Archive for September, 2008

Sunday Reading

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns.

As one might guess from the title Enns draws an analogy between the incarnational nature of God’s word in Christ and the similarly incarnational nature of Scripture. So just as Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine so too the scriptures. Specifically, based on this analogy, one should expect Scripture to bear the marks of the times and cultures from which it proceeds. So for instance certain parts of the old testament seem to assume an ancient cosmology; Enns argues that, far from being a problem, this is exactly the sort of thing we should expect. He proceeds to briefly look at three areas: the similarities between the OT and Ancient Near Eastern literature, the theological diversity within the OT and examples of interpretation of the OT by NT writers that would appear to be highly suspect by modern historical-grammatical criteria.

The book is well written and concise and was, overall, an enjoyable read. Enns’s thesis is more or less controversial depending on which portions of scripture one applies it to.

A new feature

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

So, Zoomtard has launched a new sub-site where he promises to discuss Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics briefly and a few pages at a time. It’s going to take him at least 5 years! I’m looking forward to it tremendously. He’s doing the world of lazy theologians a great service.

This all strikes me as a great idea. I’m not quite up to so momentous an undertaking as Barth’s CD as of yet but I though I might implement something similar here on my blog. Most Sundays I have a bit of spare time for reading (it’s the only time I get to read some weeks). So, in a blatant ripoff of Zoomy’s idea, I will try to post a short (under 150 words, say) summary/response/thought about whatever I happen to pick up and read on a given Sunday. For Sundays where I don’t have time to read anything I’ll post a short quote of some nature. this way I’ll get at least one post up here a week and I get to have a brief record of some of what I read.

I’ll post the first of these later this evening.