this point a very vocal engineer tried to convince the people that such efforts as he and the others were making were really acts of great heroism and that even though the plans of the architect were impossibly naive and had been hopelessly muddled by past draughtsmen and engineers, he himself could lead them through the maze by direct communication with dead engineers of the past, thereby proving the deathless value of engineering science. But instead of being considered a repristination of heroic, reforming engineers of early times, this engineer was regarded as an epitomal fool by virtually all of his colleagues and the great mass of the people. Only the media of communication featured him, for they quickly discovered that people followed his exploits with horror and fascination even as they did the latest scandals of famous entertainers.

Thus did the great cathedral eventually crumble and fall, killing not only the people who had loved it but also the engineers responsible for its loss. Pathetically, there were a few engineers who, right up to the moment of final destruction, still pleaded that the only hope lay in following rigorously the original plans, that the engineers must bring their stylistic ideas into conformity with the architect’s, and that deviations from their notions of style did not constitute genuine errors or contradictions in the plans. But their voices were scarcely heard amid the din of engineering teams working at cross-purposes to each other, and the deafening roar of falling masonry.

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that cathedral; at it fell: and great was the fall of it’.

From John Warwick Montgomery, The Suicide of Christian Theology, 25–27.

 

Parental Rights

‘The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously’. – Hubert Humphrey, cited in Craig R. Smith, Silencing the Opposition: Government Strategies of Suppression of Freedom of Expression (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 195.

Developing a Reading List – 5

This is the last of a wee series of posts (here, here, here and here) that have been written in an effort to put together some sort of a reading list for various areas of systematic and pastoral theology. The fact that it is listed here does not mean that I endorse any or all of the theology expressed by the various individuals.

This post is concerned with books on Pastoral Ministry, Preaching, Theology and the Arts (BEWARE: a long list), and Eschatology.

Remember, the kind of thing I have in mind is developing a reading list and resource for English-speaking undergraduate theology students – a kind of answer to the ‘where should I start?’ question. What books have you found helpful as either a teacher or a student that ought to be on such suggested a reading list?

Many thanks to those who have made suggestions.


Reading List: 17. Pastoral Ministry:

Christian D Kettler and Todd H. Speidell (eds.), Incarnational Ministry: The Presence of Christ in Church, Society, and Family: Essays in Honor of Ray S. Anderson

Eduard Thurneysen, A Theology of Pastoral Care

Eugene H. Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction

Eugene H. Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work

Eugene H. Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness

Eugene H. Peterson, Working The Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity

Henri J. M. Nouwen, Creative Ministry

Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

Ray S. Anderson, The Shape of Practical Theology: Empowering Ministry With Theological Praxis

Ray S. Anderson, The Soul of Ministry: Forming Leaders for God’s People

Ray S. Anderson (ed.), Theological Foundations for Ministry

Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

Thomas Oden, Pastoral Theology

Walter C. Wright, Relational Leadership: A Biblical Model for Influence and Service


Reading List: 18. Preaching:

Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon

Charles H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

Deane Meatheringham, Gospel Incandescent

Dietrich Ritschl, A Theology of Proclamation

Geoffrey C. Bingham, The Preacher and the Parrot

Geoffrey C. Bingham, True Preaching: the Agony and the Ecstasy

Gerhard O. Forde, Theology is for Proclamation

Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture: The Application of Biblical Theology to Expository Preaching

Gustaf Wingren, The Living Word

Helmut Thielicke, How to Believe Again

Helmut Thielicke, What’s Wrong with the Church?

James Denney, ‘Preaching Christ’, in Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (ed. J. Hastings), 393-403.

