Notes Along the Way 3.1 -- The Final Year in England

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1. When I returned from Germany in the spring of 95, it was time to get down to business. My final year--and especially the spring of 1996--focused on finishing the dissertation. I scrambled to get it done, but the deadline was earlier than I thought. So I ended up graduating in December even though I finished in the summer. 

I had run during most of my time in England. In May of 1995, I tried my first marathon in Leeds. When I got to mile 18, I came over a hill only to see another hill. I'll just walk a little, says I. Just to the top of the next hill. Then I'll start running again.

Didn't happen. I ended up walking the last 8 miles. Each time I got a little orange aid at a station, I would try to run again, but it didn't last more than 10 feet each time.

The finish was all downhill--multiple miles. A dream. Under any normal circumstances, it would have been a piece of cake. But I didn't have the energy even to run downhill. When I got to the final few yards, I started to jog. There was a 70 year old man who had run a marathon the previous weekend in Belgium. He ran with me a few yards.

Then my leg clinched, and I had to walk again. "You can do it," he said. "You're almost there. Don't give up now" But my leg said no. There wasn't really anyone else around. I think it was something like 4 hours and 20 minutes.

2. The next year, April 1996, I was determined to finish the London marathon without stopping. I told myself the key was that I had to keep moving. I wasn't allowed to walk at all or I would never be able to start up again. Success! I think it was still something like 4 hours and 5 minutes. Rats.

Perhaps in July of that summer I ran the Newcastle half-marathon. I remember excessively enjoying a fish and chips afterward. I remember feeling very alone.

I had felt incredibly successful up to that point of my life. Doors had opened at every step of the way. I would increasingly feel like everyone was happy to take your money, but no one was willing to give you a job. Of course things are much worse now than they were even then.

I did a marathon in Corning back in 2022, the Wineglass Marathon. I did a fare amount of training but walked about half of it. Heal clinched badly. But I did finish. I'd like to run another sometime. But time does age a person.

3. There were several trips around Britain in that last year. In the winter at the beginning of 96, David Fox had access to a cottage on the west coast of Ireland. Maybe a family member owned it. Rachel Leonard came too and perhaps one other person like James Quirk. I don't remember where we went exactly, unfortunately. Was it just beyond Galway? Killadoon?

We took a ferry across from Wales to Dublin, I believe, then drove the rest of the way in his small car.

I think it must have been mostly straight across. We didn't take a lot of big roads, as I recall. At one point we had to stop for sheep to get out of the way. It was very cold. There was no going into the water as far as I was concerned.

One highlight of the spring of 1996 was that David set his head on fire. It was third term, I think, and we were having a bit of a cook out. Rachel was there. James Quirk. And also I believe David Morton from Cumbria (I can still hear him saying that with his accent). We were on the lawn behind Cranmer, as I recall.

The fire was not heating up fast enough, so he had the bright idea of pouring some gasoline on it. It flamed up immediately and set his head on fire. That's the problem with being a genius, you think you can get by with things. He did have the intelligence to put out the fire with his shirt.

Panic of course set in. What to do? I went to run some water but didn't know what temperature it should be (cold, by the way). But by the time I came back outside, they had called an ambulance and he was off to hospital.

4. Neil took some time to drive me around England, Wales, and Scotland as well. We went up all the way to John O'Groats at the tip of Scotland. My second brief pass through Inverness and first time to St. Andrews. Probably on another occasion, we went to Cambridge and had tea at the Orchard, one of Wittgenstein's favorite places. We may have also swung by Stratford on Avon.

I have a mug from Rievaulx Abbey in York where we stopped briefly. You really get to hate Henry VIII because of his dissolution of the monasteries. There were the ruins of a priory it was nice to walk to down the Wier a few miles. Abandoned train bridge on the way, as I recall.

At some point we drove a little through Wales. What magnificent mountains, just like on the way to the Isle of Skye. I don't think I've ever seen such majestic mountains anywhere else in my travels. But of course there are many places I have never been.

Before I left, I made a trip to look at the Roman ruins underneath York Minster. It probably shouldn't have been, but it was a bit surprising to me that the Romans had been in Britain. Conflict of stereotypes in my mind. One of the Department of Theology outings was to Hadrian's wall, which was built in 122 BC. I believe James and Elena McGrath had arrived by then. We had gone to Housesteads, I believe.

5. Before I left, I also did a little driving with my friend Todd Thompson. He had come to Sheffield to do graduate work in philosophy. That was tough going, because he only had his undergraduate degree from Central Wesleyan and his MDIV from Asbury Seminary--neither of which focused on philosophy.

But it was a delight to meet up. If Neil had taken me north and central, Todd and I went south. We made it as far south as Cheddar, I think. It would have been nice to get to Land's End, but it was going to be a very long drive with no real place to visit or see. So we headed west and drove by Stonehenge instead. I think it was closed by the time we got there, but we did see it from the road.

6. David Wright and his young family were in Birmingham, I think. He was the representative of the Missions department of The Wesleyan Church at the time. Most of the Wesleyan congregations in England are of Caribbean descent in London. I did a weekend visit, as I recall with them. 

I seem to recall having some conversations about postmodernism and whether there might be lessons for the church in it. Interestingly, I would have the identical discussion with Russ Gunsalus a couple years later in 1997, in New Brunswick, Canada at Bethany. My brother-in-law Dwayne Winterberg was teaching youth ministry there at the time.

In late 95, the Wrights were going to be leaving England--I think for Haiti. Kerry Kind asked me to come down to Birmingham to consider possibly continuing where they had left off. I was flattered that he had that much confidence in me, but I told him I needed to focus on finishing my dissertation. To be honest, I really didn't have any interest in it. I thought I was going to be this great scholar whose days with the Wesleyan Church were numbered. Ha!

I remember asking him if he had ever heard of the show Friends. He said he had and that he had heard it was basically a bunch of twenty somethings sleeping around. I quickly shifted gears. "It's about the only show that we get here," I said.

7. Alex Jensen became a residential tutor that third year. A French friend had returned from a year away in Japan, Alexandra Bayol. I think it was the dissertation, but that third year just seemed more somber and serious in my memory. You begin to realize you don't know what you'll be doing the next year.

In addition to Neil and I, a Canadian by the name of Scott was also a residential tutor but for John's students who lived off campus. He dated another friend, Elizabeth, whom I was in a play with. It was a medieval play with just the two of us. I remember having tea with her before I left England that final summer. We wagered who would become famous first. I assured her that I would be a novelist who knew Madonna within a couple years.

I had started a couple novels by then. My first foray into fiction writing was a piece I wrote as a high school senior, "The Light of the Withered Rose." It felt better than it was. For a long time I planned to make it into a novel. I used to tell a story to my nephews called The Vigilante. I started to write some of it down once upon a time.

The first real attempt was Domain of Consciousness. It was The Matrix before there was The Matrix. Its inspiration came from a short story I read in the 10th grade called "The Most Dangerous Game." But in my version, it was a virtual world. He kidnapped people and put them into a virtual world without them knowing it. Then he hunted them.

My final year in John's I started one called The Birth of a God. Standard superhero stuff with a dark twist. You get kidnapped. Someone uses you as a guinea pig for a transporter. You get powers. They kill your family. You go dark and broody.

I showed some of it to a student named Anne. Despite her high expectations, the look on her face said it wasn't very good. :-)

8. In those days, sometimes it felt like I often made the wrong decision when it was important. I skipped coming home the summer of 95 and missed a celebration for my parent's anniversary. It seems like they were doing an early celebration of their 50th, which would have been later in 1997. It was quite a reunion of my mother's family, and I should have been there.

Instead, I interviewed for a position at a Roman Catholic college in Southampton. I remember the interviewer making some snide remark about how it would be a first for them to hire a Protestant. I didn't get the job and the college closed abruptly the next year.

Meanwhile, over Christmas of 95 I came home when I could have interviewed at the Nazarene Theological College in Manchester, as I recall. I later found out I was a preferred candidate. I snubbed my nose at it. I didn't realize that it also involved teaching for the University of Manchester.

So I skipped going home for a losing proposition, and went home skipping a potentially winning one. My daughter reminds me that she would never have been born if I had stayed in England, and so made the right decision after all. 

9. I suppose this is as good a place as any to mention the advent of email. Probably at some point in my second year, St. John's got email. There was a computer lab, and we could go there and send emails. My mother was very happy. I had been an abysmal son when it came to writing letters home in college and seminary.

But I could email. She now had regular communication from me.

Explanatory Notes: Revelation 9:1-12

9:1 And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from the sky having fallen to the land, and the key of the pit of the abyss was given to him. 2. And he opened the pit of the abyss and smoke went up from the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. And the sun and the air from the smoke of the pit was darkened.

Ancient Jews did not view the stars as balls of burning gas. These were heavenly beings, "watchers" even. Musings abound about the star over Bethlehem. Was it a comet, for example? But it is more likely that they thought it was an angel. 

And so, when the fifth angel sounds the trumpet, the star that has fallen to the land turns out to be a heavenly being. We get slightly mixed signals about whether this is a good or bad angel. On the one hand, he has been given a key, which suggests he might be good. Yet, he has fallen and thus could be a bad angel. Perhaps the majority see this as a good angel, although it fits better with verse 11 to see him as a fallen angel. [1]

When we get to the second vision in chapter 12, we will hear that Satan and his angels fall to earth. The passage is not talking about a fall of Satan before the time of Adam. It refers to the defeat of Satan in heaven after Christ's resurrection.

The fall here and the fall in Revelation 12 could thus refer to the same basic truth. Now that the Lamb has been slain, the seals of final judgment have been opened. And Satan's doom is sure, along with all those heavenly beings who have sided with him. 

It is perhaps another indicator that much of Revelation is a repetition of the same basic concepts in different ways.

3. And out of the smoke came out locusts on the land and authority was given to them as the scorpions of the earth have authority. 4. And it was said to them that they not harm the grass of the land, neither any green thing nor any tree except the people who do not have the seal of God on the foreheads.

The image of the locusts has given rise to speculation about helicopters, drones, and the like in the end times. However, the significance of the locusts likely has much more to do with the past than being an image of technology in the distant future. Once again, locusts were one of the plagues of Egypt. 

