Author Archives: deekdubberly

Even Their Virtues Were Burned Away

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Flannery OConnor Even Their Virtues Were Burned Away

From the prophetic voice of Flannery O’Connor:

“At last she lifted her head.  There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk . . . . A visionary light settled in her eyes.  She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire.  Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven . . . . And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right.  She leaned forward to observe them closer.  They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior.  They alone were on key.  Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away . . . . In a moment the vision faded but she remained where she was, immobile . . . . In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.”

—Excerpt from the closing paragraphs of O’Connor’s short story, “Revelation,” in Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Stories, 488-509.

What Does the Preacher Have to Say?

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“What does the preacher have to say that the psychologist, politician, stock broker, or social commentator has not already said with more passion and insight than most pastors can muster even on Easter Sunday? The credibility of the church’s proclamation will not be restored by acquiring new communication skills or devising better sermonic forms, as helpful as these may be. The answer is a preacher in whom the Word of God burns as a fire in his bones, one who must speak because he cannot keep silent, one who preaches with fierce humility yet also with unstinted audacity in the certain knowledge that God Himself is speaking in the faithful proclamation of His Word. Or, as Second Helvetic Confession (1566) put it even more succinctly: “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” This is the burden of doctrinal preaching.”

—Timothy George, “Doctrinal Preaching,” in the Handbook of Contemporary Preaching, edited by Michael Duduit (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1993), 93-102.

On Karl Barth’s View of the Bible and the Sermon

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In his book, The Sermon as God’s Word: Theologies for Preaching, Robert W. Duke “examines a variety of theologies in order to show how the preacher’s choice and development of a text is shaped by the assumptions of which he or she may not consciously be aware” (11).

In the first chapter Duke considers the theology and preaching of neo-orthodoxy’s champion, Karl Barth.  Duke writes one particular paragraph that is chock-full of important Barthian concepts and buzz-words.  Having studied Barth a fair amount over the last five months, I could not help but to nod in happy agreement as I read the following:

This strange book—this Bible—was for Barth a testimony to God’s dealings with people.  It is not essentially a record of our quest for God, but rather of God’s quest, in the person of Jesus Christ, for us.  Nowhere else are we told of this movement of God toward us.  Nor can God’s self-revelation be charted by human reason or discerned from any experience of culture, poetry, or science.  God is wholly other than our thoughts.   To become involved with the Bible is to enter into a strange new world.  Barth never tired of creating images out of his experience.  He writes that our situation is like that of a wayfarer who journeys through life “absorbed in his own thoughts and desires,” with eyes fixed ahead on the bend in the road—the curve that appears to be the goal sought.  This is a familiar world, with all its sights and sounds soothing to the ears, and the traveler retains this sense of well-being until a crisis arises.  But occasionally there occurs a foreign word, a sermon that moves him, excites him, and disturbs this ordered life.  The bend in the road ahead reveals not a continuation of the way he has been traveling, but a strange new land, “distance undreamed of, a vista he does not see, a place he does not know, the beyond!  This new land, shall we seek it? . . . To bring me to this point, to this sign of God’s highway, . . . to the end of what is earthly, and so to the beginning of things divine, just this is the aim of every thought and word of the Bible” (18).

The paragraph is Duke’s, but the quotations within it come from one of Barth’s sermons as recorded in Karl Barth and Eduard Thurneysen, Come Holy Spirit: Sermons, 196-197.

What Kind of Dreams Was John Calvin Having?

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John Calvin believed that God places an imprint of immortality upon the soul of every human being.  In defense of such belief, Calvin employs a litany of examples from real life experiences.

When speaking of “the sure indications of the agency of God in man,” Calvin offers the following rather unusual example of what the soul does while a person is asleep.   Calvin asks,

“What shall we say of its [i.e., the soul's] activity when the body is asleep, its many revolving thoughts, its many useful suggestions, its many solid arguments, nay, its presentment of things yet to come?  What shall we say but that man bears about with him a stamp of immortality which can never be effaced?”

—From Calvin’s Institutes (1.5.5, p. 60)

Did Calvin just say that he can see the future in his dreams?  Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think he did.  Hmm?  Maybe there is more to the concept of déjà vu than I realized.  Calvin appears to think so.

My wife probably thinks I’m crazy, but there have been occasions in my life when the example Calvin gives of our dreams providing a “presentment of things yet to come” really clicks for me.

If I tell you the stories I have in mind you’ll likely think I’m crazy too.  Let’s just say that when I read the highlighted passage from Calvin—I definitely related.

P.S.  In case anyone is wondering, I’m referencing the free PDF version of John Calvin’s, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, available online at Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Two Weeks with Dr. Millard Erickson

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Dr 228x300 Two Weeks with Dr. Millard Erickson

My feeble attempt at sneaking a snapshot with my cell phone while Dr. Erickson was lecturing.

I’ve had the wonderful opportunity of spending the last two weeks being taught theology by Dr. Millard J. Erickson.  Dr. Erickson has been teaching theology at the graduate level for nearly fifty years.  He has authored many books and is considered by many to be Carl F. H. Henry’s successor as “the dean of evangelical theologians.”

Dr. Erickson is perhaps known best for his volume of systematic theology, Christian Theology, a work which I’ve used in various courses at three different seminaries now.

The course I’ve been sitting in for four hours a day every day for the last two weeks is titled, “The Last 100 Years of Theology.”  Our course textbook was, A New Handbook of Christian Theologians.