John Stott, I Believe in Preaching

Karl Barth, Homiletics

Peter Adam, Speaking God’s Words: A Practical Theology of Preaching

Peter T. Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind

Sidney Greidanus, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text

Sidney Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament: A Contemporary Hermeneutical Method

Thomas F. Torrance, Preaching Christ Today: The Gospel and Scientific Thinking

Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

William Perkins, The Art of Prophesying


Reading List: 19. Theology and the Arts

Aidan Nichols, The Art of God Incarnate, Theology and Symbol from Genesis to the 20th Century

Bridget Nichols. Literature in Christian Perspective: Becoming Faithful Readers

Calvin Seerveld, Bearing Fresh Olive Leaves

Calvin Seerveld, Rainbows for a Fallen World

Calvin Seerveld, Voicing God’s Psalms

Christopher Deacy, Screen Christologies: Redemption and the Medium of Film

David Bailey Harned, Theology and the Arts

David Thistlethwaite, The Art of God and the Religions of Art

Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker

E. John Walford, Jacob van Ruisdael and the perception of landscape

Edward Farley, Faith and Beauty: A Theological Aesthetic

Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works

Frank Burch Brown, Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste

Frank Burch Brown, Religious Aesthetics: A Theological Study of Making and Meaning

Gabriele Finaldi, The Image of Christ

Gaye W. Oritz and Clive Marsh (eds.), Explorations in Theology and Film

Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture

Gene Edward Veith, Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature

Georg W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art

George Pattison, Art, Modernity and Faith

George Steiner, Grammars of Creation

George Steiner, Real Presences

Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen, Theological Aesthetics: A Reader

Hans R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture

Hans Rookmaaker, The Creative Gift

Henri Nouwen, Behold the Beauty of the Lord

Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

Hilary Brand & Adrienne Chaplin, Art and Soul: Signposts for Christians in the Arts

Jaroslav Pelikan, Bach Among the Theologians

Jeremy Begbie, ‘Christ and the Cultures: Christianity and the Arts,’ in Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. Colin Gunton

Jeremy Begbie, ‘The Gospel, the Arts and Our Culture,’ in The Gospel and Contemporary Culture, ed. Hugh Montefiore, 1992, 58–83.

Jeremy S. Begbie (ed.), Beholding the Glory: Incarnation through the Arts

Jeremy S. Begbie, Theology, Music and Time

Jeremy S. Begbie, Voicing Creations Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts

John De Gruchy, Christianity, Art and Social Transformation: Theological Aesthetics in the Struggle for Justice

John Dillenberger, A Theology of Artistic Sensibilities

John Drury, Painting the Word: Christian Pictures and Their Meaning

John Newport, Christianity and Contemporary Art Forms

Karl Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Kathleen Powers Erickson, At Eternity’s Gate: The Spiritual Vision of Vincent Van Gogh

Larry J Kreitzer, Pauline Images in Fiction and Film

Larry J Kreitzer, The New Testament in Fiction and Film

Larry J Kreitzer, The Old Testament in Fiction and Film

Leland Ryken, Culture in Christian Perspective: A Door to Understanding and Enjoying the Arts

Leland Ryken, The Liberated Imagination: Thinking Critically about the Arts

Leonid Ouspensky & Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icon

Margaret Miles, Image as Insight

Ned Bustard, It was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God

Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Art in Action: Towards a Christian Aesthetic

Nigel Forde, The Lantern and the Looking-Glass: Literature and Christian Belief

Patrick Sherry, Spirit and Beauty: An Introduction to Theological Aesthetics

Paul Corby Finney, Seeing Beyond the Word: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition

Paul Corby Finney, The Invisible God

Paul Fiddes (ed.), The Novel, Spirituality and Modern Culture

Paul Fiddes, Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue between Literature and Christian Doctrine

Paul S. Fiddes, The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature

Peter Fuller, Theoria: Art and the Absence of Grace

Peter T. Forsyth, Christ on Parnassus: Lectures on Art, Ethic, and Theology

Peter T. Forsyth, Religion in Recent Art: Expository Lectures on Rossetti, Burne Jones Watts, Holman Hunt and Wagner

Richard Harries, Art and the Beauty of God: A Christian Understandin

Richard Harries, The Passion in Art

Richard Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art

Robert Jewett, Saint Paul at the Movies: The Apostle’s Dialogue with American Culture

Robert Johnston, Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue

Roger Lundin, The Culture of Interpretation

Roland Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards: An essay in aesthetics and theological ethics

