Stanley Hauerwas on War, American History, and Christian Identity

Flotsam and jetsam (11/12)

Here are a few good links from the last couple of days:

• Daniel Kirk has some interesting thoughts on how ancient people listened to texts and the difference this can make for biblical studies.

• Brian LePort offers his own list of 10 Personal Must Reads.

• Mike Bird has posted two papers on N.T. Wright’s work, which he’ll be presenting at the upcoming  ETS and IBR meetings.

• SAET interviews R. Scott Clark on politics and theology.

• Scot McKnight discusses two recent books on the Gospel, but still thinks that our understanding of the Gospel is fuzzy.

• If you’re wondering why some people think that ETS is being taken over by Southern Baptists, check out this list of people from Southern Baptist Seminary who are presenting papers at this year’s annual conference.

• Diglot is giving away a copy of Fred Lapham’s Peter: The Man, The Myth, & The Writings – A Study of Early Petrine Text and Tradition.

• Collin Hansen has a nice summary of the recent discussion about how to translate “faith of Christ” in Galatians 2:16.

• And, here’s a list of 10 More Great Speeches in History.

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Flotsam and jetsam (11/10)

• Mark Stevens comments on Barth as a pastor-theologian.

As ironic as it might seem to anyone who would dare read his 14 volume Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth’s entire theology stood as a testament to his time as a parson. Barth was first and foremost a preacher and felt all theology should be done from the viewpoint of the preacher.

• Richard Beck shows how he led his class through an interesting discussion of economic complicity and original sin.

For my part, I tend to think of Original Sin socially and systemically. Basically, you can’t ever get clean. Systemically clean. The human condition is to be complicit, to have blood on your hands

• David Fitch argues that the New Calvinism is really the New Fundamentalism: insular, culturally suspicious, and exclusive.

To me, these are symptoms of a beginning fundamentalist posture towards culture: We have the answers, we distrust everything about everything that is not us.

• There’s an interesting discussion on how to translate pistis Christou going on over at BibleGateway’s Perspectives on Translation forum. Tom Schreiner and Mike Bird have both weighed in with helpful comments (along with a very brief one from Darrell Bock). I particularly liked this comment from Bird:

The problem is that I am familiar enough with Greek grammar and syntax to know that a genitive modifier restricts the head term but does not fill it with radically sophisticated theological content.

• Mere Orthodoxy is giving away a copy of David VanDrunen’s Living in God’s Two Kingdoms.

• And, there is now a new, giant Jesus statue in Poland.

Remembering the Barmen Declaration

On May 31, 1934 the leaders of the German Confessing Church movement issued a statement denouncing the theology and practice of the German Christians and articulating a set of theological convictions that they felt needed to be the driving factors in determining the relationship between Christian churches and the German state. Although the declaration itself, largely written by Karl Barth, is too long to post in its entirety (you can read it here), I thought I would highlight the specific doctrines they were rejecting. Several of them bear an unfortunate resemblance to our modern context:

• 8.12 We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.
• 8.15 We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords–areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.
• 8.18 We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.
• 8.21 We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church, apart from this ministry, could and were permitted to give itself, or allow to be given to it, special leaders vested with ruling powers.
• 8.24 We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church, over and beyond its special commission, should and could appropriate the characteristics, the tasks, and the dignity of the State, thus itself becoming an organ of the State.
• 8.27 We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans.