Tuesday Tidbit: tell me who I am

Joel Green, in his book, Practicing Theological Interpretation, says this:

"if this letter [James] is to serve as Scripture for us, then we will allow it to tell us who we are" (18).

What would happen if we let the Bible tell us who we are?

mental marathon

I reached the finish line Monday just before midnight, following 6 long days of meetings in Atlanta, Georgia.  The Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) and the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) had their annual meetings back-to-back at adjacent hotels downtown.  I spent about 12 hours each day listening to scholars present papers reflecting their latest research, meeting with potential PhD supervisors from the five schools to which I've applied, and meeting friends new and old.  My roommates and I stayed up late into the night talking and woke up early each morning to get ready for a new day.  It was mentally intense, but emotionally exhilarating.

Imagine you are visiting the baseball hall of fame and you discover, much to your surprise, that all of the baseball greats who are still alive are gathered there.   As you walk the halls your jaw drops when you see the name tags of all your favorite players, just inches away.  You have complete freedom to mingle with them, and if you're brave enough you can strike up a conversation.  That's what ETS and SBL are like for a young biblical scholar.  I was surrounded by the men and women who had shaped my thinking in so many ways, and had shaped the thinking of my professors, and now I was seeing them face to face.  James Kugel. Karen Jobes. Daniel Block. Richard Hays. Frank Theilman. Alan Culpepper. Joel Green. Patrick Miller. Thomas Schreiner. Marianne Meye Thompson. Seyoon Kim. Peter Martens. John Goldingay. Eugene Merrill. Erhard Gerstenberger. J. Ross Wagner. Andreas Kostenberger. Rikk Watts. Craig Keener. Grant Osborne. Walt Kaiser. Paul House. Jeff Tigay. Sandra Richter. Bernard Levinson. David Pao. John Oswalt. (Eliana is watching me type and she says you get the idea...)  It felt like a living bibliography.

There's no way to capture even just an overview of what I learned in my blog, but I'm hoping to tell you about a few of the things that stood out to me during my six days.  So stay tuned...!

theological interpretation

Joel Green, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in California, wrote an article back in 2004 that I just discovered this afternoon.  It's called "Practicing the Gospel in a Post-Critical World: The Promise of Theological Exegesis" (Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 47 no 3 S 2004, p 387-397).  Since I'm in the biblical studies orbit, the terms "theological exegesis" or "theological interpretation" are not new to me, but I found Green's explanation of it very helpful and I thought you might, too.

Green says that the main hurdle to overcome in understanding the Bible is not the historical distance between me and the text (i.e. the 2000-year gap), but the theological distance between belief and unbelief.  Because the Scriptures are written for the benefit of the people of God, in order to truly understand them we must be part of the believing community.

This is huge!  Do you have any idea how many schools offer a doctorate in biblical studies but ask students to leave their faith at home?  There is a sense in most university settings that faith clouds our ability to read the Bible objectively.  To be scholarly, faith must be put aside.  This has been a sobering part of the search for PhD programs, but an important issue to think through.  I agree that faith is a biased perspective from which to read the Bible, but un-faith is no less biased!  And those who bar faith from the classroom end up with skewed interpretations of the Bible because the Bible was intended for the faith community!  So ... three cheers for schools where faith is integral to the learning process and professors who are brave enough to say it publically!