The point of the image is to parallel God's judgment on Rome (as we will see) with the judgment with which God visited on Egypt. 

A large number of interpreters on all sides would agree that the locusts symbolize something other than literal locusts. The question is how detailed the symbolism is and what they actually represent. Many dispensational futurists see them as a specific thing of the future, like a drone. The idealist says that it is the universal consequences of wickedness that is the point. Perhaps we might say that the point is not the individual items or moments within the apocalyptic sequence here but the overall "Gestalt" or impression of judgment that we should take away.

The locusts are not to harm the grass of the land. This is puzzling because all the grass was already destroyed in 8:7 with the opening of the first trumpet. This is a strong indicator that the sequence of events are not an actual progression in time. Rather, we are seeing the same images of judgment over and over.

In other words, the symbols should not be interpreted on a one to one or detailed level. It is rather the overall Gestalt of judgment we should pay attention to.

The seal of God on the foreheads of the righteous was already introduced in 7:2-3. Interestingly, few interpreters take this as a literal mark, although futurists regularly take the mark of the beast as a literal mark of some sort. However, to be consistent, we probably should not take these as literal or visible seals or marks.

5. And was given to them that they might not kill them but that they will be tormented five months. And their tormenting [was] as the tormenting of a scorpion whenever it should sting a person. 6. And in those days, people will seek death and they will not find it. And they will desire to die and death flees from them.

Five months may seem a curious amount of time if you aren't a farmer living in a place where they are a threat. But in Israel, five months was the time of the dry season, the time when locusts were a threat. Indeed, the life cycle of a locust is about five months. In the end, we do not know for certain the precise meaning of the five months. Many commentators simply see it as a "round number" without a specific meaning.

The idea of life's circumstances or suffering making death preferable to life appears a couple of places in the Old Testament. Certainly Job at one point preferred death to his suffering (Job 3:21), but thankfully God did not oblige him nor did he take his own life. In Jeremiah 8:3, the survivors of those who corrupted Israel would rather die than endure their current suffering. The theme can also be found in related apocalyptic literature. [2]

This is of course the stark prospect of eternal punishment. Death is infinitely preferable, literally. 

7. And the likenesses of the locusts were like to horses having been prepared for war and upon their heads as crowns like to gold and their faces as faces of humans. 8. And they were having hairs as the hairs of women and their teeth were as those of lions. 9. And they were having breastplates as breastplates of iron and the sound of their wings as the sound of chariots of many horses running into battle. 10. And they have tails like scorpions and stings. And in their tails [is] their power to harm mortals for five months.

What a vivid image! There are of course futurists who see this as John's attempt to describe things that were foreign to his world (again, like helicopters), and thus they would see a detailed metaphor here for literal entities of the end times.

Preterists might hear in this imagery metaphors for entities of John's day. For example, the Roman historian Suetonius described Parthian warriors as having long hair, as Revelation describes the locusts here. [3] The image of armies from the east is frequent enough in Revelation to wonder if the rumor that Nero would return with the Parthians to bring vengeance on Rome stands to some degree in the background of such imagery (cf. 9:14 subsequently).

The book of Joel provides key background for the locust imagery, although there it is at least possible that literal locusts were in view. The idealist would say that the locusts do not represent armies in any specific time or place but the certainty of judgment for those who oppress God's people.

Craig Keener notes that scorpion stings bring great pain but not usually death. [4] This perhaps adds to the imagery in verse 6 about desiring death but not getting it.

11. They have over them a king, the angel of the abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in the Greek, he has the name Apollyon.

This king would seem to be a demonic angel rather than a good angel such as Uriel (cf. 1 Enoch 20:2). He is possibly the same angel that fell in verse 1.

Revelation's attention to the names in different languages perhaps provides us with a useful window into the book's way of thinking about names (also in 16:16). At the end of this chapter, we will hear the number 666 as the number of a name, and it would fit if this number proves to be "gematria," the use of a correlation between letters and numbers to unlock key symbolism.

You'll note the similarity between the name of the Greek god Apollo and the word apollyon. The Greek tragedian Aeschylus in fact noted the relationship between Apollo and the verb to destroy. [5] Some scholars suggest that Revelation is deliberately mocking the god Apollo. 

In the same vein, the Emperor Domitian sometimes thought of himself as Apollo incarnate. [6] It is at least possible that the book of Revelation is mocking the emperor Domitian, perhaps another bit of evidence that the book reached its final form during his reign. 

12. The first woe has gone away. Behold, still two woes are coming after these things.

We have already seen that Revelation tends to group the first four of a series of sevens together, with the final three also going together. With the seven trumpets, the last three go together as three "woes."

Additionally, with the seven seals, the last three focused more on the spiritual realm than the earth. So also here, the first four trumpets released judgment on the earth, and the last three relate to the world of the spirit. But instead of looking to heavens, the last three trumpets look to the underworld and the world of the demonic. [7]

[1] For some of the different interpretations, see Leon Morris, Revelation (IVP Academic, 2009), 126.

[2] The Sibylline Oracles in particular: 2.307–8, 8.353, 13.118.

[3] Suetonius, Vespasian 10, pointed out by Craig Keener, The NIV Application Commentary: Revelation (Zondervan, 2000), 268 n.10. 

[4] Keener, Revelation, 268.

[5] Agamemnon 1082

[6] So, among others, G. B. Caird, A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine (Harper & Row, 1966), 120.

[7] J. P. M. Sweet, Revelation (Westminster, 1979), 162.

Family History of the USA 1: Jamestown 1

1. When I was a child, my grandmother passed on a tradition that had been passed down by her mother's family before her. The tradition was that we had an ancestor who had come over to America with Captain John Smith--yes, the one of Pocahontas fame. 

As with most traditions, there seems at least a kernel of truth in the story. My mother's mother's mother's mother's father's father's father's father's father's father seems to have settled in Jamestown in the early 1600s. That is my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather (8th great grandfather).

In this day when you can connect to other people's genealogical quest, I was intrigued to find another person out there with a similar family tradition. "It is tradition among VA families that the first Shelburne, Thomas, came to Jamestown in 1607 and settled there." 

So we have a tradition I can trace to my great, great grandmother that her ancestor came over to Jamestown in 1607, and I have been able to connect it to the family traditions of others who claim the same thing about the same person.

So, did Thomas Shelburne come over with Captain John Smith in 1607? It would be nice to think so. It is at least possible. The problem is that his name does not appear on any manifest in those early years. The lists were not exhaustive, especially if Thomas were a young cabin boy who was there only to play a subservient role.

Still, we know of other boys. There was a boy named Milman who was the cabin boy of Captain Newport. And another boy named Helyard was cabin boy to Captain Waldo. Both boys would be dead within a year.

2. According to some memory, Thomas was Welsh. There was a Welshman named Captain Peter Wynne on board. No doubt we could write a novel where a naive young Thomas Shelburne somehow ended up at the last minute serving as Wynne's cabin boy at the age of twelve.

But there is no record of it. There is no record of Thomas in those dark years of Jamestown where so many died. We have many names from those early years, but Thomas' is not one of them.

So while I would like to think that he came over in 1607--maybe he slipped through the cracks--I have to consider another option as perhaps more likely. It seems more likely that he was born in Great Britain during the reign of King James (1603-25). He then emigrated at some point in the 1630s and married Elizabeth Augustine around 1640 in Jamestown.

3. My DNA supports an ancestry that is some 64% British. How a young Welshman found his way to Jamestown is lost to history. We do know that southern Wales faced significant flooding in 1607. If Thomas really was born in 1595 and came to America at the age of twelve, perhaps here was a possible cause.

The London of 1607 was the London of King James I. It was the London of Shakespeare. The King James Version was underway and would be published in 1611. London Bridge at the time not only had houses on it, but the heads of former enemies of kings on pikes. These were individuals like William Wallace of Scotland fame, as well as Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, both of whom were put to death by Henry VIII.

4. In December of 1606, three ships set sail from Blackwall, at that time just outside of London to the east, on the north side of the River Thames. These were the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. Christopher Newport captained the largest of the ships, the Susan Constant. Captain John Smith was also on board. John Ratcliffe captained the Discovery.

Captain John Smith was one of those personalities who did not do well as a subordinate. Maybe he was smarter than everyone else or maybe he wasn't. But he found himself repeatedly in trouble with his superiors. He was jailed on the voyage over for mutiny and scheduled to be hanged upon arrival. But when they arrived, instructions from Virginia Company were opened, and Smith was to be on the governing council.

Throughout his time he would repeatedly clash with the leadership of the colony. He probably also was a key player in keeping the colony alive, as opposed to the earlier attempt at Roanoke Island in 1587. When Governor John White returned to Roanoke Island in 1590, the colony was gone, leaving only the word "Croatoan." Many think the colony moved and, perhaps, blended into some of the surrounding native American groups.

On those first three ships to Jamestown, there were some 105 passengers and 39 crew, all men. Only 38 men were still alive when Captain Newport returned again from England with the "First Supply" in 1608.

5. The three ships made their "first landing" in what they called "Cape Henry" after the son of King James, April 26, 1607. Chaplain Robert Hunt offered a prayer and they set up a cross. He would be dead the next year. His remains have been found on the site of the first church in Jamestown, the first one to be buried in the new church--no coffin, only in a shroud.

On May 4, 1607. they settled on the spot up the "James River" that would become "Jamestown," both named after King James. They had the original triangular fort up and built by June 15.

The first women at Jamestown came on a Second Supply trip. The wife of Thomas Forrest and her maid, Anne Burras, made their way on that third installment. Anne would be the first of the English to marry in the New World--to John Laydon. And she would be the first to give birth in Jamestown, although the first English baby born was Virginia Dare in the Roanoke Colony. Born in 1587, her eventual fate is unknown.

6. Those first few years of the Jamestown settlement were brutal. Because of the poor conditions, someone died almost every day. The swampy water around the peninsula where they built their fort was arguably part of the problem. It was unsuitable for drinking. The immediately surrounding land was unsuitable for farming. Almost two thirds of the first group to arrive would be dead less than five months after their first landing.

They arrived in one of the worst droughts the region had seen in seven hundred years. They had run out of supplies and it was too late for planting. In part that was why the Native Americans had not used it. Facing drought themselves, the surrounding peoples had less to give than they might have in another decade.

