In both Thessalonians and Corinthians Paul uses language to speak of the reception of the gospel, the effect of his ministry, that seems to be anything but cruciform. When the gospel comes through Paul, it arrives with “power and Spirit” (1 Cor 2:4; 1 Thess 1:5). Paul can speak of the signs of a true apostle accompanying him: signs, wonders, and miracles (2:12).

Paradoxically, however, this power is shown to be God’s power precisely because it comes in the midst of suffering:

We know this because our good news didn’t come to you just in speech but also with power and the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. You know as well as we do what kind of people we were when we were with you, which was for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord when you accepted the message that came from the Holy Spirit with joy in spite of great suffering. (1 Thess 1:5-6, CEB)

How do you know that this joy, power, and Spirit are genuinely from God? Because they come in spite of your own suffering, says Paul; because they come despite the powerlessness of the messenger, and because in coming through such suffering they cohere with the gospel of Christ crucified.

I stood in front of you with weakness, fear, and a lot of shaking. My message and my preaching weren’t presented with convincing wise words but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power. I did this so that your faith might not depend on the wisdom of people but on the power of God. (1 Cor 2:3-5, CEB)

Resurrection looks like the power of God being made known through, and in the midst of, the weakness, suffering, and persecution that are the embodiment of the cross. More particularly, Paul’s vision of resurrection life now seems to be most sharply in focus when he speaks of his own suffering bringing life, by the Spirit, to others: “We always carry about the dying of Jesus in our mortal flesh so that the life of Jesus also may be made known in us.. So, death works in us, but life in you.”

As the self-giving Christ brings life to the cosmos, so the self-giving Christians bring life to those to whom they speak.

AKMA pushes me on some important questions that I feel I have no good answers to. How do we do ministry like this? For one thing, cruciformity cannot be institutionalized. It is the antithesis of the institution, which must always live, at least in part, to perpetuate itself.

What happens if a good and lowly sufferer does well? What if her church takes off? What if she gets a PhD? What if, horror of horrors, her book sells?! What if we are filled? What if we are already rich? What if we have become kings–while the apostles are being exhibited last of all as people condemned to death?

I don’t have a clear or easy answer.

I suppose that persons more godly than myself can make myriad small decisions to embrace the way of the cross such that their success continues to be a manifestation of the power of God.

I know of a couple of godly, exceptional NT scholars who have made some self-sacrificial decisions in terms of career and public visibility in order to care for ailing family members. From the midst of their self-giving so that others might live, beauty and strength shines forth.

I know teachers who aren’t great communicators (cf. 1 Cor 2:1-5), but whose life and message transform the students who come across their paths.

That’s a start.

Akma has more questions, challenging questions on his page today. I’m guessing he wants to go some other directions with resurrection. I have a few more places I’d like to go with it as well. Maybe later…

But I was wrong. (See? You didn’t think I could ever admit to such a thing–but there it is!)

The article was about the students’ perception that they were withering up spiritually. Their souls are being sucked dry by the intense academic environment that does not provide nourishment for the whole person.

I have a couple of responses to this, and would love to hear your take as well.

First, I have a great deal of sympathy for the students. I have known, far too often, the disappointment from experiencing a void in pastoral leadership in my own life. I can very much relate to the sense that I need more direction and pastoral care than I am receiving.

The students are right to be aware of this dynamic and it is good that they recognize the needs they have that aren’t being met. These feelings of not having spiritual needs met can create a great deal of frustration in a seminary environment where, if anything, there seems to be a plethora of wise, godly persons with pastoral inklings all around–none of whom are serving as your pastor.

My second, thought, however, is this: if you are going to be a pastor, you are embarking on a lifetime in which nobody is going to pastor you.

For the rest of your life, it will be your responsibility to find wise mentors to pastor and challenge you; for the rest of your life, and spiritual accountability and encouragement you receive from a peer group will come only from any group of your own making.

Is it good for div school students and pastors to be alone? No. And that is why, as a preparation for a lifetime of ministry, I encourage all such students and pastors to go out of your way to create the relationships you need for long term spiritual health.

It may very well be that the school should be doing a bit more for you than it currently is. But if this is the case, the best course of action you can take is probably not a campaign to change the system of the school, but one to change the relational systems in your own life so that they start helping prop you up for a lifetime of ministry that will otherwise likely unfold without anyone being in charge of pastoring you.

Vanhoozer had left Trinity to join the faculty at Wheaton College.

I am almost able to recall that process, now, without my palms getting sweaty and suffering the onslaught of unrelenting heart palpitations. As I do, here are a few words.

First, for those of you who are on search committees.

I ask you to remember one thing: each application you hold in your hands represents the hopes and dreams of a person who has worked very hard to get where they are.

