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Opportunity for pre-PhD Minorities

Published at: 11:09 pm - Wednesday September 01 2010

Announcement from AAR & FTE:

In partnership with the American Academy of Religion (AAR), The Fund for Theological Education is pleased to host this two-part workshop for students of color who are considering the pursuit of a Ph.D. or Th.D. degree in religion, theology or biblical studies.

Students must apply to participate. Twenty students will be selected for this workshop.

Student Application Deadline: September 20, 2010

Please pass this information along to students who may be interested in this opportunity.

Note: This workshop is only for students from historically underrepresented
racial and ethnic backgrounds who have not yet been admitted to doctoral programs.

American Academy of Religion
October 28-29, 2010

CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION AND APPLICATION MATERIALS

A two-part workshop prior to the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR)

Atlanta, GA

Students must to apply to participate in this workshop.

Limited travel reimbursement stipends will be available to selected participants

Send an e-mail to doctoralinfo@fteleaders.org for more information

Join a growing network of FTE leaders at the new www.fteleaders.org.

Posted in: Uncategorized by J. R. Daniel Kirk 1 Comment

Entitlement & Giving

Published at: 02:09 pm - Wednesday September 01 2010

Recently I received the annual (biannual? quarterly?) e-mail from the dreaded “SBL Development” arm. That is, this was the regular request from the Society of Biblical Literature that I support the society that makes my profession great.

This always fills me with wonder. I imagine the several thousand low-wage-earning academics to whom the letter has come, sometimes of my annual dues and conference fees, and reverently escort it to the recycling bin.

At times, while at SBL, I think I’ve seen a purple “Donor” ribbon adorning some people’s name tags. The impression this has left in my mind is a higher sense of awe that someone has invested in the society not only for the propagation of their own career but of the society itself.

And it’s that latter realization that makes me think that this could be a generational (or age) problem. Is mine simply not a generation of givers? A full generation removed from that “great” baby boomer generation, two generations removed from those who gave up everything to fight in World War 2, is our generation mired in a slough of entitlement?

At my first full time academic job, the development officer paid me a visit. He explained that one of his goals was 100% buy in from the faculty. He didn’t ask for much, but did ask that I participate annually with some sort of contribution to the school’s annual fund.

Though his request struck me as odd at first (my stance seems to be, by default, you’re my employer, go find money so you can pay me) I gave it a shot. I didn’t have much. I didn’t give much. But it was amazing how much the sense of entitlement dissipated when I was part of the support base. My frame of reference shifted ever so slightly from an employee of an institution to a member of it, working with it for its good. There was a shift from an “I” “you” relation to a “we” relation.

Giving, it seems, has the power to start unraveling my sense of entitlement.

Maybe I need to go fish that SBL Development letter out of the recycling bin.

Posted in: Uncategorized by J. R. Daniel Kirk 4 Comments

Confusion Indicates What?

Published at: 11:08 pm - Tuesday August 31 2010

In commenting on the Gospel writer Mark as a “preserver” of tradition, Ernest Best makes the following aside: “(We might say that wherever we see the commentators in confusion this is a sign of the preservation of tradition.)” –”Mark’s Preservation of the Tradition,” in The Interpretation of Mark (2d ed.; ed. William Telford, p. 160)

In other words, where commentators can’t see how the Gospel narrative holds together, that means that the author / redactor has stitched things together in a particularly clumsy way, preserving some bit of tradition he had available but which we couldn’t find a suitable place for. So he just shoved the crap in however he could.

From my experience, I would advocate a different conclusion: “We might say that wherever we see the commentators in confusion there is a sign that we need to rethink what the Gospel writer is trying to tell us.”

Posted in: Uncategorized by J. R. Daniel Kirk 5 Comments

Chapter Problems in JVG?

Published at: 01:08 pm - Tuesday August 31 2010

Has anyone else had a problem such as the following in Jesus and the Victory of God?

Today I was reading along and told that I could find more of what I was interested in should I be so kind to turn to ch. 13. Chapter 13 was not so helpful, and I began to wonder whether the chapter number had been misassigned.