Within days of settling on the peninsula, they would be attacked for a couple months by some of the surrounding tribes, although they were initially greeted by the Powhatan Nation. The interaction of the settlement with the Native Americans must have been puzzling. At times some were friendly enough and traded for food. At other times some attacked.

Most of those who came were not prone to work. They were gentlemen who had little practical knowledge and expected others to work for them. Captain John Smith insisted they work. He was a hard man for hard times. His motto was based on 2 Thessalonians 3:10: "He who does not work, shall not eat."

Many of us have heard the story of Pocahontas. While exploring the area, John Smith was abducted, while most of them with him were killed. According to the legend, as he was about to be killed, Pocahontas rushed over and put his head in her hands, putting her cheek against his, pleading for mercy from her father, Powhatan...

Notes Along the Way 2.4 -- A Semester in Germany

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17. Professor Dunn arranged for me to spend two months of the spring in Tübingen, 1995. What a great privilege that was. He arranged for me to meet with Hermann Lichtenberger while I was there. Later in 2004 I would do a Fulbright sabbatical with Professor Lichtenberger as well. 

In the winter of 1994, my parents came to visit. It was my mother's first time in Europe and my father's first time back since WW2. We would visit most of the places where he had been stationed during the war. 

In England, that was Cheltenham. I can still hear my dad trying to say it with a British accent (and failing). He was in the Ordnance Corps and so helped administrate the supply lines (he ended the war as a Sergeant Major). Thankfully, that meant he was always a step or two behind where the front was.

My dad rented a car, as I recall. We have a picture of my mother in Paris realizing that she had put her jacket on top of her seat belt and then was a bit puzzled at first why she couldn't get up.

That means we must have taken a ferry across with the car. Cliffs of Dover across the channel to Calais. It was a trip I'd take a few times. When I actually went to Germany in January, though, I took the Chunnel, which had only recently opened, as I recall.

18. From Paris we took a train to Mannheim. Unfortunately, we didn't get to stop at Nancy, France, where my dad was stationed when the war ended. Again, his French (like his Spanish frankly) was atrocious. But I recognize that it's harder for me to learn languages now in my late 50s than when I was younger. 

He remembered saying things like, "We need boo-coo tires" (beaucoup). And I think "sin-nee-finee-en" was an attempt to say "Ça ne fait rien." Something like "doesn't matter."

The train from Paris went to Mannheim, where we took a taxi (I think) to visit the plant where he had been stationed just after the war. Not much to see there. 

I was especially struck by the fact that many buildings had one style for the first floor and another style for upper stories. Sometimes there was even one year engraved on the first floor and another year engraved for the upper floors. Quite striking to realize that the upper floors had been bombed to smithereens during the war.

From there we took the train to Stuttgart, then to Tübingen for my first time. I would stay there for two months in the spring of 1995.

We met Frau Ilse Michel, the wife of the Hebrews scholar Otto Michel. I was to stay in her Keller for a small amount. My only house responsibility would be to perform the obligatory Kehrwoche -- the sweeping of the front sidewalk on Saturdays.

19. From there we took a train to Munich, where we spent the night. The next morning we would visit Dachau. What thrilling experiences these were for my parents, and they were experiences my mother had never dreamed of having. I don't think my father had ever been to the east side of Germany either.

He wanted to see Bern, Switzerland. He had spent a memorable weekend there while stationed at Mannheim. So we took a train from Munich to Zurich. Unfortunately, there was a 25 mile stretch that ran through Austria. No stops, mind you, but it crossed the border. Suddenly, we found ourselves having to pay for the train fare through Austria. So much for all my planning.

From Bern up to Basel, back to Paris, back to England, and the trip was done.

20. It was an incredible time in Tübingen for two months. Frau Michel was delightful. I only wish my German had been better.

I had first started learning German with a record I checked out of the Broward County library in Fort Lauderdale while I was in seminary. I took Dr. O'Malley's German for Reading Knowledge. Then I tried to go back through Jannach in preparation for Tübingen.

But alas, speaking a language and reading it are quite different. Given my speaking ability when I went, I must have seemed to know no German at all. Everywhere I went I had my little pocket dictionaries, depending on the country.

Coming to Germany, I first went to Paris, where I spent a day doing my usual blitz of a new city (although I had briefly come through with my parents). Notre Dame. Arc de Triomphe. The Tour Eiffel. I stayed at a hotel in the shadow of Sacre Coeur (Regyn). It would become my usual.

My French was not super and of course eventually would be worse than my German. I remember once trying to book a reservation over the phone with the Hotel Regyn and every time I tried to speak French it came out German. He was much happier to speak with me in English.

21. Christoph Lorenz was great to reconnect with, and I met two of his friends, Reinhold Schmoltz and Gottfried Eberhardt. The rules were that they couldn't speak to me in English until my German completely failed. At the beginning, that was almost instantaneous. When I left, I felt like they knew more about my time in Tübingen than I did.

By the end of my stay, my German had improved significantly, although I was still nowhere near fluent. Lichtenberger inevitably had to speak to me in English during my meetings with him. I drafted a chapter of my dissertation while there on the dualism of Hebrews. I would say most of the scholars who have engaged with that chapter have disagreed with it, and I have even changed my mind on some of it. Let's say my understanding of ancient metaphysics was rather simplistic and stereotypical at the time.

However, despite its lack of popularity, I continue to believe that the New Testament has more metaphysical dualism that some might like to think (Joel Green, Tom Wright). A few years later, Dale Martin's book on The Corinthian Body was very helpful, I thought.

The Theologicum at Tübingen was superb, probably the most useful library I've ever used. Certainly the libraries at Notre Dame and Durham were quite well stocked, but the books I wanted were often checked out by other doctoral students. Perhaps the fact that I was especially keen on English books in Germany helped.

22. I think I've mentioned my conversation with Frau Michel about her sons. All three died during World War II. One was standing next to a propeller. I got the impression that Otto was a bit of a hard task master who was "always right." I wasn't sure if that was sarcasm or sincere.

The radio station I was able to get seemed like all US 50s music. I didn't know a lot of it. Am besten am Neckar. Neckar Radio.

I did a few trips with I think a 5 day train pass. There were of course the two days coming and going. I think I went to Munich and Vienna and back. Walked around the grounds of the former palace. I have never been impressed with the Baroque. Waved at Salzburg. 

I got up one morning and took the earliest 4:30 train to Berlin, then walked from the Fernsehturm all the way back to the Gedächtniskirche in time to catch the last train back. One day pass. 

That was only about 5 years after the Berlin Wall fell, so I was able to grab a piece of it. You could still see how much worse Eastern Berlin looked from West (go capitalism). The Reichstag in a unkempt field. Brandenburger Tor. Victory monument. Englischer Garten. It was quite a walk. It would be much different in 2004 when I visited again with my new family.

23. There was a small church fellowship that met in the building of the organization that had once been run by Loren Stuckenbruck's father. That is the fellowship where I worshipped during my time in Tubingen. We would visit the group again during my Fulbright in 2004. Although, on that stay, we primarily worshipped at the methodistische Gemeinde.

24. Reinhardt and my other German friends were quite hospitable. I ate with them regularly at one of the university cafeterias. We took a drive into the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) and down to the Bodensee. There were plenty of trips to have Currywurst and Bratwurst and Rotwurst. And the Döner Kebaps were superb. Many Döner Kebaps.

I left by way of Hamburg and a ferry to England along the North Sea. I tried to watch a Julia Roberts movie in French. I still don't know what it was about. The ship landed at Harwich, I think.

Frau Michel gave me a copy of Otto Michel's German commentary on Hebrews as a parting gift, for which I was very grateful.

Sermon Starters: Best and Worst of Times

Location: Silver Lake Wesleyan Camp

Text: Revelation 11:1-13 
Introduction

• The end times teaching of my childhood and 1990s: A Thief in the Night, Left Behind. These do not reflect what most Bible scholars actually think the Bible teaches exactly.
• I approach Revelation 11 with fear and trembling. But if I have it wrong, the message can be supported from elsewhere in Scripture. We preach from the whole Bible despite uncertainty of interpretation.

I. We are the temple.

• Is it the temple of John's day? Is it some end times rebuilt temple? Or does it symbolize something else?
• Most date Revelation to a time after John's temple. The idea of a future rebuilt temple is biblically dubious and theologically problematic (cf. Hebrews and Revelation 21:22).
• Clue in Revelation 12:6 -- The woman is the true Israel, the church. She has fled to the wilderness (cf. Mark 13:14) after her son (Jesus) was snatched away to God's throne. The 3.5 years in Revelation thus refers to the "church age."
• The temple is measured, protected. But the court outside is trampled by the Gentiles for 42 months, the church age.
• What does this mean? It means that we are the temple. Cf. 1 Cor. 3:16.
• A key to Revelation is that this current age is both the tribulation and the millennium, both at the same time, the best of times and the worst of times.
• We are marked, measured by God. But our courts are trampled by the world.
• When times are good, it's easy to forget that we are not of the world, that we are citizens of a heavenly country (Phil. 3:20). 
• Remember who you are. Illustration of time I was around people whose values overlapped significantly with me but still were of a different belief. I constantly reminded myself. "I don't really belong."
• That's how we ultimately are in the world. The world will trample, but we are marked by God.

II. We are the witnesses.

• Who are the witnesses? Two people from John's day? Two people from the end times? Or do they symbolize something else?
• 11:6 seems a fairly clear allusion to Elijah and Moses. Meanwhile, the mention of the two olive trees makes us think of Joshua and Zerubbabel (Zech. 4). Once again, we have tribulation and millennium.
• Moses and Elijah are the Law and Prophets, witnesses to the world. Joshua and Zerubbabel represent the rebuilt "temple" and the new covenant. For "3.5 days" they witness.
• Once again, this is the church in this current age. In other words, they are us.
• We are the witnesses. 1 Peter 3:15. Although this is often cited as a basis for argumentative apologetics, the context of 1 Peter is much more one of "exile" and persecution. We give witness when we are on trial (tribulation).
• The two witnesses face a double whammy. The beast (Rome) kills them in "the great city" (Jerusalem). Jerusalem is "Sodom and Gomorrah." What a twisted situation. Jerusalem should have been faithful but wasn't. Rome trampled on them.
• Reminds me of Jurassic World. They're being chased by one dinosaur. Then comes a T-Rex.
• It seems inevitable that the institutional church will fail us like Jerusalem failed God.

