I gave all the official details in post 1, but I thought I’d give a few of my impressions and experiences here. This was quite an experience.
One of the most exciting parts was the first NT paper given by Francis Watson on ‘Beyond the New Perspective’. Watson challenged many of the NPP ’doctrines’ and said this would be the last of his works on the NPP. As Nijay noted, the audience included Richard Hays, Tom Wright, Jimmy Dunn, Joel Marcus, and John Barclay, among the rest of us. It wasn’t unlike SBL, but just a more intimate environment. Joel Marcus asked a probing question for Francis that still hangs in the air: Was Paul’s characterisation about Judaism right, or was it just a caricature? I don’t think that was adequately answered, but on the whole Watson’s critique of the NPP showed its weaknesses without turning back uncritically to the old perspective.
As one of the organisers, I got the opportunity to chat with all of the Duke people at one time or another. The best meal was that at Bishop Tom Wright’s home at Auckland Castle at Bishop Auckland. I had the fortune to share the table with Tom Wright and Richard Hays and several others. But even cooler was going into the chapel at the castle. It was awe-inspiring to see the lists of bishops dating back to 900 AD or so. Two of England’s greatest NT scholars and also bishops in Durham–JB Lightfoot and BF Westcott–were buried there. It gives a sense of the ancient faith that has been carried along by the leadership of the church.
The end cap of the weekend was the opportunity to drive Richard Hays to the airport because his flight was too early to catch a train. He was gracious enough to let us bend his ear for a couple of hours. He had good things to say about my thesis topic and that it is timely. He mentioned specifically that 20+ years ago hardly any in the NT guild would ever think we could learn about Paul from patristic writers, but now the field is ripe for studies like this. That was encouraging. He also mentioned the need to have a manageable scope–like not trying to do all of Paul. That will be harder advice to take since the patristic writers don’t focus on just one passage when talking about theosis. So somebody has to do the big picture stuff, right?
At the castle dinner I heard Tom Wright comment that he would have benefited in his postgrad days to have participated in an event like this. It was good to see scholarship at its best and also to get to know people personally as well. It will be one the highlights of my time here.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008 at 9:59 pm
Words can’t express how devastatingly jealous I am. What about Rowe? Does he ever make the journey?
Off topic, but are you making your Irenaeus chapter available pre-completion? I am heading into Irenaeus and deification later this summer.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008 at 10:17 pm
Hi Ben,
I actually didn’t think that Marcus’ question was so probing (although i admit that Watson’s answer was not as clear as it could have been). The question does not take into consideration how rhetoric and perspective often works in arguments. For example: on Lutheran and Calvinist’s logic, arminians have always been understood as buying into a sophisticated form of works-righteousness; from an arminian perspective the Lutheran and Calvinist perspective on God is tyrannical. That’s just how it is. Sure, if you are presenting someones arguments or positions in a scholarly work, you try to lay them out so that they would understand them (anyhow paul was not writing scholarly monographs); however, when you show the conclusions you draw from there positions, on certain issues the other person is just not going to agree. If they did, you often wouldn’t have a debate!
Likewise, Paul. Why would his contemporaries have had to agree with his perspective on their religion for it to still be a perspective that works out according to the logic of his gospel? If you don’t trust in Christ, what else is there, Paul would say? Something that you conjure up; for according to Paul, God hasn’t offered an alternative.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008 at 10:28 pm
Kyle, I definitely get what you’re saying. I was thinking at the time that the oppositional model that Seth Kunin talked about actually seemed to fit quite well with this situation. You’ll remember Kunin had the two spheres that captured two opposing realities–clean and unclean. The pig was potentially a mediating category because it has a split hoof but doesn’t chew the cud, but it gets labeled as the ‘worst’ in order to keep the system straight forward.
Thus, the Jews (and especially the Christian judaisers) could be a mediating category, so Paul castigates them most clearly to show that the new way of Christ is separate. Though in practice the difference may not appear that different. But in the end I definitely agree that Christology, or more specifically the Christ-event, is the watershed between Christianity and Judaism and not grace vs works, per se–like you say in your last paragraph.
The question however is why is why did Paul make such a distinction between faith and works if it is really between Christ and not-Christ? I suppose the old perspective people would say, it really is about faith vs works, but I don’t think that’s the foundation of it all. Since I view Paul’s letters as scripture, I’d hope he was on the up-and-up with his methodology (i.e., not caricatuing his opponents in that way), but I suppose that is holding him to a modern standard that may not be universal.
Michael, I’ll shoot you a copy of what I’ve got so far. It’s a bit more rough than Cyril, but maybe it will be helpful. I don’t know why Rowe, Goodacre, or Campbell didn’t come. There was an open invitation to the whole department.
Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 2:53 pm
Ben, you say: ‘The question however is why is why did Paul make such a distinction between faith and works if it is really between Christ and not-Christ?’
To elaborate on a point i was making in my previous comment, I would respond: The distinction between Christ and not-Christ is a distinction between faith and works. Since the Christ event is God’s definitive solution to human sin and ineptitude and since it is something that God (as opposed to humans) accomplishes in Christ; and further, since it is the only solution God has offered to humanity, if humanity looks elsewhere they are De facto looking to themselves–to a human solution. That actually is a statement about agency; people are left to human ‘works’ because they have rejected God’s work in the gospel. And just because that is an ‘implication’ of Paul’s larger ‘Christ verses not-Christ’ anti-thesis, it is a distinction that Paul understands to be right at the heart of his gospel, at the heart of what the Christ-event communicates.
Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 8:26 pm
p.s. analyzing the material through the lens of Seth Kunin’s talk is a pretty interesting idea… I (or you) should more thought to it.
Thursday, 19 June 2008 at 7:39 am
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Spirit.
Friday, 29 August 2008 at 10:02 pm
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