1999 Study Groups
Christian Doctrine
June 30 - July 2
New Testament
July 5 - July 7
Old Testament
July 7 - July 9
Biblical Theology
June 28 - June 30
Philosophy of Religion
June 21 - June 23
Religion, Culture and Communication
July 12 - July 14
Associates
Chair: Paul Woodbridge (Oak Hill)
July 2 - July 3
During these Study Groups, the following 1999 Tyndale Lecturers will be presented:
New Testament: Scott Hafemann
Christ, Servant to the Circumcision for the Hope and Glory of God among the Gentiles -- The Unity of the Church within the History of Redemption in Accordance with the Scriptures (Romans 15:1-13)
Abstract not available yet
Old Testament: Thomas Renz
Proclaiming the Future: History and Theology in Prophecies Against Tyre
Abstract
Biblical Theology: Peter Walker
A Biblical Theology of the Land
Abstract
Christian Doctrine: Martin Davie
Dead to Sin and Alive to God - Penal Substitution Revisited
Abstract
Philosopy of Religion: Harry Bunting
Ethics and the Perfect Moral Exemplar
Abstract
Religion, Culture, Communication: Dr Dewi Hughes
Mysticism: the Philosophia Perennis?
Abstract not available yet
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Study Group Seminars 1998
The Philosophy of Religion Study Group
Seminar Papers:
Myron Penner
(to be confirmed)
William Crawley
'Problems with Plantinga'
Alan Baird
'Approaching the Problem of Evil'
Daniel Hill
'Omniscience and indexicals'
Robin Parry:
'Biblical Studies and Martha Nussbaum'
Oliver Crisp
(on Edwards)
The Religion, Culture and Communication Study Group
Seminar Papers:
The Christian Doctrine Study Group
Seminar Papers:
Michael Insley (Nazarene Theological College, Manchester)
'Pope Gelasius, Luther and the Council of Trent'
David Rainey (vicar of Wadhurst in Kent)
'Wesleyan Eucharistic Theology'
Tim Grass (West Sussex)
'The centrality of the Eucharist for the Brethren and the Catholic Apostolic Church compared to modern evangelicals'
Tony Lane (London Bible College)
'Towards a Zwinglian doctrine of transubstantiation'
David Wright (Edinburgh)
'Relation between Baptism and Lord's Supper'
Conrad Gempf (London Bible College)
'A NT scholar's reflection on the previous material'
Dr Martin Davie (Oak Hill):
'Dead to Sin and Alive to God - Penal Substitution Revisited'.
The Biblical Theology Study Group
Seminar Papers:
Paul Williamson (Irish Baptist College)
'The Land in the Pentateuch: Promises and Provisos'
Desi Alexander (Queens University, Belfast)
'The Settlement of the Land: Observations from Joshua and Judges'
Stephen Sizer (Christ Church, Virginia Water)
'Theology of the Land: A History of Dispensational Approaches'
Deryck Sheriffs (London Bible College)
'The Land in the Prophets and the Prophetic Role of the Church Today'
Colin Chapman (Trinity College, Bristol) and Richard Harvey (All Nations Christian College)
'Ownership of the Land: Competing Political and Theological Agendas''
Carl Armerding (Oxford Centre for Mission Studies)
'Stewardship of the Land: Implications for the Christian Church Today'
The New Testament Study Group
Seminar Papers:
Conrad Gempf (London Bible College):
'"And so we came to Rome ...": Paul and early Roman Christianity'
Douglas Mohrmann (Durham ):
'Trusting in the Corner-Stone: Isaiah 28:16, Its History of Interpretation and Use in Romans 10'
Bruce Winter (Tyndale House):
' Roman Society and Roman Law in Romans 12-15'
Peter Oakes (Northern College and University of Manchester):
'Christianity in a Roman Colony: modelling the church at Philippi'
Teaching Seminar on Romans (P. Head and others)
The Old Testament Study Group
Seminar Papers:
Mervyn Richardson (Manchester)
'The Word for the World: Principles of revision of the English edition of Koehler-Baumgartner'
Karl Moeller (Cheltenham)
'Dialogue as Rhetorical Technique in the Book of Amos'
Dan Hawk (Ashland Theological Seminary)
'Fixing the Boundaries: the construction of identity in Joshua'
Ken Kitchen (Liverpool)
'Theology, Literature and History in the OT'
Bob Fyall (St John's, Durham)
'Micah 5.2: a messianic prophecy?'