III. We are the vindicated

• The passage ends with the resurrection of the two witnesses after 3.5 days, after the tribulation, after the church age. So we will be vindicated. So there will be judgment.
• Vindication comes through the cross, not around it.
• Reminds me of Methods of Bible Study students who went through the whole course learning a painstaking method and then wrote a final paper that they could have written before the course. They went through the motions but more or less skipped the middle bit.
• Revenge is not the goal, although there are consequences in judgment on the world and "Jerusalem."
• It is a corporate vindication. There will be justice in the end. "Rome" will be judged.

Conclusion

• We are a "peculiar people" (T-shirts from my childhood youth group, 1 Pet. 2:9, KJV).
• Revelation 11 is about now. We are in a time when Christ has begun to reign. Yet we are in a time when we may face tribulation.
• Remember who you are.  We are a faithful witness. In this life we may be trampled on, but God wins in the end. 

Notes Along the Way -- Durham 2.3 New Faces in Durham

Continued from the last post
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12. I don't remember much specifically about the fall of 1994 (Michelmas term). Perhaps that was the term we went through Martinez's newly published The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated. I failed to mention that the third term of each year (Easter term), we graduate students presented papers, if I remember correctly. During that third term, students didn't take courses but studied to take their end of the year exams, which meant everything for advancement (see Harry Potter).

I taught beginning Greek again for the Department of Theology that fall. My German friend Christoph Lorenz had returned to Tübingen, and a new German exchange student had arrived, Alex Jensen. He was quite unlike any German I had met so far. He was from Hamburg, and far from the stereotypical German, he was quite the jolly old soul.

He was also studying at Tübingen. He liked to poke fun at the Schwäbishe accent: "I muss schaffe gange." Believe it or not, his very first higher ed degree was a PhD from Durham. The German theology undergraduate degree took 7 years. With at least 3 years under his belt, he was able to come to Durham on exchange. He would then transfer as an MTh student and upgrade to a PhD under Stephen Barton. And that was his first degree.

His English was not perfect. He would say, "Hmmm" as if to assent, but I think it meant, "I didn't get a word of that." Of course, it was amazingly better than my German. Alex knew how to bluff his way through this world. I suspected that invention could come from a desire not to exert more effort than necessary, and he was clever.

We would have many good conversations over the next two years. I remember him trying to explain Luther on free will. I didn't get it. In retrospect, I don't think I got it because Luther basically doesn't believe in free will (De servo arbitrio). That was a surprise. 

I think Alex was trying to explain compatibilism to me. I would sum it up as, "You're not really free, but you think you are." To me, it's a farce, which I suspect is why Alex couldn't explain Luther to me to my satisfaction. The language barrier may also have been a factor.

He would become a residential tutor, and we often spent our allowance for students together on end of the term gatherings. When I told him I didn't like drinking, he would say one must do it as a matter of duty: Pflicherfühlung.

13. Sandy Wedderburn had returned to Germany, so my second year saw a newcomer to the teaching faculty of Durham: Loren Stuckenbruck. He had studied with Johann Christiaan Beker at Princeton.

Stuckenbruck is clearly a genius. A nearly photographic memory for intellectual things. His interview was very memorable. The other finalist was Dale Allison. I enjoyed Allison's presentation in the spring of 1994. Bob Hayward was quite unfairly critical of it, I thought.

Nevertheless, Loren was a fantastic hire. One of the best academic mentors out there. Very attentive to material you gave him to read. A great cheerleader. He would be the external examiner for my dissertation. I was delighted to see him and Lois in Rome this month for the Enoch Seminar.

That fall semester, Loren and some other students met in Dr. Hayward's office to look at some early rabbinic texts. I was not good enough at Hebrew to make much sense of them (targums, I think). They were unpointed too. I remember Loren lighting up when we came across a reference to the watchers. The core book of 1 Enoch is the Book of the Watchers. 

(I have to think it is no coincidence that Marvel comics has a group called "the Watchers." These comic book writers are scary people indeed. Former philosophy majors and such)

14. Bruce Longenecker had also moved on from Cranmer Hall. So the spring of 1994 also saw interviews for his position. By the way, have I mentioned that he had a computer program that helped him write music? I tell you, these top level academics are scary smart beyond what most people can imagine. Sometimes I think people have to put them down because of how intimidating they can be. No one puts Bruce down, of course. He's such a kind soul.

Have I mentioned a couple John's meetings some of us did? We read through the Apostolic Fathers, as I recall. On another occasion, I presented a paper arguing that evangelicals should be focused on the good news since that's the root word. Root fallacy, of course. I had not yet taken Wittgenstein fully to heart.

I remember one fellow who interviewed talked about how only one of the "7 last words" of Jesus was probably historical ("My God, my God..."). Principal David Day was not impressed. Made some snide remark and that was that.

In the end, they hired Mark Bonnington, who was there for the remainder of my time.

15. I think I was in Romeo and Juliet that fall as Mercutio. I had been in Much Ado about Nothing the previous year. Still sang in the choir. The rowing crew was mostly gone now -- Juan, Christoph, Helen. Still cantored for the Tuesday worship service. Still attended the Claypath United Reformed church. Preached there once or twice during my time in Durham.

I suspect I had written a draft of the methodology part of my dissertation by this point. I was going to use Richard Hays' structuralist approach to Galatians but apply it to the narrative substructure of Hebrews. I would focus on the settings of that narrative world: space and time. I was probably reading books like Susanne Lehne's The New Covenant in Hebrews and Mary D'Angelo's Sacred Space.

My memory is that I really buckled down in writing my third year. I gave Dunn at least one paper or two a term to read those first two.

16. I think I've already mentioned that I managed to meet Kingsley Barrett at some point. I remember the first time I spotted Charles Cranfield walking across town. He was incredibly hunched over. Very unfortunate for him. Still, he lived to be 100, dying in 2015. 

Perhaps I've mentioned that he wrote his ICC Romans commentary just before the new perspective on Paul exploded. He was like the last of the old generation. I would meet him formally either at a John's dinner or, more likely, during the Paul and the Law conference.

Revelation 8 Explanatory Notes

Albrecht Dürer woodcut,
angel sounding trumpet

I started this pot back in October 2020 when I was doing my "Through the Bible in Ten Years" in the book of Revelation. I'm now trying to finish my Explanatory Notes in the form of a 30 day devotional.
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8:1 And when he opened the seventh seal, a silence came about in the   sky of about a half hour.
In Revelation 6, the Lamb opened six of the seals, beginning the days of judgment that coincide with the end of the great tribulation. Then in Revelation 7, there was an intermission in the opening of the seals. We saw what was happening in heaven as the final judgment was beginning on earth. Revelation 8 then returns to the final seal, the seventh seal, which represents the completion of the judgment.

Again, this is not a literal picture of what will happen. Revelation is an apocalypse. It uses fantastical imagery that gives us the feeling of tribulation and judgment, not a literal movie. For example, the number seven is symbolic. It signifies completion. The half an hour of silence, like the intermission, builds up to the end. We are getting ready for the end. It’s like a runner taking a deep breath before the gun goes off.

2. And I saw the seven angels who have stood before God, and they gave to them seven trumpets.
In Revelation 1, the seven angels are the angels of the seven churches (1:20). There, these angels probably do not just represent the seven churches of Asia Minor. They probably are meant to represent the entire worldwide church. Revelation 8 does not explicitly connect its seven angels with the angels of Revelation 1, but the fact that seven angels are mentioned in both places could imply that they are the same. If so, it would suggest the earth is about to experience judgment not least for the way it has treated the churches of God.

However, other interpreters see them as the seven highest archangels. In Tobit 12:15 (which many Jews at the time considered Scripture), the archangel Raphael speaks of seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints to God. Similarly, 1 Enoch 20:1-8 mentions seven archangels: Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Saraqael, Gabriel, and Remiel. Jude 14-15 quotes from the same section of 1 Enoch, suggesting that at least some early Christians may have considered it Scripture.

It does not have to be one or the other. However, the similarity in the function of the archangels to what happens in this chapter may suggest that we should view the angels of Revelation 8 as different angels from those in Revelation 1.

Just as there were seven seals, there are seven trumpets, blown by these seven angels. When the seventh seal is opened, the seven trumpets commence. And the vindication of God’s church begins.

3. And another angel went and stood upon the altar of incense, having a golden censor. And was given to him much incense so that he will give [it] with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar that is before the throne. 4. And the smoke of the incense went up with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God.
The presence of the altar of incense in heaven implies something that has not been made explicit thus far in the vision. The throne room of heaven is none other than the heavenly Holy of Holies. The vision of Revelation 4-5 is in the heavenly sanctuary.

The sermon we call Hebrews in the New Testament builds on this same common understanding within Judaism. The earthly sanctuary was actually patterned on the true, heavenly one (Heb. 8:1, 5). Interpreters of Hebrews debate how exact a replica it is. I personally believe it is not an exact representation. For example, I do not believe there is an outer room in the heavenly sanctuary and that the heavenly sanctuary is more or less equivalent to the highest heaven. [1]

In both Hebrews and implicitly here in Revelation 8, the altar of incense is inside the Most Holy Place. This is interestingly different from the description in Exodus 30:6 and suggests that both were tapping into a common tradition in the late first century. It is fairly clear here that the altar of incense was associated with the prayers of God’s people.

Although it is perhaps a strange image to us, these verses draw on the common ancient sense that God delights in the smell of sacrifices. In this case, wafts of the smoke from the incense from the altar go up to God. Presumably, they fill his nostrils to his delight. Of course, this is merely a picture. God does not have a literal nose.

What he is smelling is the prayers of the saints, the holy ones set aside to him. Believers, in other words. The content of their prayers is presumably a cry for justice in the face of their persecution. “How long, O Lord?” was the cry of the souls under the altar in Revelation 6:10. The angel burns incense on the altar to initiate judgment finally to the earth for their mistreatment.

5. And the angel has taken the censor and filled it from the fire of the altar of incense, and he cast it to the earth. And thunders and sounds and lightnings and earthquake took place.
What is the result of the burned incense? It has first gone before God. Now, it comes to the earth.