Rowan Williams, Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love

Roy Kinnard & Tim Davis, Divine Images: A History of Jesus on the Screen

Simon Jenkins, Windows into Heaven

St John of Damascus, On the Divine Images

Stanley Porter et al, eds., Images of Christ, Ancient and Modern

Stephen May, Stardust and Ashes: Science Fiction in Christian Perspective

Steve Scott, Like a House on Fire: Renewal of the Arts in a Postmodern Culture

T. R Wright, Theology and Literature

Trevor A. Hart and Steven R. Guthrie (eds.), Faithful Performances

Trevor A. Hart, A Poetics of Redemption Volume 1: Creation, Creatureliness and Artistry (forthcoming)

Trevor A. Hart, A Poetics of Redemption Volume 2: Incarnation, Embodiment, and Art (forthcoming)

Trevor A. Hart, A Poetics of Redemption Volume 3: Holy Spirit, Imagination and the Salvation of Humanity (forthcoming)

William Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture: The Protestant Imagination from Calvin to Edwards

William Dyrness, Rouault: A Vision of Suffering and Salvatio

William Dyrness, The Earth is God’s: A Theology of American Culture

William Dyrness, Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue


Reading List: 20. Eschatology:

Adrio König, The Eclipse of Christ in Eschatology: Toward a Christ-Centered Approach

Anthony Hoekema, Bible and the Future,

Alister McGrath, A Brief History of Heaven

Ben Witherington III, Jesus, Paul & the End of the World

David Powys, ‘Hell’: A Hard Look at a Hard Question

Donald G. Bloesch, The Last Things: Resurrection, Judgment, Glory

Edward Fudge, The Fire That Consumes: The Biblical Case for Conditional Immortality

Geerhardus Vos, Pauline Eschatology

Geerhardus Vos, Eschatology of the Old Testament

Hans Schwarz, ‘Eschatology’, in Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (eds.), Christian Dogmatics, Volume 2

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, Vol. 5

Helmut Thielicke, The Evangelical Faith, Volume 3: The Holy Spirit, the Church, Eschatology

Herman Ridderbos, Coming of the Kingdom

James Wm. McClendon, Jr., Doctrine: Systematic Theology, Vol. 2

John F. Walvoord, Zachary J. Hayes, and Clark H. Pinnock, Four Views on Hell

Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology

Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope

Jürgen Moltmann, In the End – The Beginning: The Life of Hope

John Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World

Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama

Peter T. Forsyth, This Life and the Next

Richard Bauckham, God Will Be All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann

Robert A. Peterson, Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment

Wayne Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands: C.S. Lewis on Heaven and Hell

William H. Katerberg and Miroslav Volf (eds.), The Future of Hope: Christian Tradition amid Modernity and Postmodernity

Podding around

Here’s a few more podcasts that I’ve checked out today that I thought were worth sharing here:

With the rise of the internet many parents are feelings that their kids know more about what goes on in the world wide web than they do. And with community like websites, danger for them is no longer just in the neighbourhood. In this podcast, Paul Wallbank of PC Rescue maps out some of the dangers of cyberspace.

In this podcast on living with drug and alcohol abuse in families, Shirley Smith, author of Set Yourself Free, talks about how we can help people with addictions or overcome our own. All of us know someone with a problem with addiction and it can create chaos in a lot of lives.

The first 9 minutes of this podcast includes a discussion on Boys, Men, and Fathers.

This podcast includes a discussion on reading to your children, this one and this one are discussions on co-parenting and reading to kids, while this one is on Single-sex schools.

This podcast includes an argument for co-ed schools, and this one’s on Political wives, Intensive parenting, and Maths for pre-schoolers.

There’s a discussion here on Kids and Money too, and one here on ‘From Babies to Blokes: The Making of Men’.

So that ought to keep us all busy for a wee while. I usually download podcasts to my MP3 player and listen to them at night while I fall asleep.

Tom Wright , Andrew McGowan and Post-Modernity

Is Christianity a rival, an ally or a coping mechanism in the post-modern empire? In this engaging podcast, N T Wright addresses this question in front of Melbourne Anglicans and is joined in the discussion (it’s not a debate) by Rev Dr Andrew McGowan, Director of Trinity College, University of Melbourne.

On the way, Wright talks about postmodernity, 9/11, the current invasion of Iraq, beauty, ‘authenticity’, and the arts.