Later, I was reading along and he said that the notion of Jesus as Coming King would be addressed in ch. 12. But then I noticed that ch. 13 is entitled, “The Return of the King.”

It got me to thinking that maybe somewhere along the line there were a couple chapters flip-flopped or else perhaps an extra chapter was added that messed up the enumeration. Then it got me to thinking that if anyone else had experienced similar difficulties then we probably both have spent way too much time with this particular book. Anybody want to own up to it?

I’m sure that many of my scholar friends have had their own problems with JVG: exegetical, theological, editorial, and otherwise. Feel free to talk about that here as well. Whatever. It’s your blog.

Posted in: Book Reviews by J. R. Daniel Kirk 6 Comments ,

Biblical Roots of Beck’s Civil Religion

Published at: 09:08 am - Tuesday August 31 2010

As I’ve caught various whiffs of Glenn Beck’s calls to America to turn back to God, I’ve simultaneously felt the biblical currents that enliven such a dream. Thought it is sometimes hard to see, and requires a little bit of reconstruction, Beck’s vision of a Christian nation is a thoroughly biblical idea.

We catch sight of it when Jesus comes proclaiming the reign of God–that it has come near, is here on earth already. The indications of its arrival are not lost on Jesus’ followers.

When Jesus is riding into Jerusalem, they proclaim him king: Hosanna! Here comes David’s kingdom!

When Jesus asks the disciples who they say he is, they answer quite clearly: You are that coming Christ!

Indeed, the disciples are not only the ones who confess this about Jesus, they are willing to lay down their lives for it. When Jesus is about to be arrested in the garden, a disciple (Peter) pulls out his sword and slices off an arresting agent’s ear.

When Jesus looks forward and sees death they help him find his way: No, Jesus! I rebuke you, said Peter.

Great, Jesus, interesting story about that coming death thing. Now, when you come in glory can brother here and I sit at your right hand and left?

The disciples continue to show us the importance of the nationalistic vision of the reign of God when their post-resurrection knowledge of the Messiah draws them to ask, “So, is this the time when you’re going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

Yes, the civil religion of Glenn Beck has a rich, apostolic pedigree. It has behind it the apostles’ confessions, their swords, and their earnest expectations. God, the all powerful protector of the nation was their god as well. Civil religion is clearly a biblical idea.

Of course, Jesus responded to this idea, found in the Bible, with: “Get thee behind me Satan,” “you don’t know what you’re asking,” “put the sword away,” and “just go wait in the city until the Spirit comes and you finally understand what I’m talking about,” but that’s neither here nor there.

Posted in: Bible Thoughts, Culture by J. R. Daniel Kirk 19 Comments , , ,

Moyise: Paul and Scripture

Published at: 01:08 pm - Monday August 30 2010

A couple months ago I reviewed Steve Moyise, Paul and Scripture, for a journal. The version I had was from the UK publisher, SPCK, and it didn’t seem to be available in the U.S.

Now I have seen, thumbing through my Baker Academic catalog, that Baker has the rights in the US and Canada.

That version is now in stock at Amazon should you be interested in such things. The book is an introduction to Paul’s use of the OT that engages Paul’s citations and allusions by going through them in OT order.

If you’re interested in the subject of biblical intertextuality, or are teaching on it anytime soon, you might want to check it out.

Posted in: Uncategorized by J. R. Daniel Kirk 3 Comments

Den of Thieves, House of Prayer

Published at: 06:08 am - Monday August 30 2010

In Mark’s temple clearing incident, Jesus condemns what he sees in the precincts: It is written that my house is to be a house of prayer for all nations–but you have made it a brigands’ den!

It is now widely agreed that Jesus’ temple action was not so much a “cleansing” (something to put things right in the day-to-day functioning) but a prophecy of the temple’s looming destruction. Its being sandwiched within the fig tree incident and Jesus’ later parable about the vineyard help reinforce this idea. Jesus was saying, “The temple will be destroyed.”

And in fact, close attention to the OT citations upholds this reading. The “house of prayer for all peoples” is Isaiah’s prophecy about the eschatological in-gathering of God’s people. “Robbers’ den” is Jeremiah’s word of condemnation: a people who think they can commit murder, injustice, and idolatry come to the temple and think they’ll be safe? Hardly! God will destroy this temple. It is no talisman.