We can see easily enough what is happening here. The prayers of the saints have risen to God for justice. As a result, the fire of justice is cast down to the earth. After all, the seventh seal has been opened. Everything to this point is preparation. Now the final act begins.

Thunder, lightning, and earthquake remind us of God’s descending on Mt. Sinai (Exod. 19:16-18). The audience of Revelation would recognize them as the imagery of theophany. It is not just the fire that is coming down to the earth. God himself is descending.

6. And the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared them in order to sound. 7. And the first angel sounded the trumpet, and hail and fire having been mixed with blood was cast to the earth. And a third of the land was consumed and a third of the trees was consumed and all the green grass was consumed.
Revelation 8 starts with four trumpets. There will be three more trumpets when we get to chapter 9. The trumpets thus follow a similar pattern as the seals. Remember, the first four seals involved the four horsemen, and then there were three more.

Similarly with the trumpets, we have the first four trumpets. Then there is a pause of the first four trumpets at the end of the chapter. Then the final three trumpets come in a group.

And of course, things get worse and worse as it goes along. The events that accompany the trumpets echo the plagues God sent on Egypt. For example, the hail and fire of the first trumpet is like the seventh plague that falls on Egypt (Exod. 9:24). God is delivering his people from the new Egypt, which is Rome.

In verse 6, the seven angels with the seven trumpets get ready to sound. In verse 7, the first angel sounds, and hail and fire fall. These are mixed with blood, again echoing the seventh plague on Egypt.

It is cast upon the land. A third of the land is burned up and a third of the trees is burned up and all the green grass is burned up. This is probably not a literal picture, but we’re getting a clear feel for the great devastation that is coming. The final judgment has begun.

8. And the second angel sounded the trumpet, and [something] like a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea and the third of the sea became blood, 9. and the third of the creatures in the sea died, the ones having life, and the third of the ships was destroyed.
The second angel sounds, and something like a great mountain burning with fire is cast into the sea. Again, given the general nature of apocalyptic, we probably shouldn’t assume that something like a meteor will fall into the sea during the final judgment. While such things are of course possible, that’s probably not how the imagery works. It’s the Gestalt, not the literal image.

The sea turns to blood. Once again, this is a fairly clear allusion to the first plague on Egypt in Exodus 7:20-21. As God judged Egypt, so God will judge Rome.

We are seeing that all the parts of the creation are experiencing a kind of sympathetic judgment. It’s not that the trees have sinned. It’s not that the water has sinned, although water usually does have the connotation of negative chaos in ancient culture.

However, in this case, there is a sympathy between the waters and the plight of humanity. Creation currently groans for redemption with us (Rom. 8:19-22). Soon, there will be a new creation. The old creation will be removed, and that is part of what this sequence symbolizes here.

10. And the third angel sounded the trumpet, and a great star fell from the sky, burning like a lamp. And it fell upon the third of the rivers and upon the springs of waters. 11. And the name of the star is called, "The Absinthe." And the third of the waters turned into absinthe. And multitudes of humans died from the water that was made bitter.
Next, the third angel sounds his trumpet. Now a star falls from the sky, a great star burning like a lamp. It falls on a third of the rivers and upon the springs of the waters. These are now the inland waters rather than the sea.

The name of the star is called “Absinthos.” That is to say, “Wormwood.” Wormwood is a bitter plant, absinthe in Greek, and it turns a third of the waters into absinthe, into wormwood. Many people die as a result from the waters. The bitter water is poisonous.

This time, the imagery is not a plague but may allude to two other Old Testament texts. One is the bitter waters of Marah in Exodus 15. They need to be sweetened before Israel can drink them. Here, of course, God makes the waters bitter.

Alternatively, the wording is very similar to the Greek of Jeremiah 23:15, where God threatens to feed Israel “wormwood” and “poisoned water” as judgment. While Rome is the primary target of the judgment, we might remember that it is quite possible that Jerusalem has also just been destroyed as part of God’s judgment.

The star in Revelation 9 is a heavenly being, possibly Satan. Here, however, there is no clear indication that Wormwood is a demon or a fallen angelic being. The Old Testament passages mentioned above seem more likely background for the image.

12. And the fourth angel sounded the trumpet, and the third of the sun and the third of the moon and the third of the stars was struck. And the third of them so that the third of them might be darkened and the day might not appear--the third of it and the night similarly. 
The fourth angel sounds. Now, a third of the sun, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars are darkened. Day does not appear for a third of its normal time.

Craig Koester notes that some of these objects have already been subject to God’s judgment.[2] The sun was already darkened in Revelation 6:12. The moon has already turned to blood (6:12). He reminds us that the visions of Revelation are not linear. We are getting the same images from different perspectives. And none of them are meant to be taken literally.

The visions are much more like a kaleidoscope, where we get a picture from one side and a picture from another. But none of it is meant to be taken as exactly the way that the judgment will happen. Nevertheless, with the fourth trumpet, all the cosmos has been affected. We’ve seen the seas affected. We’ve had the lands affected.

And now the sky itself has become part of the judgment. The stars, the moon, the lights—we see all the realms of creation are now part of the judgment. This is the destruction of the world as John pictured it.[3]

13. And I saw and I heard one eagle flying in the middle sky, saying with a mighty voice, "Woe, woe, woe in relation to those dwelling on the earth from the rest of the sounds of the trumpets of the three angels about to sound the trumpet."
8:13 is the pause mentioned earlier that comes between the first four trumpets and the last three. The first four trumpets repeat the judgment of the whole cosmos. Now, as the judgment intensifies, three woes will accompany the final three trumpets.

The eagle speaks from the “middle sky” or the “middle heaven.” We remember that Paul once mentioned being taken up into the “third heaven” or the “third sky” (2 Cor. 12:2). We know from the Jewish literature of the time that some Jews thought that there were three layers to the heavens above as you ascended to God in the highest heaven (e.g., The Testament of Levi). God was in the third sky. The first sky was the sky immediately above us, leaving the middle sky for angelic beings.

This will not be the last time that a heavenly being speaks from the middle sky. In the second vision, three angels speak to the earth from the middle sky (Rev. 14).

The eagle can speak. Its words are a preface to the last three trumpets. In effect, it is saying, “You haven’t seen anything yet.” We should note that the word for “eagle” can also be translated as “vulture.” Robert Mulholland argues that vultures might be a better translation because they are associated, after all, with carrion and death. They hover over things that are dying or about to die.

Either way, the imagery is ominous. [1] See Kenneth Schenck, Explanatory Notes on the Sermon of Hebrews (Cascade, 2023).

[2] Craig Koester, Revelation and the End of All Things (Eerdmans, 2001), 97.

[3] John didn’t think of there being galaxies in the universe. Alpha Centauri is not being judged in the book of Revelation. Such an idea would have been completely foreign to John. Distant black holes are not being judged. The whole universe is not being judged. Our earth is the scope of this judgment.

Notes Along the Way: Durham 2.2 -- The Summer of Schindler's List

Continued from the previous post
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6. The summer of 1994 featured two movies that related to the problem of evil and suffering. I'm sure you know the drill. If God is all powerful, then he is able to stop evil and suffering. If God is all good, you'd think he'd want to stop evil and suffering. Then why does evil and suffering continue to exist?

This question had really begun to trouble me in my final years in Wilmore. It's not that I faced either great suffering or evil. I never have thus far. My mother and father both lived long lives and both passed as peacefully as I would want to. Have I had struggles and disappointments? Of course, but none beyond what is fairly normal for a mortal on this earth.

I have mentioned my struggle with the seeming silence of God. I've mentioned my decade of torture from about the age of 10 to the age of 20. I cried out to God repeatedly for a sense of peace and forgiveness, but most of the time did not sense any clear answer.

In my last couple years in Wilmore, my study of Scripture kept revealing how little my church circles really understood about the Bible. If you have been reading this series, you'll have a sense of that journey. And so, perhaps it is no surprise that I began to long for some sort of direct sign from God of his presence.

7. My final year in Kentucky, I was the facilitator for a small Sunday school class at Stonewall Wesleyan Church in Lexington, where I attended. The two daughters of Gary Cockerill of Wesley Biblical/Hebrews fame were in the small group. Because I had the subject on my mind, we read Philip Yancey's Where Is God When It Hurts. 

To be honest, it just didn't satisfy. Frankly, I have never heard an explanation that entirely satisfies. The two main explanations are the free will theodicy (God gives us freedom, which means some are going to freely do the wrong thing) and the soul making theodicy (suffering gives us the opportunity to grow). They both are helpful but still not entirely satisfying.

Over the years, I've engaged a few books on this topic (even took a shot at writing one). At IWU, our Monday reading group read Satan and the Problem of Evil by Greg Boyd. Steve Horst really likes this book. Its biggest move is to give substantial blame to Satan. In Boyd's view, Satan provides a bigger context for the evil and suffering of the world than just the two main explanations.

I actually found The Shack to be somewhat helpful. However, I've never been able to bring myself to be a universalist. I would say it is the free will theodicy on steroids.

This past year, a reading group I'm in with the Horsts and the Varadmans read Tim Keller's, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering. Again, I didn't find any silver bullets in the book. There was a line that I resonated strongly with. He suggests that all the different explanations taken together help quite a bit, but there is no one explanation that seems to fully satisfy nor do they all add up to a comprehensive explanation.

That final year in Kentucky, I would shout out to God (silently) during prayer. During the pastoral prayers at Stonewall, I was silently screaming to God, begging for some sort of word that was definitively him. I even asked him to punish me somehow just so I would know he was there. I bought Hans Kung's huge book Does God Exist? As usual of course, it didn't hold my attention.

8. So the summer of 1994 seemed like a gut punch. First, there was Schindler's List. As Keller has pointed out, the real challenge is not your run of the mill suffering. Yes, that absolutely can keep us from becoming morally flabby--no pain no gain. It builds character. It shapes our moral muscles

But the Holocaust was "over the top" evil. It is "gratuitous suffering" that is the challenge. Six million Jews--how much character does that build? Yes, Hitler was defeated. But how many times in history were the Hitlers not defeated? How many times--so many times, maybe most of the time--did the "Hitler" in question win?