McGowan (definitely not the Andy McGowan from Scotland) offers us a much more positive view of the relationship between Christianity and Postmodernity, and also a critique of the Church’s relationship with consumerism, a go at conservative Anglicanism (read Sydney? and a ‘Hillsong-style Anglicanism’), and relevance vs authenticity in mission.

Other topics of discussion include immigration policy, the current state of worldwide Anglicanism, and human rights,

The discussion is well worth listening to.

Universal preschool, Maths for preschoolers and Reading to your children

Just been listening to this podcast on Universal preschool, Maths for preschoolers and Reading to your children

On Universal preschool (00:00), the argument is that Preschool is the cornerstone of education – everything else is built upon it. That’’s what David Kirp has been telling Australia’s biggest and most profitable childcare company, ABC Learning. Universal preschool is something both major parties have talked about in Australia, but free preschool for all 3 and 4 year olds seems a very long way off – though South Australia is probably furthest along the track

On Maths (00:14) for preschoolers, it’’s usually assumed that kids don’’t start learning too much in the way of mathematics until they start school. Sure they read the odd counting book, or know how many feet they have, but despite the lack of formal learning, pre-school kids actually know a lot more about maths than you might think. Brian Doig has been looking at what sort of mathematical knowledge pre-schoolers have and how everyday tasks are a major part of developing that knowledge.

On Reading to your children (00:22), whilst studying children’’s language development, Susan Colmar found that there are a few key things parents should and should not do when they read to kids. One of her project’s focused on 15 mainly 3-5 year old pre-schoolers with language delay. After their parents made a few tweaks to how and how often they read to their children, there was a significant increase in their language skills.

We’re not up to even thinking about pre-school stuff yet, but I’d be keen to hear what your thoughts are on what is being said in this podcast.

Introducing Children to Worship

I just came across this post from a fellow blogger and thought it was worth sharing here. The quotation, from Debra Dean Murphy, a theologically sensitive director of Christian Education at a UMC in North Carolina, is from a short essay entitled “Introducing Children to Worship”, from the latest issue of the Baylor University-sponsored journal series Christian Reflection: A Series in Faith and Ethics (click here to find out how to get the journal for free).

Murphy says:

…we must regularly communicate to children (and their parents) that they are integral to the whole worshipping body gathered weekly to imagine and practice God’s world into being, and that their presence and participation are not merely tolerated but happily anticipated. When we “dismiss” children from the worshipping body (say, for “childrens church”), no matter how well-intentioned our efforts at teaching them about worship, we convey to them and to all others present that dividing the worshipping body is an acceptable norm. More importantly, we rob children of the gift of being formed by the regular habit, discipline, and joy or corporate worship – which is really how they learn it and learn to love it in the first place …
But it is also important to insist that worship should not cater to children, since to do so is to give in to the pressures of accomodating style and preference and the temptation to appeal to a target audience. Rather, worship that seeks above all else to enact God’s story of redemption and to imagine God’s politics of peace invites and expects the participation of the whole household of faith – young and old, rich and poor, the able and the infirm – with the understanding that, in regard to young children especially, there are privileges reserved for their maturity, and mysteries and riches of the worshipping life that reveal themselves as rewards for years of practice and perserverance. Children should never be the center of attention in worship (God alone is the object of our devotion) but as children learn about worship by regularly participating in it, we hope and trust that they will come to reap those rewards …

The New Disconnect: Kids and Marriage … and Happiness

‘The nonpartisan Pew Research Center yesterday released an 88-page demographic recap of surveys and interviews of 2,020 adults on the subject of marital satisfaction, including nine factors that make up a happy marriage. In what the report described as “the single most striking finding,” only 41 percent of Americans said children were very important to a successful marriage, a 24 percentage-point drop versus 1990, when 65 percent of Americans described children as very important to a successful marriage. Children still matter – 85 percent of parents with children under 18 described them as a top source of personal fulfillment – but kids are not as integral to a happy marriage’.

Read the entire article here.

The article’s author, Leslie Morgan Steiner, ends her piece by asking her readers, ‘Do your children contribute to the happiness (or unhappiness) of your marriage? Or are the two completely separate as you go about finding “balance” in your life?’