As Mark stitches the episode together, it culminates in what might otherwise be seen as generic ideas about prayer: Say to this mountain, “Be cast into the sea… ask what you will without doubt… when you pray, forgive and you will be forgiven…”

But in the story as it’s now written, these words are not just about prayer but about the community of Jesus’ followers becoming what the physical temple has not. They are to become the house of prayer for all people. They are to replace the temple as the locus where forgiveness is extended.

No more can God’s people think of a geophysical location as that to which all nations will be drawn when God does what God promised. Now, the reign of God will go out and embrace the nations where they are. Those who follow Jesus will become the house of prayer for all nations–the surprising fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision.

Rereading the story in our contexts presses one particular question upon us. In what ways do we treat our own faith as a talisman, as the ancients did their temple? If they interpreted “salvation” as security in their land, in their temple, we interpret salvation much more cosmically.

And it makes me wonder: do we sometimes think that we have magic words of salvation that are a talisman, such that we can do whatever we want and be safe from the judgment of God? Do we say, “I’ve confessed with my mouth and believe in my heart” and run to that as a refuge when we are adulterous, murderous, idolatrous, unjust? Do we think that God who did not spare the Temple that bore his name will be gentler in our case if we neglect so great a salvation?

There is a challenging warning that besets us when we place ourselves on the other side of the tables. If we bring our injustice into the house of God and there seek asylum, what hope do we think we have?

Posted in: Uncategorized by J. R. Daniel Kirk 5 Comments

Hope for Now

Published at: 03:08 pm - Sunday August 29 2010

A couple of questions for my Christian readers:

  • Have you ever taken comfort in the fact that you are justified in Christ, and therefore assured of your standing before God?
  • Have you ever prayed for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done on earth?
  • Have you ever pointed to someone spiritual growth and seen there that sanctification is taking place?
  • Do you ever think of yourself as a daughter or son who has been adopted into God’s family?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, your own understanding of life here and now has been shaped by the New Testament’s eschatology. The idea throughout the NT is that the end has already begun and is making itself known in the present.

One of the most profound implications of inaugurated eschatology is that there is continuity between the life we live in this age and the lives we shall live in the age to come.

When we start teasing this out, it means that we need to start weeding out those ideas that plant themselves in our minds that what we do here does no matter because, after all, “it’s all going to burn.”

Returning to my initial questions:

  • Justification is the word spoken by God on the judgment day over his people: they are vindicated, acquitted. Justified. To claim that identity now is to participate in our eternal judgment in Christ before God finally renders it at the end-yet-to-come.
  • The kingdom of God comes with submission to God here on earth (when people recognize and act as though God is the King God is)–but, there is a coming consummation of that reign when every knee will bow. Obedience now is a foretaste of what will be.

And so on. Any change toward God, any change in our status or persons as we identify ourselves with Christ, or, better, as God identifies us with Christ, are anticipations of what will fully be in the life to come. Our own identities walk in what we call and “already/not yet” eschatology.

Last night we had dinner with someone who works as a consultant to help create sustainable business practices. Her goal is to help companies, agencies, etc. live into a future where success is measured not merely by a financial bottom line but also bottom lines that measure social and environmentally sustainability.

As she has worked to bring this message to the church, the greatest hindrance has been bad eschatology.

Why are Christians in America disproportionately unconcerned about issues of environmental stewardship and not merely “being green” but true social, economic, and environmental sustainability?

The biggest problem is that American Christianity has drunk deeply of a future-only, entirely discontinuous vision of the age to come. The dispensationalists have painted powerful pictures through fiction and film about a world in which all we do will be destroyed and God will either simply deliver us out of it, or begin a new work ex nihilo, from scratch.

When we look to the future with a deep seated conviction that God is going to destroy everything, we hear pleas for earth-stewardship, for systemic transformation, as little more than cries to start polishing the brass on the Titanic. These sound like foreign narratives, pagan narratives that would distract us from the real work of saving souls for the age to come.