If that wasn't enough, Shadowlands came out later in the summer. This is the story of C. S. Lewis' struggle with the cancer and death of his wife. That story in itself wasn't so difficult to handle. It was that story as a follow up to Schindler's List that was forceful. It was a one-two punch.

Lewis looks foolish in the movie when he presents the problem of pain. The movie means to portray him that way. I love the look of complete puzzlement on one lady after he talks about suffering as God's chisel whose blows hurt so bad but make a fine sculpture out of us.

In the movie, Lewis is on a journey to knowledge. At the end of the movie, he still has faith, but he is much wiser than when he gave his lectures. He's sure God has his reasons, but he's still the vivisectionist. He shouts at a priest giving him the kinds of responses he himself has given in the past. The son, meanwhile, decides not to believe in God.

"Pain is the megaphone God uses to rouse a deaf world." I'm not sure I like that. Lewis, who accepted evolution most of the time and didn't necessarily see Adam as a literal human, mostly relied on the soul making argument to answer the problem of evil. Like most explanations, it helps a little but still leaves one wanting more.

9. I remember having some friends over to dinner in my flat that summer. One of the friends was an atheist, a PhD student in philosophy. "You know the best answer to the problem of evil and suffering is that God just doesn't exist to stop it." I told him I understood all his arguments. 

"Then why do you still believe," he asked.

"I don't know," I responded. "I just do."

10. To me, most of the core questions about God have fairly easy, rational answers. The cosmological argument, the fine tuning argument--these make a lot of rational sense to me. The resurrection of Christ can be argued for on the basis of historical evidence.

To me, the problem of evil and suffering require more faith. God gave us a choice, so some are going to make the wrong choice. Makes sense. Makes a whole lot more sense than hyper-Calvinism, which makes God responsible for every last evil thing that has ever happened in the world.

Suffering gives us an opportunity to grow and express moral character. Yes, makes sense.

But there is a point where the suffering and evil are so great, that these explanations do not seem satisfying. That's when I have to press the mystery button. We have to believe God is in control. We have to believe that God loves us and is good. As the priest in Shadowlands says, "We see so little here."

We don't see the whole picture. That's the best we can do to fill in the gap between the explanations that make sense and what is left to mystery.

11. After decades of reflection on the question, two insights seem likely to me, although I welcome the Lord or someone else to show me otherwise. One is that death and suffering in themselves don't have any moral significance. Death is not bad. Suffering is not bad. Pain is not bad. The agents that cause them are what can make those events evil.

One of the biggest realizations I've had in the last five years is that not only in Genesis but likely in Paul as well, death was part of God's creation. It wasn't meant to be the end game, but it was the beginning. Eternal life was always a modification, an addition, to our natural state. The tree of life adds eternal life. 

Death was not the intention for humanity, but it was our created state. That suggests that death is not bad in itself.

A second insight is that, while we can see God at work everywhere if we orient ourselves that way, it is highly unusual to receive direct and unambiguous words from him. Again, it is not that we cannot see and hear him continuously. It is that all of these moments could be taken differently. They are a matter of interpretation most of the time. 

If you believe that God is speaking, you will hear him. But rarely will you have a speaking that is direct in an indisputable way. Faith is always involved in hearing God.

I can see God constantly at work in my life. Am I absolutely certain in each case that it is God? No. And that's ok. I'm thankful all the same.

Notes Along the Way: Durham 2.1 -- 1994 Summer Travels

Continued from previous post
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1. I was in Britain for most of the summer of 1994, although it's possible I took a short trip home to Florida to visit. John's did slow down after the exam term, but there still needed to be staff around in case of fires or conferences (I can't remember there being many conferences).

But the summer was a time for exploring. For example, Rachel Leonard talked me into doing a 2000-foot parachute drop. It was a still line pull. You climbed out onto the wing. They turned the propeller off. You let go.

It all looked very easy from the ground. When it was my turn, I wondered why I was climbing out of a perfectly good airplane. But when they said to push off, I dutifully did so. It was nice. The chute opened.

As I descended, I watched as Rachel must have been climbing out on the wing. The engine cut. The engine started back up again. She didn't jump the first time. I guess the second time he shouted and startled her into letting go.

2. There was also a two-day, 200-mile bicycle race from Belfast to Dublin and back the next day. I bought an orange bike for 100 pounds and had been training (gave or sold it to Phil Burns when I left). Several of us flew on a small plane to Dublin with our bikes. I think Ceri Huws was on that trip. She was a Welsh harp player of some skill. Maybe Emma Houghton and David Fox too. 

Those were the days when the unrest in Northern Ireland with the IRA was in its twilight. There were still military vehicles that wandered up and down the streets of Belfast with machine guns pointed at the sidewalks (that was a little startling to me). In the subways, you were warned to report any backpacks or other things sitting unattended on the platforms.  But the violence was pretty much over by then.

It was a fun, exhausting two days. I remember devouring a Snickers bar at the border to Ireland -- and I don't like Snickers. I remember the bus passing a Subway on the way to dorm rooms that night at Trinity College, Dublin (it could have been University College). So close, yet so far away.

3. Another highlight of that summer was a backpacking trip around Scotland with Rachel Leonard and James Quirk. James was doing his degree in Geography, I believe, which was something quite different than what we think when we say that in the US. It involved some pretty serious stuff, including engaging some post-structuralist thinkers like Levi-Strauss. He would eventually become an Anglican priest and is living in Canada.

We went to Edinburgh, then to Inverness, then to the Isle of Skye, and back. Passed Lindisfarne of course on the way up. You can only drive over and back at low tide. At high tide, the road is under water.

I've always thought that Edinburgh was a two-day visit. My daughter Sophie did an MA there and I warned her. But she loved it. Arthur's Seat, the Royal Mile. That cursed John Knox. I went with her over, and then we went to her graduation. All lovely.

Later that summer, Neil Evans and (I think) Alistair Kirk and I went to the Edinburgh Art Festival in August. I tried Haggis and blood pudding (Mark 7:19 permitted me). You just have to. Forgive me but I also tried Guinness. It's Irish (it decreases in quality the farther you get from Dublin, apparently). These all seemed necessary to get the full cultural experience.

I must confess that, after trying beer there, I didn't like it. I get the sense that alcohol is an acquired taste.

4. The bus rides passed some incredibly beautiful mountains, especially from Fort William to the Isle of Skye. There's a castle on a lake when you're almost there. It features I think in some movies. This was before they built the bridge over. We had to take a ferry.

I can't remember at what point of this trip that Rachel declared quite rightly that I was crap. She wasn't too angry, just making an observation. I had a tendency to wing it back then. In the words of Indiana Jones, "I don't know. I'll think of something." But as you know, "assumption is the mother of all screw ups."

When we finally got on the island, it was getting late. I had booked a hostel on the south side of the island, but as it was a Sunday, there was no public transportation to get there. I believe we somehow arranged a taxi, but by the time we got there, they had given away our reservation, which didn't seem very nice to me.

There was a man across the way who apparently wanted to get into the hosting business, and thus began our adventure. It was quite a bizarre experience, and unfortunately, this well-intentioned man, like me, was crap. 

Thinking we were doing Rachel a favor, we let her sleep in the house. But, as it were, the man had her sleep in his daughter's room -- with the unhappy daughter sleeping in the room too! She was not happy.

Meanwhile, James and I slept in some kind of a camper that apparently had at some time been under water. The man managed some cereal or some such in the morning, and we couldn't have been happier to get away.

5. These were precious experiences. By the end of my first year, I had swept a good deal of Scotland. I had been to Ireland from Belfast to Dublin. I had been across London and hit most of the sites there. 

I believe on my way to visit home either that first Christmas or perhaps in the summer, I took a day to visit Oxford. To be frank, I didn't really like the city. For me, it was both too cramped and too ostentatious. As I said in my previous post, Cambridge was much more to my liking, more laid back and rural in feeling.

But I got my pictures of Oxford. I think I was still using a real camera that my father gave me. I think it had been his originally. It had a red strap and all. Soon we would transition to those throwaway cameras that you could get developed at Walgreens and CVS. Man, how times have changed.

NAW Durham 6 -- The Secret to my Genius :-)

Notes from my days at Durham continue...

38. I mentioned that Helen Fox was another one of the Residential Tutors in John's. She was from the Isle of Wight and I forget how far removed she was from the throne. It might have been in the high 90s. They track these things. How many people are in line to the throne ahead of me?

I joked to her once that she had helped me understand the French Revolution. She actually was quite nice and unpretentious. But there was also something about her that made saying she was 98th or something from the throne make a lot of sense to me.

She told me a story about some extended family member on the Isle of Wight that seemed to express it all. Apparently, some men were working on the sewer system that ran in front of this relative's house. But the aunt (or whatever the relation) was afraid that if she used the restroom while they were working, they would see the results.

So she invited them in for tea and "biscuits" (bread sweets) so she could use the restroom in peace.

39. At some point, I believe she had invited Neil and me to her flat up the Bailey. I'm not even sure if I was serious, but I said something like "I'll just make up my own definitions for the words in my own private language."

"Ah, but isn't that exactly what Wittgenstein said you couldn't do -- have a private language? Meanings come from the language games we play in a certain form of life." Something like that.

I'm not sure how much I knew about Wittgenstein at that time. But I didn't really know much about Wittgenstein at the time, and there's nothing like feeling embarrassed to get you to do a little research. I think I may have also had conversations with David Mossley about Wittgenstein after that (PhD student in philosophy).

40. Wittgenstein blew me away. He had lived in the first part of the twentieth century and died in 1951. A very colorful figure. Almost certainly on the spectrum. Think Sheldon.

His early life is quite amusing at points. Wealthy but gave away his inheritance. Had himself put on the front (Austrio-Hungarian) lines of WW1 to see if his philosophy could take it. Argued with Bertrand Russell at Cambridge over whether there was a rhinocerus (in the room?). Wrote a treatise in seven points that he thought had solved all the problems of philosophy. Then wanted to go work in a factory in communist Russia (They would have been glad to take him as a professor, but weren't interested that he work in a factory.)

His seventh point was interesting, "Whereof one cannot speak, one must be silent."