Herbert Klement:
(on Samuel; title TBC)
Terence Mitchell:
'On writing for The Cambridge Ancient History'
Rick Hess (Denver)
'Ancient Israelite Reading and Writing in the Light of the Evidence'
Keemun Sung
(to be confirmed)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract of Old Testament Tyndale Lecture:
Proclaiming the Future: History and Theology in Prophecies Against Tyre
This lecture is presented as a contribution to our understanding of the predictive element in Biblical prophecy. Prophets in the OT acted as a mouthpiece for God, receiving a message from him and speaking in his name. Biblical prophecy has appropriately been defined as forthtelling rather than foretelling. Still, predictions are an important part of the prophetic message and evangelicals have rightly resisted attempts to minimise this element of prophecy. The function of predictions is however not always properly understood. I will argue that predictions are not meant to unveil the future but to proclaim God's plan. Predictions do not present a historiography before the event but an expression of God's purpose. This explains the conventional and vague language of many predictions, the element of conditionality in Biblical prophecy, and the selective nature of the vision of the future being offered in our prophetic literature.
The aim of the lecture is to demonstrate the validity of this thesis through an analysis and comparison of prophecies against Tyre (especially Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 26, with reference to Amos 1:9-10, Joel 3:4-8, and Zechariah 9:2b-4). I will attempt to relate the prophecies in Isaiah and Ezekiel to the actual history of Tyre, as far as we can recosntruct it today, to the theological thrust of the relevant sections in the two books, and to each other, comparing the promise of restoration after the judgement in Isaiah 23:15-28 with the consistent denial of any such denial in Ezekiel. Finally, the oracle in Ezekiel 29:17-21 gives us a precious insight into the disappointment caused by Nebuchadrezzar's failure to devastate Tyre and indicates how predictions are to be read and understood. The lecture will show that predictions are an essential part of the prophetic message but that they offer a broad picture of God's dealings with humanity rather than a detailed presentation of future events
Dr T Renz, Oak Hill College
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract of Biblical Theology Tyndale Lecture:
A Biblical Theology of the Land
It is often said that the NT does now have any particular interest in the Land. There are indeed only a few references which overtly touch on the subject, but when the issue of the Land is set within the context of the parallels issues of the Temple and the City, a paradigm develops which suggests that the NT writers may well have reevaluated this concept of the Land in ways similar to their re-evaluation of Jerusalem and its Temple.
Three particular NT authors (Paul, Hebrews, and John) will then be examined showing how their writing does reveal a considered approach to this issue of the Land.
A second part of the Lecture will then seek to trace this new approach to the Land back to the ministry and teaching of Jesus himself. In this section we will be daring to ask, What was the attitude of Jesus to the various issues raised in his day by the theological convictions of his fellow Jews on the subject of the Land? It will be argued that his ministry was one which took up the same promises of the Old Testament (which fuelled the attachment to the Land) but which saw them as fulfilled in himself and in a surprising way. He was the agent of Israel's longed-for restoration and 'end of exile'. If the NT writers come out with a quite different view of the Land from some of their fellow Jews, this has a great deal to do with Jesus himself and what they learnt from him
The final section of the paper will then seek to integrate this analysis of the NT into an overall biblical theology of the Land, arguing that this key concept needs (as with so many other NT themes) to be interpreted through the fulfillment found in Christ. OT verses cannot be simply lift off the page, without paying attention to the pattern of NT thought. Promises in the OT that might be thought to be still awaiting their physical fulfillment will be seen instead to have genuinely found fulfillment in Christ. Nor is this a later abstraction or neat systematization imposed on the biblical material retrospectively, but something which was lived out and believed by Jesus himself. The centre of the scriptures proves to be Jesus of Nazareth.
Some final reflections will then be offered as to how this approach would interact with and be different from other , perhaps more popular, approaches to the Land today.