In light of this: (1) Recognizing that they hold out hope as long as they have not heard from you, please tell your candidates as soon possible if you will not be proceeding further with them. I know you don’t have to do this, but it is a tremendous kindness. And if you know they are not a good fit, don’t wait until after SBL or after you make your hire. You know you have a pile of rejections sitting on your table or floor or corner or whatever. Send them the final word and close the file. For their sake.

(2) Never, ever, ever, ever indicate to a candidate who is on campus for an interview that they are the one to whom you will offer the job. This happens from time to time when there is a clear favorite, or an apparent consensus among the committee. And, almost every time, the vote ends up going another way. Indicating to a candidate that they will be hired is unprofessional, creates false expectations, and as often as not creates more heartache for that great candidate you were hoping to hire.

Now, for you who are candidates.

(1) See your interviews as opportunities for making professional connections, even if you don’t end up taking a particular job. One of the best things about my interview process was that from each school with which I interviewed I have at least one professional colleague that I now keep up with as part of my circle that I otherwise would not know. This is part of…

(2) Remember that you are interviewing for a job that is part of a relatively small community. This means not only that you want to refrain from badmouthing any other scholars, but that you need to treat this as a professional engagement that will potentially affect your relationships with other scholars with whom you may wish to collaborate or otherwise engage in the future.

One of my absolute worst interviews was at a school in Oxford. It was terrible in every respect, but the only reason I really regret the interview was that Markus Bockmuehl was part of the interview team. I frankly wish I hadn’t met a scholar I so respect in what was the worst interviews I’ve ever given.

(3) Perhaps most importantly: in my experience, interviews went well at schools that would have been a good fit, and they went poorly at schools were I did not fit so well. At their best, interviews are opportunities for both sides to discover whether or not you are a good long-term fit for their school or department. As hard as it is to be rejected, try to keep in mind that often a bad interview and a rejection is an indication, not that you were a bad candidate, but that you were not a good fit.

In other words, you are being rejected now rather than being denied promotion or tenure years down the road.

So buck up, sell yourself, but most of all, be yourself. If they don’t want you for who you are, you’re better off somewhere else–even if that somewhere is the local college you’re adjuncting for right now.

The homepage of Seth Godin’s website says, “Go. Make Something Happen.”

Go read a few of Godin’s blog posts. They usually take about 90 seconds to read. Often they are pep rallies: Go change the world, because the old way of doing things will kill us off eventually.

He will say things like this:
Too often, the corporate world pushes talking points onto people, and more often than that, speakers and writers get nervous and they turn into parrots. The only reason to go through the hassle and risk of putting yourself out there is to be out there… you, not a clone.

“Yes,” I will say to myself as I grind my morning coffee beans! Get out there! Don’t be a clone!” And before you know it, the song “That’s what friends are for” has become “That’s what blogs are for,” and I’m singing a new theme song.

Then I remember.

I’m in theology. And academics. And the church.

Three realms that don’t like change very much.

If I may pick on a fellow NT Scholar blogger friend, the disposition of our world was captured perfectly in a blog post calling out to pastors to stop tweeting.

I think everyone who thinks that what they have to say is important should be tweeting. And that includes most pastors. Yes, people say dumb things on twitter. But the concern that dumb things get picked up by the media, and aren’t the sort of careful statement one should make to the press seems to be disconnected from the experience of everyone who has ever spoken to a reporter: reporters never pick up on the careful, nuanced thing you say and express it fully in their article. They glean sound-bites that often represent the least careful, least substantive thing you have to say.

Reporters want soundbites. Twitter is a place to create your own. Do I wish certain uncharitable or otherwise disagreeable (or disagreeing with me) people would be less in the press? Yes, of course.

But part of the reality of the world that most people interact with is that they are more likely to read a Tweet than a blog; they are more likely to read a blog than a magazine; they are more likely to read a magazine than a novel; they are more likely to read a novel than a popular Christian book; they are more likely to read a popular christian book than an academic crossover book; they are more likely to read a crossover book than an article of serious scholarship; and they are more likely to read an article of serious scholarship than a scholarly monograph.

In other words, the likelihood of someone being affected by what we write is inversely proportional to the value it has on an academic CV. And, the likelihood of someone being affected by a piece of writing is inversely proportional to the care that must be taken to craft it in an air-tight, compelling manner.

Tweets and blogs are not typical forums for academics. They’re not the stuff of rigorous, careful, enduring work. The academic world says, “Please stop before you hurt someone with that thing.”

But they are the means for reaching masses both inside and outside the church and, as importantly, inside and outside the academy. Tweets and blogs cry out, “Go. Make something happen.”