Whatever we make of these findings, one thing remains true. As rich a contribution kids make to our marriages, they ought never be the foundation or the glue of the relationship. One day, I hope, Sinead will leave home. That’s one reason (though not the main one) why we can’t allow Sinead to be the centre and be all and end all of our marriage. To be sure, she is a part of our marriage, and always will be. But she is neither its ground nor its goal. And while she contributes significantly to our joy, our joy is not dependent on her. My deepest joy comes from knowing who I am in God. And from that place, I remain convinced that one of the most loving things I can do for Sinead is to love her mother.

I remember once hearing a paper by Prof. Ellen Charry from Princeton on God and the Art of Happiness in which she engaged with Augustine and Aquinas to offer a voice into a much-neglected theme in the Christian tradition concerning the nature and source of happiness (which she distinguished from joy). Her basic thesis is that true happiness requires a certain level of material comfort in order to truly flow, citing Jesus’ concern for one’s physical needs before attending to their spiritual and emotional needs. I suspect she needs to do a lot more (theological) work if her argument is to stick, but it did raise a number of questions for me. Primarily, what is the relationship between happiness and security, whether physical, political, social, material or spiritual? Is a certain level of safety/security a pre-requisite for human happiness? Can one be both anxious and happy? Frightened and happy? What is the relationship between happiness and forgiveness? And happiness and service? And how does a doctrine of eschatological hope relate to the now-and-not-yet of happiness? What is the relationship between communal and individual happiness?

Against much current thinking that assumes that God’s job in life (if one can put it so crudely) is to make us happy, both P T Forsyth and C S Lewis have written eloquently concerning the fact that God does not save us in order to make us happy. He saves us that we might serve and worship and commune with him. Happiness is what happens in the overflow of that loving relationship. It is never the goal itself.

BTW: found this and this today.

Warfield on Penal Substitution

Speaking at the ‘Religious Conference’ at Princeton in 1902, B. B. Warfield (sounds like a great name for the first great Presbyterian rapper) offered the following observations, pertinent for our own times:

‘It is probable that a half-century ago the doctrine of penal satisfaction had so strong a hold on the churches that not more than than an academic interest attached to rival theories … [Penal substitution] has not even been lost from the forum of theological discussion. It still commands powerful advocates wherever a vital Christianity enters academical circles: and, as a rule, the more profound the thinker, the more clear is the note he strikes in its proclamation and defense. But if we were to judge only by the popular literature of the day – a procedure happily not possible – the doctrine of a substitutive atonement has retired well into the background. Probably the majority of those who hold the public ear, whether as academical or as popular religious guides, have definitely broken with it, and are commending to their audiences something other and, as they no doubt believe, something very much better. A tone of speech has even grown up regarding it which is not only scornful but positively abusive. There are no epithets too harsh to be applied to it, no invectives too intense to be poured out on it’. – Benjamin B. Warfield, ‘Modern Theories of the Atonement’, in Studies in Theology. Edited by Benjamin B. Warfield. Vol. 9 of 10 vols.; The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003, 286, 287.

Once again, the ancient preacher was spot on: ‘What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us’. (Ecc 1:9-10)

Cross Purposes

Three of the UK’s most prominent Christian groups – Keswick, UCCF and Spring Harvest – have ended a 14-year conference partnership amid growing debate over the penal substitution. Read on here.

The CT article also links to Hans Boersma’s article, ‘The Disappearance of Punishment: Metaphors, models, and the meaning of the atonement‘

and

Stephen N. Williams’ article, Atonement: The Penal View?: Toward a trinitarian theology of atonement.

The hotness of this topic is also evident in the recent release of Pierced for Our Transgressions, by Steve Jeffery, Mike Ovey, Andrew Sach – a book that comes with its own website.

Developing a Reading List – 3

Developing a Reading List – 3

So far I have listed books on (1) Theological Method and Prolegomena, (2) Systematics/Dogmatics (3) Biblical Theology, and (4) Theology Proper, (5) Patriology, (6) Christology, (7) Pneumatology and (8) Revelation. Below is a list of books that I’ve found helpful in thinking about Creation, Soteriology, Ecclesiology, Anthropology. Remember, this series of 5 posts is with a view to developing some sort of a reading list for various areas of systematic and pastoral theology, and that the kind of thing I have in mind is a reading list and resource for English-speaking undergraduate theology students. It is to this end that I am inviting your help.


