Turns out that radical biblioholism goes back to the earliest days of Christianity. Mike Gorman has recently posted this great quote from Epiphanius on how acquiring books makes us less inclined to sin:
The acquisition of Christian books is necessary for those who can use them. For the mere sight of these books renders us less inclined to sin, and incites us to believe more firmly in righteousness.
If only this were true, I’d be pretty freaking holy.
Working in publishing, one the key elements of our work is trying to acquire new books that promise to be game-changers, at least in some respects, in their field. We editors are like vultures swooping around looking for talent and then dive-bombing them until they agree to give us a book.
So, in the interest of helping me foster this mission, I wish to pose a question to my theologically-astute readership: Who do you think publishers should be trying to solicit books from? What new theologians are pursuing ideas that need attention in print? Who should my next phone call be to?
At the new Christian Theology on the Bible blog, fellow Wipf & Stocker, Chris Spinks is posting a series of quotes from Stephen Fowl’s forthcoming book on Theological Interpretation of Scripture in our Cascade Companions series. Other notable books in the series include Michael Gorman’s Reading Paul and D. Stephen Long’s Theology and Culture. This new book by Fowl is sure to be a good one.
Here’s the first quote that Chris has posted so far:
Open up virtually any biblical commentary written before the 16th century; then look at the discussion of that same passage in virtually any commentary written after 1870. The differences are so significant that a beginning student may well wonder if these two commentaries are actually speaking about the same biblical text. I can think of no better way to begin to think about the role of history and historical criticism in theological interpretation than to perform this exercise.
Pre-modern interpretation is very different from the types of interpretation you encounter in a modern biblical commentary or article. Understanding the nature of this difference is what is most important for now. If you have already been exposed to some pre-modern interpreters, they may seem less strange. For many students, however, their encounter with pre-modern interpretation can seem like traveling to a different planet. It may be tempting to think that the difference between pre-modern interpreters and us is that they had a naïvely literalistic understanding of the Scripture, that they read the gospels with harmonizing eyes such that they neglected or glossed over textual puzzles. Although there may be some examples of these interpretive flaws, they are not characteristic of pre-modern interpretation at its best. Pre-modern interpreters understood that Scripture was extraordinarily diverse, and contained various textual puzzles and obscurities.
For the most part, the various interpretive practices common in the pre-modern period arise from Christian theological convictions. Scripture was seen as God’s gift to the church. Scripture was the central, but not the only, vehicle by which Christians were able to live and worship faithfully before the triune God. It is also the case that faithful living, thinking, and worshipping shaped the ways in which Christians interpreted Scripture. At its best, the diversity and richness of the patterns of reading Scripture in the pre-modern period are governed and directed by Scripture’s role in shaping and being shaped by Christian worship and practice. Ultimately, Scriptural interpretation, worship, and Christian faith and life were all ordered and directed towards helping Christians achieve their proper end in God.
It is important to understand that the difference between modern and pre-modern biblical interpretation is not due to the fact that we are smart and sophisticated while they are ignorant and naïve. Instead, modern biblical study is most clearly distinguished from pre-modern interpretation because of the priority granted to historical concerns over theological ones. Ultimately, if Christians are to interpret Scripture theologically, the first step will involve granting priority to theological concerns. This, however, is to anticipate my conclusion.
Looks to be a good book and good blog series. Keep your eyes on it.
James K.A. Smith’s article in Evangelicals and Empire is good overview of the contrast between the rhetoric of freedom in the West and the classical Christian and distinctly Augustinian notion of freedom as rightly ordered desire:
If we valorize freedom as mere freedom of choice, then we end up affirming the condition of a disorderd should as metaphysically normative, and we will end up describing as “free” what Christian theology describes as a state of sin. We will also end up describing the rightly ordered agent as some how unfree because he is not free to do otherwise.
I pretty much agree with this. The equation of freedom with the experience of choice is, frankly just stupid. Also, I am a firm believer that true freedom is freedom that can do no other. The one who cannot help but love his wife is free. The man who chooses to cheat on his wife with his secretary is enslaved.
But, of course this line of reasoning has an ideological danger to it (which does not militate against it—it just needs to be noted). Equating freedom to rightly ordered desire must not be allowed to turn into a sort of enforced moral totalitarianism if it is to be true freedom. In other words, while reducing freedom to choice is slavery, it is not any less slavery to say that since freedom is not ultimately about the experience of choice it doesn’t matter whether or not we coerce the choices of others.
Jason alerts us to the fact that today is the birthday of Scottish theologian, P.T. Forsyth. Forsyth is one of the great underrated theologians and probably always will be. His books are worth anyone’s time. The Holy Father, The Cruciality of the Cross, and The Soul of Prayer are some of the best books of his.
Here’s a quote of his to add to the one Jason already posted:
Man is indeed incomparable with God, but incompatible he is not. And in Christ the compatibility becomes full communion. In Christ the living God is, to the extent that he lives, the giving God. In Christ we were neither made nor saved to eke out some lack in God, nor to meed some hunger in his being; but of his fullness we have all received. And we are here as the fullness and overflow of his creative love, to his praise and glory in our faith’s receptive and sympathetic love.