The imagination of North American Christianity needs transformation. It needs to start foreseeing a future that is intimately connected with the present, a future in which the judgment “fires” will not only consume dross, but also leave behind gold, silver, bronze, precious stones.

Eschatology matters. Eschatology shows us what the ending of the story is. And we, as people, are inherently story-bound and therefore inherently living our lives so that they will, to the best of our ability, realize the future that we believe lies ahead.

If we are going to be worth anything as a force for justice, for life, for transformation, we need to get our story straight. We need to better learn where it’s going. And we need to know that there is not merely deliverance to take us from here to there, but a path to walk as well.

Posted in: Bible Thoughts, Culture by J. R. Daniel Kirk 12 Comments , , ,

“Is that Book About God Created?”

Published at: 08:08 am - Sunday August 29 2010

The other day I was reading Evolving in Monkey Town. My 5 year old daughter initiated the following conversation:

“Are you reading the Bible?”

“No, sweetie.”

“Is it a book about God?”

“Yes.”

“Is it about ‘God created’?”

“It is! How did you know?”

“There’s a monkey on the front.”

Brilliant.

Posted in: Book Reviews, Humor by J. R. Daniel Kirk 1 Comment

Judge Not? Even People Who Write Books?!

Published at: 01:08 am - Saturday August 28 2010

I have a mixed relationship with “Judge not, lest you be judged.”

Whenever I hear it my antenna goes up, listening intently for how someone is about to tell me that they don’t have to listen to what the rest of the Bible says about how Christians should act since Jesus tells us we’re not supposed to judge anyone. I typically assume that Paul is about to take a beating.

But every now and then it comes back around on me, and I realize that those are life-giving words–not merely for individuals, but for communities. Here’s my latest struggle with it.

I’ve been questioning the value of certain scholars’ work recently. Not that it’s not scholarly and to the point, but I’ve been made cautious because these Christian scholars who have written at length on forgiveness, reconciliation, and sex have had their own marriages end.

I feel a need to know what happened. I feel a need to know how their lives do or do not reflect what they’ve spoken about with such authority in their books. I find myself hesitating about the value of their work because of the lives that don’t serve as glowing endorsements.

If all goes well, it does begin to dawn on me that I don’t know these people at all, not only do I not know the circumstances behind the writing, but I also do not know the circumstances behind the divorce. There is no context of community within which I might wrestle with them, listen to them, and have sufficient exposure to who they are that their personal “witness” begins to regain (or to lose) its credibility.

As the thought process continues, I realize that I have friends who are divorced and remarried, and that in the context of a relationship where I know them, at times worship with them, and otherwise spend time in community with them, I never hear them differently due to their marital status.

I listen to them, honor them, and respect them because we have built a relationship of trust even though both our lives are marked with decisions that we and the other might regard as unwise or unholy.

And so I come full circle to the initial impulse to judge these divorcees who should have been able to avoid it if they were living according to what they wrote in their books. And I am reminded of the stern warning: do not judge, lest you be judged.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I am even able to stop there and let it all go. But if not, there’s always the threat that someone might turn the tables on me and ask me how well I’m doing by the standards I set in my own writing. If I dog these folks for lives that imperfectly mirror the beauty of the gospel as they have been able to see it and articulate it in writing, what will become of me when someone uses my own writing as the canon by which my own life is judged?

I once read a pastor’s narrative in which he was reflecting on his call, especially preaching. He reflected on people calling the preacher a hypocrite for what he says in the pulpit in juxtaposition to the pastor’s imperfect life. But his own feeling was that it was in the pulpit he was his truest self.

I think those of us who write about biblical and theological things can resonate with that. Or, at least, with the idea that in our writing we see more clearly than we might reflect in our everyday lives where old patterns and powers overwhelm us again and again. The failure of the life to live up to the text is not simply the reality of our lives stacked up against the Jesus of the Bible, it’s the reality of our lives when stacked up against the Jesus upon whose ways we reflect in our books.

We will continue to fall short. We will continue to need grace.

And, I think we’re still free to read each other’s books.

Posted in: Academia, Bible Thoughts by J. R. Daniel Kirk 14 Comments , , ,
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