Reading List: 9. Creation:

Colin E. Gunton, The Triune Creator

Colin E. Gunton, Christ and Creation

David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall

Jonathan Edwards, Concerning the End for Which God Created the World

Joseph Ratzinger, In the Beginning

Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation

Langdon Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth


Reading List: 10. Soteriology:

Albrecht Ritschl, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation: The Positive Development of the Doctrine

Anselm, Cur Deus Homo?

Athanasius, On the Incarnation

Colin E. Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement

David Peterson, Possessed by God: A New Testament Theology of Sanctification and Holiness

Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord

Geoffrey C. Bingham, Christ’s Cross Over Man’s Abyss

Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor

Hans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition

James Denney, The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation

James Denney, The Death of Christ

John McLeod Campbell, The Nature of the Atonement

John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ

John Webster, Holiness

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1

Kenneth Grayston, Dying, We Live: A New Enquiry into the Death of Christ in the New Testament

Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross

Michelle A. Gonzalez, Created in God’s Image: An Introduction to Feminist Theological Anthropology

Molly T. Marshall, What It Means to Be Human

Nigel M. de S. Cameron (ed.), Universalism and the Doctrine of Hell

Paul Fiddes, Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement

Peter T. Forsyth, The Cruciality of the Cross

Peter T. Forsyth, The Work of Christ

Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol. 1: Human Nature

Stephen C. Barton (ed.), Holiness: Past and Present

Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ

Thomas Smail, Once and For All: A Confession of the Cross


Reading List: 11. Ecclesiology:

Colin E. Gunton (ed.), Trinity, Time, and Church: A Response to the Theology of Robert W. Jenson

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Donald G. Bloesch, The Church

Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Children of Promise

Hans Küng, The Church

John D. Zizioulas, Being As Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church

Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit

Donald G. Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry Mission

Miroslav Volf, After Our Image: The Church as the Image of the Trinity

Peter Leithart, Against Christianity

Peter T. Forsyth, The Church and the Sacraments

Peter T. Forsyth, The Church, The Gospel and Society


Reading List: 12. Anthropology:

Alan Torrance, Persons in Communion: an Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human Participation

Christoph Schwobel & Colin Gunton (eds), Persons, Divine and Human

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Harry R. Boer, An Ember Still Glowing: Humankind as the Image of God

Helmut Thielicke, Being Human … Becoming Human

John D. Zizioulas, Being As Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church

Pope John Paul II, The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan

Randall C. Zachman, The Assurance Of Faith: Conscience in the Theology Of Martin Luther and John Calvin

Ray S. Anderson, On Being Human: Essays in Theological Anthropology

Stanley Grenz, The Social God and the Relational Self

Thomas Smail, Like Father, Like Son

Wolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective


Next on the list: Prayer and Meditation, Missiology, Ethics, and Doxology.

Bonhoeffer

The International Bonhoeffer Society has issued a Call for Papers for the Tenth International Bonhoeffer Congress in Prague, July 22-27, 2008. The theme of the Congress is ‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theology in Today’s World: A Way between Fundamentalism and Secularism? More information here.

While on Bonhoeffer, Ray Anderson has recently contributed a brilliant piece – Ten theses on Dietrich Bonhoeffer: theologian, Christian, martyr – posted here on Ben’s blog. Is there anything that Ray Anderson has written that is not worth reading!

And after you’ve submitted your proposal for the conference, and read Ray’s piece you can reward yourself with one of these. I so want one.

Developing a Reading List – 2

Following on from a previous post on developing a reading list in which I listed books on (1) Theological Method and Prolegomena, (2) Systematics/Dogmatics (3) Biblical Theology, and (4) Theology Proper, I continue on with this exercise of developing some sort of a reading list for various areas of systematic and pastoral theology. Remember, the kind of thing I have in mind is a reading list and resource for English-speaking undergraduate theology students. What books have you found helpful, as either a teacher or student, in these areas?