At some point, Russell wanted him to come to Cambridge. Unfortunately, he didn't have a doctorate. As an indication of his personality, he suggested that if his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was really that good, they should give him a doctorate for it. OK, fine. Just write a preface. Wittgenstein refused. They gave him a doctorate anyway.

41. It's really his later work, though, that brought such insight. Wittgenstein's earlier work assumed something he called a "picture theory of language." It is essentially the way most people think about language -- including most pastors. Going back to Augustine, it assumes that words picture things. I say "house"; you picture a house.

This works to a point. Words often do relate closely to things. But you might say that's only a portion of our language. For example, what does "is" picture? What does "righteousness" picture? What does a "wild goose chase" picture? (Don't say someone chasing a wild goose, because almost no one pictures that when they use that expression.)

The Wittgenstein story is typical. An Italian friend of his said, "Hey Ludwig, picture this" and playfully gave him a rude gesture. But alas, Wittgenstein couldn't say what the equivalent of giving someone the finger pictured. Its meaning is not some "thing" it pictures.

42. That was the beginning of a revolution, and the secret to much of my insight is that I know it and you don't. :-) The meaning of language is in how words are used. Words don't have meaning "in them" per se. They take on meanings in "language games" we play in different "forms of life."

Take the word fire. You light a fire and your Augustinian picture theory seems to work. I say, "fire," and you picture red stuff.

But what if a solider says "fire"? What if a boss says, "You're fired"? What if I play a song called, "Come on baby light my fire"?

Each one of these expression is playing a different "language game" in a different setting. And the meaning is different. Since Wittgenstein, these insights have been extended. Words don't simply inform. They do things. If I yell "Fire!" I'm probably suggesting that you're in danger and should probably leave the building quickly. If a couple says, "I do," they are marrying each other.

By the way, this is why I always roll my eyes when someone says, "Don't say, 'How are you?' unless you really want to hear the answer." The words "How are you?" perform a social function in most cases. Sure, if someone starts to answer, listen to them. But when that happens, the language game has changed. The normal game for that phrase is social and affective, not cognitive or "logos."

Sheez. 

43. This secret knowledge has tremendous implications for understanding the Bible and all sorts of things. When you take a Bible study course and you learn about word fallacies, they mostly are simply playing out these insights on language. Has anyone ever told you that the church is made up of the "called out ones" because ekklesia comes from ek and kaleo.

Nope. The meaning of ekklesia at the time of the New Testament depended on how people were using the word at the time. It doesn't have to have any obvious relation to the history of the word or the parts of the word (etymological fallacy). Baptizo doesn't have to mean immerse just because its root meant to dip (root fallacy). The meaning of words wanders over time and space.

Frankly, half the things preachers say about Greek and Hebrew words from the pulpit are wrong because they don't understand this principle. Kittel's theological dictionary -- not only spearheaded by a former Nazi but riddled with word fallacies that don't understand how language works. Ironic that the philosophy of a Jewish man would unravel it.

44. You might see how this problematizes a narrow understanding of sola scriptura and explains why there are thousands of Protestant denominations. Words don't have fixed meanings in them. When Luther said, "The authority for Christian belief and practice alone," he set in motion the inevitable fragmentation of Christianity. Since texts can have many meanings, the Bible has taken on countless different meanings not only for all the different Christian groups but all the individuals reading the Bible.

Gödel's incompleteness theorem also comes to mind here. I first learned about Gödel from Paul Herman I think in high school. Certainly didn't understand him then and may not even now. By the way, I saw Paul maybe three years after high school graduation. He told me Kant changed everything in philosophy. As with Helen Fox, I was a bit embarrassed inside because I didn't really understand Kant. I really learned Kant my first year of teaching. 

And I more or less agree with Paul now. Don't tell him. I responded something about Aquinas at the time.

Gödel's theorem suggests to me that no system can internally provide its own foundations. An ideological system requires grounding principles from outside it. 

This is especially true with Scripture. Scripture does not and could not tell me what the canon is. That is a decision that must be made from outside the text. I need a set of language games and at least one form of life to interpret the words of the Bible. "Orthodoxy" presents a set of such. Denominations often do. 

Bible scholars generally try to read each biblical text in relation to its original languages games and forms of life. But this also results in a fragmented text because there are so many of them. This is why some in the past have said that it is not even possible to identify a biblical theology. (It also seriously threatens the idea of a biblical worldview.)

So much is going on under the hood of our Bible reading, and most of us -- including most pastors -- don't have a clue. Again, Wittgenstein is my secret weapon to see such things.

45. These insights also undermine what I have come to call the "Platonic fallacy." This is again the notion that ideological systems are real.

Let me share Wittgenstein's sense of "family resemblance." Let's say you came to a Schenck reunion, and I ask you what the essence of a Schenck is. You say, "Well, some of you have big noses. Some of you have big ears. Some of you talk pretty loud."

But then I push back. "Well, some noticeably have big ears or big noses, but not everyone does. Some are loud but some aren't." What Wittgenstein noted was that there isn't really an essential Schenck here. What there is, is a collection of traits or "family resemblances." Not every Schenck has all the characteristics. Two Schencks might not have the same characteristics at all but have some of the characteristics from the grab back of Schenckness.

When we apply this to Marxism or Wesleyanism, we see that two Marxists might look quite different from one another. Two Wesleyans might look quite different from each other. They each would likely have some features from the common cup, but they might not have all.

You can see how this wreaks havoc with the argument that says, "You have this piece in your thinking that is also in communism; therefore, you are a communist." That doesn't follow at all. Both cyanide and bread have carbon in them, but one is deadly and the other isn't.

Wittgenstein has been my secret weapon, mainly because most people are unreflective in the way they read the meaning of the world. Thanks, Witty.

46. I might note that my first year in England I learned that there was a group of Anglicans who called themselves "non-realists." Don Cuppitt's Sea of Faith was the key work here. The Anglican church was fascinating because it was held together more by the liturgy than by belief system. There were Anglo-Catholics that were high church. There were evangelical Anglicans like St. John's. There were even charismatic Anglicans.

Speaking of the charismatic Anglicans, that was the moment when the "Toronto Blessing" was taking place. An Anglican church in London--Holy Trinity Brompton--was part of the movement. So there were tongues-speaking Anglicans.

The non-realists, on the other hand, didn't believe that God was literally real. Rather, they believed he was real in the "language game" of Christian religion. They took this idea from Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein believed that religious language performed a different function than traditional ontology. God was not "out there" literally.

But God was real! God was real because the idea of the existence of God "did things" among Christians. God existed in the language game in the religious form of life. In that sense, God is real even though they didn't literally believe God was real. I'm not expressing it well, but it was a spin on Wittgenstein.

At the time, I thought, "What's the point of that?" It seemed to me that if you didn't believe God was really real, why even believe in him at all? It seemed like sentiment trying to cling onto something you had lost. I wondered this about many non-realist pastors out there (e.g., some in the United Church of Canada). Why stay with the form of Christianity if you don't believe its heart is real? 

47. In my final year in England, Neil Evans was kind enough to go on a drive about England and Wales to several places One of them was Cambridge. We went down the Cam to the Orchard Tea Garden that Wittgenstein had once frequented. If I could have taught at any unversity in the world, I think I would have picked Cambridge.

NAW Durham 5 -- When McDonalds is a dream

Continued from the last post
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30. Near the end of my first semester in England, I was so desperate for an American hamburger that I walked three miles to north Durham to get a McDonald's. It was wonderful. And I say that as someone who didn't particularly go to McDonald's much in the US.

There's a joke about European cultures that is both funny and pretty accurate. In heaven, the French are the cooks. The Italians are the lovers. The British are the police. And the Germans organize everything.

But in hell, the British are the cooks. The French are the police. The Germans are the lovers. And the Italians organize everything.

I did not find British food to be particularly delectable. There was this "American" restaurant in London everyone always bragged about, Garfunkels. I found their burgers mediocre. Frankly, I found Scottish Angus beef -- again, often bragged about -- pretty mediocre. I even bought hamburger from the store across Framwellgate Bridge and cooked it myself. It just was blah. 

Suffice it to say, although I am a meat eater, I had little craving for British meat. (England was also just getting over "mad cow's disease" at that time too. I wasn't able to give blood for years after I returned. As far as I know, I never developed it.)

I found the meals in John's generally mediocre, although the price was right (free for me). I have since come to believe that really high quality lamb can be tasty. But whatever they served in John's seemed pretty mediocre to me and sometimes gamey. (I'm also no fan of mint sauce.)

31. There was one English food I liked -- Yorkshire pudding. I've recently learned from Payne's -- an English restaurant out toward Upland -- that the Yorkshire pudding is actually the puff pastry. But it always came with a sort of beef stew, and I liked it. I would get it at the Half Moon, I think, across Elvet Bridge.

It was there also, I think, that I was introduced to the croque monsieur and the croque madame. The first was more to my liking, a ham and cheese basically. The latter adds an egg. It was there also that I was introduced to garlic mayonnaise, which I regularly would get with my chips. I was young and could eat such things.

I got to like an English breakfast. The sausages were quite different, tight on the outside and softer on the inside. 

By the way, I will never have a French hot dog again. I tried one in Paris and it was atrocious -- mushy on the inside. I have never understood the rumor that French cooking is the best (although Verzenay's in Chicago is a wonderful boulangerie). Angie and I actually ate at a French restaurant on High Street in Durham after a ceremony on Claypath in 1998. But I don't know what the fuss is all about French food.

32. The foods I loved most in Durham were foreign. I loved getting Chinese with Neil there, usually up on Claypath, I think. The Italian in town was fantastic. It was in Durham that I learned to love carbonara, I believe. The night before a ceremony we had, Angie and a group of us ate at an Italian place that was across Framwellgate. Delicious.

Durham was also the first place that I really tried Indian food. David Fox was particularly fond of Shaheen's on the Bailey. I always got "Bhuna Beef," not realizing that an authentic Indian restaurant wouldn't serve beef. Rachel Leonard and the others usually got far hotter food than me (Vindaloo, a song that came out while I was there, I think). Here I learned of peshwari naan and poppadom and chutney (which I didn't ever eat).

David had also seemed to think that "tak tak" was a euphemism for sex in Hindi. He would always ask the owner if he was going to be having "tak tak" later. Not sure what that was all about. I don't know that tak means anything in Hindi or any Indian dialect.