For those interested, a perusal of the notes I managed to type during Dr. Erickson’s lectures will give you a good idea of what I’ve learned.

Dr. Erickson administered a final exam in class today.  It covered quite a bit of material! We were asked about each of the following theological topics from the 20th century:

  • Social Gospel
  • Fundamentalist movement
  • Karl Barth’s view of revelation
  • Paul Tillich’s theological method of correlation and his idea of God as the ground of being
  • Rudolph Bultmann’s employment of the distinction between historie and geschichte and his notion of God as the ground of all being
  • Wolfhart Pannenberg’s notion of revelation as history
  • Jürgen Moltmann and theology as eschatology
  • Process theology’s concept of God as dipolar
  • Liberation theology’s nature of theology
  • African theology and indigenization
  • Death of God theology
  • Communicational role of narrative theology
  • Vatican II and degrees of church membership
  • George Lindbeck’s postliberal thoughts about the nature of doctrine
  • Inclusivism and implicit faith
  • Open theism
  • Annihilationism

The test was no walk in the park, but all of the questions were addressed in both our lectures and assigned reading.

I feel very fortunate to have been able to take a class with Dr. Erickson.  He was a very kind, professional, and sharp theological instructor.  He told our class that we would likely be the last class he ever taught.  What a blessing!

 

A New Seminary and a Busy Semester

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SBTS2lineVertical A New Seminary and a Busy Semester

One of the main reasons for my several-month blogging hiatus has been school.

1 semester, 4 classes, 14 credit hours, 28 required texts, 32 papers/assignments later—and I made it!  Finished my first semester at Southern Seminary.

Here is a list of the courses I took, their descriptions from the Southern Seminary academic catalog, and the required texts according to each course’s Fall 2011 syllabus:

Graduate Research Seminar—A survey of library resources and techniques for the preparation of dissertations and examination of research writing.

  1. Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success, by Wendy Laura Belcher
  2. The Craft of Research, 3rd ed., by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory C. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams
  3. The Oxford Guide to Library Research, 3rd ed., by Thomas Mann
  4. The Southern Seminary Manual of Style, 3rd ed., by Southern Seminary
  5. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations, 7th ed., by Kate L. Turabian
  6. Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace, 4th ed., by Joseph M. Williams

Theology of Karl Barth—An examination of Barth’s theology with a view to understanding his interpretation of the Christian faith and his significance in twentieth century theology.

  1. Church Dogmatics I.2, on The Doctrine of the Word of God, by Karl Barth
  2. Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, by Karl Barth
  3. The SPCK Introduction to Karl Barth, by D. Densil Morgan
  4. How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology, by George Hunsinger

Baptist Theologians in Historical Perspective—A study of selected Baptist theologians in their historical context, examining the currents which shaped their thought and the contributions of each theologian to church and ministry.

  1. Theologians of the Baptist Tradition, ed. David Dockery and Timothy George
  2. By His Grace and For His Glory, by Tom J. Nettles
  3. Baptist Theology: A Four Century Study, by James Leo Garrett

Hermeneutics for Preaching—An examination of the history and theory of hermeneutics for the art of Christian preaching. Modern hermeneutical theories and their impact on the preaching assignment will be carefully critiqued.

  1. The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Text?  Essays on the Use of the Old Testament in the New, ed. G. K. Beale
  2. Putting the Truth to Work: The Theory and Practice of Biblical Application, by Daniel Doriani
  3. Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture: The Application of Biblical Theology to Expository Preaching, by Graeme Goldsworthy
  4. The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Literature, by Sidney Greidanus
  5. Preaching Christ from the Old Testament: A Contemporary Hermeneutical Method, by Sidney Greidanus
  6. Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. Stanley N. Gundry, et al.
  7. Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ from All the Scriptures, by Dennis E. Johnson
  8. Toward an Exegetical Theology: Biblical Exegesis for Preaching and Teaching, by Walter C. Kaiser
  9. The Uses of the Old Testament in the New, by Walter C. Kaiser
  10. Culture and Biblical Hermeneutics: Interpreting and Applying the Authoritative Word in a Relativistic Age, by William J. Larkin
  11. The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, by Grant Osborne
  12. Hermeneutics, Inerrancy & the Bible: Papers from the ICBI Summit II, ed. Earl D. Radmacher and Robert D. Preus
  13. Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, rev. ed., by William W. Klein, Craig L. Blomberg, & Robert I. Hubbard, Jr.
  14. Validity in Interpretation, by E. D. Hirsch
  15. Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon, by Bryan Chappell

Back to Blogging!

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I’m back to blogging.  Sort of.  I’m back in the sense that I’ve renewed by domain name  and I’ve purchased further web hosting services.  I may not be back in the sense that I’m blogging regularly every week.  That remains to be determined.

For the handful of you who read this blog, you know that I haven’t written or posted anything in several months.  I’ve got my reasons.  Lauren and I moved to Louisville, KY back in August.  I have since matriculated into doctoral studies at Southern Seminary.  Life has changed quite a bit in the last few months.  Most of the changes have been good.

Almost needless to say, maintaining my blog has not been a major priority.

Unfortunately…

I’ve managed to lose everything from all of my past blogging exploits (insert long story about how it went down here).  That’s over three years of articles, thoughts, links, theme customization, etc.  And yes, losing all of that stinks!

Oh well.

The fact that I’m really not all that upset about losing hundreds of posts, comments, and technical tweaks is proving quite the commentary on the medium of blogging.  I am discovering that for me blogging has been—and perhaps will continue to be—simply something to do.