So, if you think you have something to say, and especially if you’re right about that, please keep tweeting, please keep blogging.

But watch your proverbial tongue…

If you scroll down the screen you’ll see that I have a post there on how I see the blog working in concert with my classroom teaching. Take a look, and then explore the stageoflife.com site. They are exploring some interesting, and wide-ranging, topics!

Our quarter will be kicking off in a couple of weeks. I love the process of digging into the New Testament texts with students–you bring a passionate commitment to living out the Jesus story that is too often missing in the halls of the academy. You remind me why we study the Bible in the first place.

But there’s something you should know. Bible classes are often the hardest classes for seminary students. And I don’t mean that they’re the hardest academically. I mean that they’re often the hardest on students’ faith.

You’re coming to study a book that you love. You’re coming to delve into a book whose various verses and chapters have spoken directly to your heart–and transformed you. You’re coming to build on what you know and to enrich what you’ve already discovered.

But if I am doing my job, you are probably going to undergo a slow process of discovering that what you thought was a book is, in fact, a bunch of books; you’re going to find out that what you know is often incorrect; and what has spoken to you has been edifying, but that text may not ever be able to speak with that same voice again.

Bible professors are not the only ones whose classes hope to leave you with transformed knowledge. But rarely do you have as much invested in the assumptions that the professor is trying to deconstruct.

People lose their faith in Biblical studies courses, and grad school in particular, because they discover the pervasive extent to which the NT was written by humans and speaks differently from what they anticipated.

This can all sound terribly bleak. But I want you to enter the class with your eyes open.

And more than that, I am going to make you a promise.

Here is what I promise to do for you: I promise to leave you with a Jesus who is worth following, a Christian vocation that’s worth risking your life on, and a Bible that will guide you toward both.

In other words, I promise that I will not leave you empty-handed; I promise that my goal is to strengthen you as a faithful follower of Christ. I have not come to steal, kill, and destroy, but to help you better see the One who is the way of life, and how scripture is a witness to him.

So for my part, I promise to leave you with a faith worth believing.

For your part, I ask that you come to learn. Here, more than anywhere else, if you have come to have your prior understandings validated through high academic marks, you are likely to experience frustration. Hold loosely to what you’ve brought through the door, and learn what is coming from your reading, from our discussions, and from the lectures.

Learn what is really on offer, resist jumping to conclusions, press to find out how it all holds together. I promise that I am striving to be a faithful teacher, I need you to enter in with the goal of being a faithful learner.

At the end of the quarter, we will likely disagree about a few things. Or maybe we’ll disagree about almost everything. That’s fine. I won’t down-grade you for that. But I need to know that you’ve learned. And, I hope that in the process you have seen more clearly a Jesus who is worth following. I believe with all my heart that this is what I’m helping you discover.

So if you feel like things are falling apart or spinning out of control, let’s talk. That’s not the direction this should go, but it’s always part of the danger of discovering that the Bible isn’t what we thought it was–or that Jesus isn’t who we thought he was. But the fresh acts of faith that such discoveries engender can themselves be the stuff of newness of life.

I look forward to learning with you in the weeks ahead.

Peace,
jrdk

John Schneider has now resigned.

The Grand Rapids News ran an article about the resignation. They then ran a follow-up story about Dan Harlow being unhappy with how Calvin is portraying the matter. The latter seems to be following up on an article in The Banner.

The views of Schneider and Harlow were recently cited in an NPR story on Evangelicals and Adam and Eve.

If you’re interested in reading the essays that created the storm, you can download a PDF of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith.

This is the sort of controversy that always lurks in the back of my mind as I wrestle with how we conceive of our Christian identity and thus what it looks like to act Christianly, and read the Bible Christianly, in our world. I don’t claim to have any easy answers.

Generally, however, I wish we were more patient and had better practices of wrestling with new and controversial ideas. The questions raised about human origins by various sciences are only getting more pressing and complex. Now more than ever we need people who are willing to ask hard questions without presupposing we come with the answers in tow.

One of my thoughts is about theological interpretation as a discipline unfolding in the biblical studies academy. In short, I realize that I perceive the academy differently from my senior colleagues who feel the need to fight for space for theological interpretation, because I see them as the academy.

In conversations with several senior colleagues I’ve seen that the academy that they see themselves needing to try to survive in is the world you catch a glimpse of whenever someone writes a letter to the editor at SBL and decries the presence of people who think the Bible is scripture.

For me, the academy is the place that has always had a Pauline Theology group. It’s the place where the Richard Hayses and Michael Gormans and Joel Greens and Tom Wrights and Stephen Fowls and AKMAs and Jimmy Dunns are presenting papers that have significant theological weight to them.