God in Christ is the maker of his own revelation. It was God himself that came to us in Christ; it was nothing about God, even about his eternal essence or his excellent glory. It is God that is our salvation, and not the truth about God. And what Christ came to do was not to convince us even that God is love, but to be with us and in us as the loving God forever and ever. He came not to preach the living God but to be God our life; yes, not to preach even the loving God but to be the love that God forever is.”
~ P.T. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, 353-54.
There’s every chance in the world that this won’t work out. This is one of those grand types of resolutions that are made to be forgotten about in a matter of days or weeks. Nevertheless I’m going to give it a shot. I mean, seriously, if I’m going to pay for the entire new set of Barth’s Church Dogmatics, it’s only fitting that I actually commit to read the thing. So that’s the plan. I plan to read the whole, entire, complete thing. But don’t worry, I’m not crazy. I will probably skim many of the in-text footnotes. I’m not gonna lie.
The new edition is split into 31 volumes, including the index (which, of course won’t be included in my final count). So that leaves me 30 volumes ranging between 150ish-400ish pages in length. My goal is to shoot for one of these volumes per week. This, of course is ridiculous.
But look, I’m 27 and single. Why would I not do this? Most of you get to have wives and children and mortgages. I get to read Karl Barth. It’s simple physics.
There are two reasons why this plan will almost certainly fail. Probably more, but two that are relevant to me. First, even the most elementary theomathematician among us can see that pulling this plan off would entail reading the same series of books (all of them on dogmatics, no less) for 30 straight weeks. My attention doesn’t usually remain transfixed for that long, even on a set this awesome. So there’s that. Second, as I’ve already lamented, I watch way to effing much in the way of shows than is conducive to large amounts of reading. This also has retroactive impact on reason #1. The more time I spend watching Deadwood, the less time I have to read a variety of things when I get bored.
So, my steps shall be as follows. Beginning today the goal is one of the (new) Barth volumes per week. Usually this is going to average out to 40 or more (occasionally about twice as much, but not often) pages per day. I think I can pull this off. If and only if I can mitigate the danger posed by visual media burgling my time away. To that end, the laptop is (generally) going to be staying at work during the week from now on. If I can pull that off, I think I have a shot at this.
And lets face it, from a theologically geeking out perspective, there’s not much that’s more awesome than this.
So yeah. There’s every reason why I should fail at this undertaking. But I bought the set, so I’m taking the shot. If all goes according to plan, by December 7th, I should have read the Dogmatics. And watched no Deadwood.
Keep your fingers crossed.
Alright, this question is actually an exercise in my own personal fact-finding. Every year I write this review column on British and American theology. Last year’s was a real winner with J. Kameron Carter’s Race: A Theological Account, Ted Smith’s The New Measures, and Nate Kerr’s Christ, History and Apocalyptic. So, this year I have to, once again choose the books I think most worthy to be included in the column. Sadly, we’re dealing here with constructive (i.e. systematic) theology in this publication, otherwise this would be the year for doing something on the awesome books on Paul that are coming out this year (Campbell and Gorman for starters).
So, if you had to pick 3-4 theology books from 2008-present to review, what would your choices be?
Gorman offers the following definition of theosis as it applies to the thought of St. Paul:
Theosis is transformative participation in the kenotic, cruciform character and life of God through Spirit-enabled conformity to the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected/glorified Christ, who is the image of God. (p. 125)
The only thing I might tweak here would be to replace “Spirit-enabled” with “Spirit-actualized” or something of that nature. Other than that this seems to be a good definition of theosis, which makes clear that theosis is not about having our human nature changed into divine nature or something like that. Rather it is transformative participation that results in conformitas Christi.
I’ve been waiting for this set since last October. And finally it is here:
I’m delighted with the new edition of the Church Dogmatics. Not withstanding the loss of the prefaces, I still think this edition will be eminently more readable. At least I certainly hope so. Be prepared for a lot of posts on Barth. Because for almost $500, this set is going to get read.
Again, from Gorman:
Because the faithful and loving crucified Christ is the image and self-revelation of God, the paradoxical process of justification by co-crucifixion, or resurrection through conformity to the crucified Christ, means that the pisteuontes (“believers”) are those who are becoming like God and thus experiencing the process of theosis inasmuch as they embody the symbiosis of fidelity and love found in the Son of God.