Peter Walker, Wycliffe Hall Oxford
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract of Christian Doctrine Tyndale Lecture:
Dead To Sin and Alive To God - Penal Substitution Revisited
One of the historical hallmarks of conservative Evangelicalism has been its commitment to the doctrine of Penal Substitution. In its traditional form this has held that God's justice requirs that sin carries the penalty of death of the body and the soul. Because God the Father is not only just but also loving He sent his Son to endure this penalty in our place so that because He has been punished in this way we do not need to be.
The strength of this understanding of the Cross is that it takes seriously the Biblical teaching that the 'wages of sin is death' (Rom 6:23), and that the only reason we can be righteous before God is because God the Father placed our sinfulness and its consequences upon God the Son. In the words of 2 Cor 5:21: 'For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God'.
However, besides these strengths the traditional formulation of the doctrine of Penal Substitution also has a number of weaknesses.
It fails to explain satisfactorily why from Gen 2:17 onwards God demands death as the appropriate penalty for sin. Why cannot God exact some other penalty instead?
It fails to do justice to the fact that Christ is not only our substitute but also our representative in that according to the witness of the NT what happened to Him on our behalf also happened to us. Thus 2 Cor 5:14 tells us 'we are convinced that one died for all therefore all died'. In other words, when Christ died we died with Him.
It fails to do justice to the fact that it is not only the cross but also the resurrection that puts us in the right with God. In the words of Rom 4:25, Christ: '...was put to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification.' If the problem is simply that penalty for sin has to be paid by Christ's death then why is the resurrection said to justify us?
It fails to do justice to the importance of baptism in the NT teaching about salvation. Traditionally faith alone has been seen as the link between what Christ has done for us and our salvation whereas in the NT Paul also stresses the importance of baptism in this regard. For example, in Col 2:12-15 the forgiveness of our sins is linked to Christ's death and resurrection via both faith and baptism together.
The purpose of this lecture is to argue that it is possible to reformulate the doctrine of Penal Substitution in such a way as to conserve its strengths and avoid the weaknesses identified above.
I shall argue that God's purpose in creation is that we and all creation with him might share in His eternal life of love (Eph 1:10). Our sins prevent this happening, and therefore as George MacDonald and C S Lewis have argued, God's inexorable love demands our sin should be dealt with. However we and our sins cannot be separated since we are by corruption of nature sinful people. Therefore the destruction of our sins demands the destruction of our sinful selves or, in other words, our deaths. God's infliction of death is thus a 'severe mercy' which prevents us from living for ever in alienation from him (Gen 2:22-24).
Martin Davie, Oak Hill College
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract of Philosophy Tyndale Lecture:
Ethics and the Perfect Moral Exemplar
Contemporary philosophical interest in the relationship between the ethics of ccharacter and the ethics of conduct has provided an impetus to re-examine central themes in Biblical ethics. One such theme is the role, if any, in moral theory of a perfect moral exemplar. The Lecture commences by describing ways in which a Christo-centric ethic invokes the concept of a perfect moral exemplar making particular reference to the Gospels and the Pauline writings.
The neglect of the concept of a perfect moral exemplar in modern deontological traditions, contraction, cosequentialist and rationalist and also in recent defences of Christian virtue ethics such as provided by Jean Porter (>The Recovery of Virture<) and Jospeh Kotva (The Christian Case for Virtue Ethics) is noted.
Drawing on the work by J O Urmson ('Saints and Heroes' in A I Meldin ed. Essays in Moral Philosophy) contrasts are drawn between the concepts of a saint, a moral hero and a moral exaemplar; these are contrasted with the unique concept of a perfect moral exemplar.
Specific arguments, recently developed by S Wolff ('Moral Saints' in Crisp & Slote ed. Virtue Ethics), E Conee ('The Nature and Impossibility of Moral Perfection' in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1984) and C McGinn ('Must I be Morally perfect' in Analysis 1991), against the intelligibility and usefulness of a perfect moral exemplar are critically examined and rejected.
The centrality of the virtue of love in a Christian perfectionist theory and the significance of a hierarchy of virtues are explored. The extent to which the latter may provide a framework for a revised theory of the unity of the virtues is examined alongside the relationship between the perfectionist virtue ethic and a divine command ethic. A central concern of the Lecture will be to assess the merits of an ethic of virtue as against a deontological ethic as accounts of Christian morality.
W H A Bunting, University of Ulster