In other words, I’m spoiled, and I tend to take for granted that the biblical studies academy is a place where I can do the kind of work I want to do–whether that be the boring stuff of Pauline chronology (I’ve got a riveting paper on my hard drive) or the more theologically engaged discussion of the beauties of the hermeneutics of Christological revisionism.

So: thank you to the generation of senior scholars who have created this space in the biblical studies world, especially in Pauline studies.

The second reflection is more about the substance and practice of theological interpretation.

In general, a wide gulf continues to exist between biblically generated theology and the theology of theologians, and this gulf will continue to stymie the vision of bringing together the fields of biblical studies and theology.

There were only a couple of hints at this over the weekend, where in general the conversations seemed to be unfolding on the same playing field.

But there were hints. One paper that was reflecting on T. F. Torrance’s reading of scripture talked about Torrance’s assertion that Mark indicated a virgin birth, for instance. In the Q & A afterward, this presenter talked about the annoyance of students coming from their intro to the Pentateuch course into his theology course and not having anything significant to say, theologically, about Gen 1-3. The “throat clearing” has taken place, but they’ve not yet spoken.

I began to wonder if the problem wasn’t with what the students were reading in Genesis, but that theology, in general, has not yet learned to listen to the theology of scripture, how ancient pre-Patristic texts theologize; or, even more importantly, that the texts simply do not speak of, support, or presuppose the theology that the theologian demands of them.

In a side conversation with one of the presenters (whose paper I very much appreciated and whose overall position on theological interpretation I find quite congenial), I made a brief case for why Christian hermeneutics should be Christological rather than Trinitarian.

He sees these working together. And I get that. But in trying to situate my point I asked, “Was Paul a Trinitarian?” He said, “Yes.” End of conversation.

That’s a small picture of where a biblical scholar can’t say what a theologian presumes, and why scholarship’s Bible will continue to be an enigma to the church. Beyond whether scholars are approaching their exegetical task as Christians, theologians (and church people) often want the Bible to say what it does not say, to support what it does not speak to.

I do wonder if the church’s theology will need to learn to hear what it takes for throat clearing as the song of the Spirit before the chasm will bridged between theology and the Bible.

She raises three points:

1. Seminary organizational structures appear bloated to church professionals who often make due with very little in the way of staffing resources.
2. Pastors are concerned with seminary student loan debt–are seminaries?
3. Seminary profs should be encouraged to publish more for broad audiences

What do you think of these assessments of the seminary from “outside”?

Here are my thoughts:

(1) The first one is tricky. Quite often, schools that act like small schools that cannot afford top-notch staffing end up acting like second-rate schools as part of their culture. They end up not being able to recruit top-tier faculty or students. And, due to their inability to offer the same services (directly tied to administrative overhead) or caliber of scholarship (indirectly tied through a culture of being second rate), they can neither recruit students well nor convince people to give them the money that might enable them to act like a top-tier school.

Putting it somewhat differently, sometimes the very things that make an institution look like it’s too bloated for a donator on a tight budget are the very things that make an institution attractive to folks with large budgets and large organizations.

(2) Absolutely. I think that the reality of student loan debt is one that we as seminary faculty and administrators have to start taking much more seriously. There is, perhaps, a catch-22 here as well. A couple of the things that need to happen in order for cost burden to go down have to do with what’s worth giving money to. It seems it’s easier to raise money for buildings than student scholarships. And it seems that people are often drawn to schools with greater facilities that create significant infrastructure costs.

But I agree, and think that in raising money there should be a couple of focuses that might translate into gradual, long-term tuition reductions. First, commit to reducing overhead through faculty endowment. Endow a chair to pay for the faculty who is already present. (Is that possible? Do people give money if it doesn’t come with the promise of recruiting some new hot-shot?) Second, commit to reducing student burden through scholarship endowment.

Of course, this ties the costs of education more directly into the markets. And, as many schools can tell you in the wake of 2008, this is no sure way to alleviate student debt load. However, judging by the difference in what (for example) Princeton Seminary students were bearing in debt load and what my fellow classmates were bearing when I graduated from Westminster (Machen, couldn’t you have brought a few million over with you when you left, for crying out loud?!), this is an important facet of reducing debt that people will not earn enough to pay off in the fields for which we are preparing them.

(3) For some reason it does feel like we have to figure out what one audience we are going to write for. It’s tough to move back and forth between technical scholarly articles and broadly accessible books. I think CHM is right that we need to create seminary cultures in which producing for both worlds is the norm rather than the exception.

I see all three as great challenges for the seminary to do some serious soul-searching in terms of our calling to work for the church.

What do you think of her questions?