What does that mean? Inasmuch as Christ’s faithful and loving death reveals the faithfulness and love of God, and justification is participation in that death, justification is participation in the faithfulness and love of God. It is, thus, a process of deification or theosis. The cruciformity that is constitutive of justification is actually theoformity, or theosis . . . This means also that to become the righteousness or justice of God in Christ is theosis. This is not primarily an individual experience, but a corporate one of communal theosis–we become, in Christ, the righteousness/justice of God. (p. 90-91)
Again from Gorman, here is the summary of his view of justification:
Justification is the establishment of right covenantal relations–fidelity to God and love for neighbor–by means of God’s grace in Christ’s death and our Spirit-enabled co-crucifixion with him. Justification therefore means co-resurrection with Christ to new life within the people of God and the certain hope of acquittal/vindication, and thus resurrection to eternal life on the day of judgment.” (p. 85-86)
More good stuff from Michael Gorman’s new book, Inhabiting the Cruciform God:
To be more specific, Paul has not two soteriological models (juridical and participationist) but one, justification by co-crucifixion, meaning restoration to right covenantal relations with God and others by participation in Christ’s quintessential covenantal act of faith and love on the cross; this one act fulfilled by of the “vertical” and “horizontal” requirements of the Law, such that those who participate in it experience the same life-giving fulfillment of the Law and therein begin the paradoxical, christologically grounded process of resurrection through death. That is, they have been initiated into the process of conformity to the crucified Christ (cruciformity, Christification), who is the image of God–and thus the process of theoformity, or theosis.” (p. 45)
Michael Gorman’s new book, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology is just a goldmine. Mike was kind enough to send me a copy, so today I’ll be posting a smattering of quotes and thoughts from my reading of the book thus far. At the center of the book is Gorman’s supremely helpful proposal of how to understand the doctrine of justification in Paul. According to Gorman, the best way to understand the much-debated doctrine of justification by faith is to understand it as “justification by co-crucifixion.” In contrast to the constant squabbles, particularly amongst those who claim the name “reformed”, Gorman calls us toward Paul’s far more radical doctrine of “costly justification”:
There have always been legitimate theological arguments about justification, as well as less noble but understandable interconfessional squabbles. But it may also be the case that there is another, more subtle (and thus more dangerous) theological reason for at least some aspects of the current situation regarding justification. To paraphrase Dietrich Bonhoeffer, parts of the Christian church have become enamoured with cheap justification. Cheap justification is justification without justice, faith without love, declaration without transformation.” (p. 41)
“The events of Good Friday and, even before that, in prayer in Gethsemane, introduce a fundamental change into the whole course of the revelation of love and mercy in the messianic mission of Christ. The one who ‘went about doing good and healing’ and ‘curing every sickness and disease’ now Himself seems to merit the greatest mercy and to appeal for mercy, when He is arrested, abused, condemned, scourged, crowned with thorns, when He is nailed to the cross and dies amidst agonizing torments. It is then that He particularly deserves mercy from the people to whom He has done good, and He does not receive it. Even those who are closest to Him cannot protect Him and snatch Him from the hands of His oppressors. At this final stage of His messianic activity the words which the prophets, especially Isaiah, uttered concerning the Servant of Yahweh are fulfilled in Christ: ‘Through his stripes we are healed.’”
~ John Paul II, Dives in misericordia, par 7.
From Micah White at Adbusters:
Argument one: The Kindle destroys the trace of the author. After the death of the individual author, books continue to live. They carry the trace of the authors life and thoughts on the page and show this trace through the physical existence of the book. If you hunt for books in bookstores instead of libraries, you may not realize that every age has bound its books differently, used different papers and inks and decorated the page in various ways. The materiality of the book gives us a taste of the author and the time when the book was made. Each book is different and an avid reader can often remember the color of their favorite book or the feel of its pages. The Kindle destroys this because it divorces the text from the book. It displays every book the same. While the text on the screen may changes the physical object in one’s hands stays the same. This has some troubling consequences for our relationship to the author’s words because what the Kindle really displays is one long book — simply a long stream of endless, digitized words.
Argument two: the Kindle destroys the community of readers which books engender. The Kindle has been devised by a society that wants to make profit each time a text is read rather than each time a book is purchased. In the old system, once I bought a book I owned it as an object. I could read it as many times as I liked and give it to friends who may give it to their friends. That is the basis behind public libraries, we all share books because we understand that there are more books we’d like to read than we’d ever be able to afford to read. This creates a community of readers who circulate books amongst themselves for the benefit of all. The Kindle is the end of that, no more sharing books, no more public libraries, no more sitting in a bookstore and reading a book without buying it. The Kindle is a prison for words.
Argument three: the Kindle denies the call to deep, meditative reflection. Books have a magic power in that they can draw us into the world of the author and make time pass quickly while we are immersed in the text. The book is the ideal format for presenting complicated, philosophical arguments that require the reader to pause between paragraphs and reflect. The Kindle is the opposite — it is merely a television for reading text, a computer that will distract us. Furthermore, the adoption of the Kindle will destroy the culture of reading that sets aside sacred places for study: libraries. The Kindle makes these special places unnecessary because it argues that the library will be carried in our pocket. But with the loss of quiet study places for the public will come the loss of the public’s capacity for quiet study. This is why some commentators have already reflected that the Kindle is best for trashy novels. But if the Kindle becomes widespread, all we will have is trashy novels.
The Kindle is the devil.
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