Reading List: 5. Patriology:

Geoffrey Bingham, Father! My Father!

Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting Father

J. Scott Lidgett, The Fatherhood of God

Peter T. Forsyth, God the Holy Father

Thomas Smail, The Forgotten Father


Reading List: 6. Christology:

C. Norman Kraus, Jesus Christ Our Lord: Christology from a Disciple’s Perspective

Donald G. Bloesch, Jesus Christ: Saviour and Lord

Gerd Theissen, The Shadow of the Galilean

Isaac A. Dorner, History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ

John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus

Jon Sobrino, Jesus the Liberator

Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth

Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God

Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ

Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity

Leonardo Boff, Jesus Christ, Liberator

Marcus J. Borg, Christology in the Making

Peter T. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ

Peter T. Forsyth, The Preaching of Jesus and the Gospel of Christ

Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament

Thomas F. Torrance (ed.), The Incarnation: Ecumenical Studies in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed

Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ

Thomas Smail, Once and For All: A Confession of the Cross

Trevor A. Hart and Daniel Thimell (eds.), Christ in Our Place: The Humanity of God in Christ for the Reconciliation of the World: Essays Presented to Professor James Torrance

Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ

Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus – God and Man


Reading List: 7. Pneumatology:

Donald G. Bloesch, The Holy Spirit: Work and Gifts

Gordon Fee, God’s Empowering Presence

James D.G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit

John Taylor, The Go-Between God

John Webster, Holiness

Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation

Molly T. Marshall, Joining the Dance: A Theology of the Spirit

Thomas Smail, The Giving Gift

Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, Vol. 1


Reading List: 8. Revelation:

Colin Gunton, A Brief Theology of Revelation

Donald G. Bloesch, Holy Scripture: Revelation, Inspiration and Interpretation

Emil Brunner & Karl Barth, Natural Theology: Comprising ‘Nature and Grace’ by E. Brunner & the reply ‘No!’ by Karl Barth

Gerrit C. Berkouwer, Holy Scripture

John Webster, Holy Scripture

Peter F. Jensen, The Doctrine of Revelation


Next on the list: Creation, Soteriology, Ecclesiology, and Anthropology.

Life’s Songs

One of my favourite artists is the folk musician Eric Bogle. In one of his songs, he reflects about the hump-back whale, and what it might be like to be at the sharp end of the harpoon:

The saddest sound I’ve ever heard
Is the song of the hump-back whale
His moans and sighs and his eerie cries
Sing a sad familiar tale
For he sighs and blows as if he knows
His race is nearly run
And that soon with all of his kind he’ll fall
Before the whaler’s gun

For every living thing on earth
Nature made a space
Each a living strand of a fragile plant
That can never be replaced
And not from need but from want and greed
Man’s torn down nature’s web
With greed possessed he will not rest
Till the last of the whales is dead

In my mind’s eye I can see them die
As the whaler finds his mark
Hear the muffled boom of a cruel harpoon
As it blasts their lives apart
I see the flood of the rich dark blood
As it stains the ocean red
That bloody green will not wash clean
Till the last of the whales is dead

I’ve never heard a hump-back’s song, of even seen the creature. But I have heard not a few injured dogs yelp, and it’s a song which cuts and offers no healing.

Bogle’s song reminds me that life of full of songs, and not all of them happy, or human. Sinead reminds me of that too, only her songs are mostly of joy and uncompromising playfulness which too is part of life’s symphony. She loves to sing. And the different tones and meters of her tunes reflect the different moods that she is in. To parody Bogle,

The sweetest sound I’ve ever heard
Is the song of this alluring girl
Her moans and sighs and her joyous accents
Tell of life, hope, and of a disciplined carelessness.

The sound of a river scurrying over rocks while you’re standing in the middle casting a fly is like nothing else in the world. The sound of a child singing simply for pleasure is also like nothing else in the world. Logan Pearsall Smith once said, ‘What music is more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can’t hear what they say?’

W H Auden was on to something: ‘No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible’.