33. Getting used to British slang was a learning curve for me. For example, I had gathered from several conversations that to be "knackered" was to be exhausted. After one of the Tuesday evening worship services, I remarked to a woman that I was "a bit knackered" when she asked how I was. She grinned.

A little later, her husband informed me that, where he came from, "knackered" had the connotation of being tired from having sex. He grinned that I had told his wife I was knackered. Suffice it to say, even in the same country, there can be different idioms in different regions.

Which reminds me of the time I took a taxi in Newcastle. I haven't a clue what the driver was saying in his thick Geordie accent.

In my final year, a little store up near the viaduct started doing sandwiches. I would often walk there to get a ham with shredded cheese and mayonnaise.

34. I have never been particularly stylish. Rachel Leonard informed me that Doc Martins were all the rage. They were also more than I wanted to spend. I ended up getting a much less stylish pair of boots that I enjoyed nonetheless. Before we did our Scotland tour that summer of 1994, I got a green rucksack that I was quite fond of and used for many years.

I went to one rugby practice in the fall of 1993. The exercise was to get down on my knees (along with others) and then they would run into me. Of course no real padding in rugby. One practice and I thought, "That's going to hurt," and I didn't go back.

I was amazed one year when Phil Burns hurt something or another at football practice and we went to the hospital. In America, we avoided the hospital like the plague because of how much it costs, even with insurance. I think my father might have had a heart attack a few weeks before he died, but he didn't go to the hospital.

But with universal health care in England, when you needed to go, you went. After living in England, I really don't get people's resistance to it here. It seems mostly ignorance on our part to me.

[35. You'll have to buy the book to read this section.]

36. In those days, the fact that I was an American was very amusing to the people in the college. This was before the Iraq War -- and certainly before Trump. The British thought of us as funny, loud, somewhat ignorant people. They didn't yet think of us as dangerously ignorant people.

So, the students wanted me to be in their plays. I sang in the choir. It was all good fun. A German exchange student named Astrid did an American accent that I found hilarious. It was strange to think of Americans having an accent. I certainly never thought of myself as having one. Surprise!

I was Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. I was in Much Ado About Nothing. I also did a two person medieval play with a woman named Elizabeth. There was a suggestion to have a nude scene in it -- I passed.

The choir was particularly enjoyable. I had not known Faure's Requiem before, but it is now one of my favorite choral pieces of all time. I haven't remembered the director. He was a brilliant student named Andrew, I believe. He wrote some pieces and I assume went on to be a composer. 

All of these performances were student led, and they were brilliant.

I hadn't known Andrew Lloyd Webber before England. Or really Queen either, just a couple songs. I hadn't really been aware of British music or of the music I knew in the states that was British.

37. At the end of my first semester, I had to make a formal declaration of what I was going to work on for my dissertation. I had done all my fall work on Hebrews, but I would have proposed something different.

When I came home for Christmas, I thought long and hard about switching to something like the messianic secret in Mark. Did Jesus deliberately downplay a messianic identity because it would have been misunderstood by those around him? Turned out that Dunn had already written an article like that.

But it would have been a weak play. It wasn't a distinctive hypothesis. It wouldn't have been a unique contribution. And I would have been a nobody in a glut of Gospel scholars.

Hebrews it was.

NAW Durham 4 -- Teaching Christology in Cranmer

Continued from last week
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I remembered that the first year of my doctoral program I also waded through L.K.K. Dey's Intermediate Patterns of Perfection in Philo and Hebrews (1975). I didn't feel like I learned much of anything about Hebrews, but it was a baptism by fire into Philo. 

25. I've mentioned that Cranmer Hall in the 1990s was an Anglican training school in partnership with the Wesley Study Centre. I'm having trouble ironing out all the details. John Pritchard had just come as the Warden of Cranmer Hall, and a man by the name of Philip was over the Wesley Study Centre.

On faculty was Bruce Longenecker in New Testament, Robert Fyall for Old. I attended his United Reformed Church while I lived in Durham, and he performed a ceremony for Angie and me in 1998 there. The church was evangelical in the British sense.

Michael Vasey taught liturgy. He published a book called Strangers and Friends during my time there. I believe Robert Song came during my second year as an ethics professor. In 1999 he would join the main Department of Theology. A woman named Liz taught theology. I haven't been able to pull up her last name yet.

I was privileged to be in England when the Anglican Church first ordained women (1994). I don't think Liz was in the first group, but I suspect she was ordained in York in May of that year. I seem to remember us sending her off as she got on the bus to leave. I jokingly made some stupid remark about not being sure that ordination was actually in the New Testament. She said, "Maybe, but I don't want to think about it since I've waited so long for this to happen."

I feel confident that the elements of the previous paragraph are true. I'm just not entirely sure about the combination. The first woman to be a bishop in the Church of England (Libby Lane) graduated from Cranmer the spring before I arrived. [1]

26. It seems to me that, in the fall of 1993, Cranmer was lacking someone to teach theology. So it became a team effort. I was privileged to be asked to cover Christology. There is something implicit about the thinking of the leaders to ask a Biblehead to teach the theology of Christ. It seems to assume that theology is more or less what the Bible says--or should be--which is far from how theology is often approached.

I was mindful of this distinction, although I also indulged myself. I believe there is a gap between the Bible and Chalcedon. My recent reading of Jesus Wars by Philip Jenkens has overwhelmingly confirmed that, unless one has a very strong sense of Providence, the path from the Bible to Nicaea and Chalcedon will seem little more than petty humans fighting each other--often literally.

I believe I gave three lectures. The first was on the quest for the historical Jesus. The second dealt with Pauline and early New Testament Christology. I believe the third focused more on John. Philip and Fiona Richardson were students then. We have kept in contact over the years. They have faithfully served as OMS missionaries over the years.

27. I spent a fair amount of time researching for this teaching. Apart from the New Testament Survey teaching I did for Midway College, it was really my first time teaching Bible. And I was privileged to do it on a high level. Don't get me wrong. I loved teaching Bible at IWU. But this was more like teaching for Notre Dame. 

I used N. T. Wright's sense of the "third quest" for the historical Jesus to frame that lecture. The first quest ended with Albert Schweitzer. Many of the portraits of Jesus in the 1800s were some mixture of antisupernaturalist and romantic. David Strauss threw down the gauntlet of myth. Source criticism whittled Jesus down to Mark and then Wrede took that away. 

Meanwhile, Schweitzer dubbed Jesus an apocalyptic stranger, a foreigner to what we want in a Jesus. Then comes Barth and Bultmann. Stop the quest! It's the Christ of faith that is important, not the Jesus of history. The quest seems to stop for a few decades.

Then comes the New Quest, launched by Ernst Kasemann. Maybe we can know a few things about the historical Jesus. Maybe he is relevant. The criteria come into play: dissimilarity, multiple attestation, coherence. Edward Schillebeeckx writes a 700 page book on Jesus with only a handful of certain sayings from Jesus. The Jesus Seminar perhaps culminates this era with its red letter Bible -- sayings of Jesus in red that came from him, pink if quite possibly, gray if probably not, and black if certainly not.

28. N. T. Wright spoke the third quest into existence. The "Jesus the Jew" quest. He pinned its beginnings to Geza Vermes' Jesus the Jew, The Aims of Jesus by Ben Meyer, Jesus and the Constraints of History by A. E. Harvey, and E. P. Sanders' Jesus and Judaism.

What Wright said distinguished it was the attempt to show the continuity between Judaism-Jesus-and Christianity rather than the dissimilarity. Going for dissimilarity gives you a small subset of what Jesus likely said and did. Wright aimed to find "double similarity."

I was quite enamored with Wright in those days. I couldn't wait for his Jesus and the Victory of God to come out. By the time it finally came out in 1996 I had moved on. But I did find the notion of the contraints of history and E. P. Sanders' approach to Jesus quite helpful. I met Wright in Durham at a conference in 1995. More on that later.

Over the years, I have given a paper for the Historical Jesus (1999) and Q Sections (2000) at SBL. Both had to do with Jewish afterlife traditions. Tom Wright came up after the historical Jesus paper and asked me for a copy. I like to think that it helped inspire some of his thoughts for the early sections of Jesus and the Resurrection of the Son of God. I never finished the work that all that afterlife research was headed toward. More on that later.

There have been some notable points over the years. John Meier's Marginal Jesus series was spectacular, I thought. Dale Allison's Constructing Jesus was a fine volume in its approach that asked more about the kinds of things Jesus certainly said and did rather than specific things. Dunn's Jesus Remembered I also found quite helpful, building off of some of the insights of Kenneth Bailey on oral tradition. 

I managed to drive over to United Theological Seminary when Chris Keith and Anthony LeDonne blew up the quest. The conference volume was published as Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (2012). Now there's a volume out called The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus also edited by Chris Keith with James Crossley joining in.

29. I'm sure that my next two lectures in Cranmer were thoroughly influenced by Dunn's Christology in the Making. The standard model for approaching New Testament Christology in those days focused on Christological titles. I spent a fair amount of time researching the title Son of Man. Maurice Casey's book From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God had come out in 1992.

There is currently a Waterstone's on Saddler Street that was a prize during my time in Durham. I believe it was a Dillon's back then, but it had a superb used theological section. I bought many biblical studies classics there during my time at Durham.

It's hard to remember where I took my thoughts on the Son of Man. Casey had written a book on the title in 1979. Barnabas Lindars came out with one in 1985. I have Douglas Hare's 1990 volume in my library to this day, but I don't remember being particularly impressed with it. Nor was I impressed with Casey's "I'm just a guy" conclusion.

Somewhere, I synthesized three main uses in the Gospels: 1) self-referential, 2) in relation to Jesus' sufering, and 3) in relation to a Daniel 7 apocalyptic figure. The fact that only Jesus uses the title in the Gospels seems to be strong evidence that he did in fact use the title.

So I played a little hooky from my own dissertation in order to fill in gaps in my knowledge of New Testament Christology. It probably wasn't entirely as much learning as a US doctoral seminar would have given me, but I enjoyed it very much.

[1] I should note that there is some resemblance of Bishop Libby Lane to the Liz of my memory, and Bishop Lane's first name is Elizabeth. But the only way that could have worked was if she commuted back from Blackburn to teach, which seems very unlikely.