Out of the closet: a meme

Inspired by Peter Leithart, Ben Myers has invited us to post some ‘theological confessions’. Judging by the huge response, there’s obviously a lot of need for confession around. I’ve been trying to resist, but OK … I give in.

  1. I confess that although my confession in Jesus’ lordship seems way too important to be part of this confession, there is no place in which such a confession is anything less than entirely proper.
  2. I confess that sometimes I think that all the problems in the world would go away if people (not me of course, but those other people) could just read and take in (just about) everything that Forsyth says.
  3. I confess that I prefer Wittenberg to Rome, I prefer Geneva to Wittenberg, and I prefer a good fishing spot more than them all.
  4. I confess that reading books about prayer is almost as hard as actually praying.
  5. I confess that Barth’s Dogmatics gets better as he warms up.
  6. I confess that although I’m stimulated by the Torrance’s reading of Calvin (and Barth), I’m unconvinced that they are always telling us the truth about the two blokes (i.e. are always faithful interpreters).
  7. I confess that I was fairly serious when I asked recently whether or not PhD theses on Barth ought to be discouraged for a wee bit. (I am not implying here that we ought to neglect the bloke).
  8. I confess that that I’m glad that there’s only three in the Godhead because my maths is useless and the doctrine is hard enough to understand, let alone live in.
  9. I confess that the US version of The Office is better than the UK version. I sub-confess that as an Aussie I never thought I would say this about anything American.
  10. I confess that American Football is the most boring game on the planet. The fact that it is enjoyed by so many morons is both the greatest single simultaneous evidence for the doctrine of total depravity and common grace.
  11. I confess that I’m glad that the fire accompanying the open theist debates seems to have died down.
  12. I confess that sometimes I wish Beza had never heard of Calvin.
  13. I confess that I feel far too stupid to be doing a PhD.
  14. I confess that bad coffee and bad shoes are not better than no coffee and no shoes.
  15. I confess that there may be one or two people who disagree with #14, particularly those who actually don’t own a pair of shoes.
  16. I confess that (with Sean) I am one of the few Baptists that still think that studying Greek ought be a mandatory part of training for the pastoral ministry of word and sacrament.
  17. I confess that (following on from above) I am something of a hypocrite and that I wish had stuck at my Greek and Hebrew more than I do.
  18. I confess that Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was onto something when she said that ‘Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense’. If only she had known about the great joys and distractions of blogging!
  19. I confess that theology happens best not in the academy nor on blogs but in the local Church and its proclamation which it exists to serve.
  20. I confess that I always enjoy reading a good fiction book with a cup of tea.
  21. I confess that I don’t understand the objections to ‘double-predestination’ by those non- Barthians who imply that ‘single predestination’ seems so much more gracious.
  22. I confess that the Gospel is still good news to the poor.
  23. I confess that I find it hard to trust teetotallers.
  24. I confess that I am genuinely grieved at the dearth of contemporary hymns on the atonement.
  25. I confess that I learn more theology in an hour with Dostoevsky than in an hour with almost any other theologian.
  26. I confess that I’m pleased that sinful bloggers have decided to exercise their bondaged will’s and ignore Ben‘s invitation that these confessions concern themselves with ‘a list of intellectual confessions’.
  27. I confess that I have prayed that some of the brilliant Barthian theologians around might start to do some serious bible exegetical work when doing their theology.
  28. I confess that I have prayed that some of the brilliant non-Barthian theologians around might start to do some serious bible exegetical work when doing their theology.
  29. I confess that I’ve enjoyed Byron’s confessions the most of all.
  30. I confess that Christianity stands or falls with its preaching.

BTW: some have been asking – even confessing – that they don’t know what a ‘meme’ is. The answer is here.

Helen Gardner (via Rowan Williams) on Liturgy


‘Liturgy is not a matter of writing in straight lines. As the late Helen Gardner … remarked, liturgy is epic as well as drama; its movement is not inexorably towards a single, all-determining climax, but also – precisely – a circling back, a recognition of things not yet said or finished with, a story with all kinds of hidden rhythms pulling in diverse directions’. – Rowan Williams, ‘Service to commemorate the 450th anniversary of the Martyrdom of Thomas Cranmer, 21st March 2006’. Full sermon here.