Coffee with Charles Cranfield

At CK Barrett’s 90th birthday last year, someone mentioned that they were sad that Charles (aka C.E.B.) Cranfield wasn’t able to make it.  He’s just a year or so older than Kingsley, but can’t make it around as well.  John Barclay mentioned that Professor Cranfield does like to have students over, so I finally got around to asking for his info to have coffee.  He was kind enough to invite me over, and we had a nice chat about my studies and his thoughts on theology, plus I asked a few questions offered up by readers here.  He is quite candid about his opinions both theological and political, especially on points of disagreement.

As to his background, he mentioned that he originally studied classics and later did theology at Cambridge.  (His language ability is hard to believe…from memory he quoted John Chrysostom in Greek and later Aquinas in Latin.)  He spent the summer of 1939 in Basel, Switzerland but had to leave because of the beginning of WW2.  He was later an army chaplain and worked with the German Confessing movement after the war as well as with the World Council of Churches.  He came to Durham in 1950.  He was raised Methodist but noted switching to the reformed church because, among other things, of their reading of Rom 7 as applying to a Christian, which is no surprise if you’ve read his commentary.

For being 92 (almost 93–so that puts his birthday in 1915, Mike) and failing eyesight, he’s quite sharp and still well read, for instance he mentioned going through Watson’s Hermeneutics of Faith and Jewett’s Romans commentary.  Speaking of Romans commentaries, he noted several recent ones but seemed to have a critique for each one in some way or other.  I think Käsemann’s came off the highest.  He commented in particular that he wasn’t a fan of the New Perspective, so he thought Dunn’s commentary was off target in those areas.  He didn’t go into it in any detail but it didn’t seem like he thought there was a need to find a way forward.  (Regarding his own commentary, he mentioned that he would have made some changes but unfortunately didn’t elaborate further.  Though, on the ‘too reformed’ aspect in the questions, he noted he’s a good Calvinist, but with the ‘necessary’ revision of election offered by Barth.)  He noted particularly the commentaries of John Chrysostom and Aquinas as excellent but often overlooked, and that Pelagius’ commentary is quite helpful at times.

I asked him what 5 books or so a theologian would need to read in order to not be ‘uneducated’.  He offered these: 1) Barth’s original commentary on Romans because of its historical importance,  2) Shakespeare and John Milton, and 3) Greek writers: Homer, Sophocles, Thucydides, Aeschylus, and Euripides, and 4) the commentaries of Calvin and Luther. 

It was a nice couple of hours, and I intend to take him up on his invitation to stop by again. 

 

Books at Durham

A common stereotype of UK libraries is that they aren’t anything near as good as one in the US. So, implicitly, you shouldn’t go there.  (This excludes Oxbridge and Edinburgh since their libraries buy everything, literally.)  It is true that the aren’t as good as the major seminaries/univesities because the size of the student population at a university program here doesn’t even compare to the those in the US.  At Durham there are about 300 undergrads and 150 postgrads in theology versus 1k, 2k, or 3k+ at some in the US.  But it is not a dire situation, nor anyway near as bad as US people make out.  There are a handful of books that I was surprised Durham didn’t have but on the whole, it’s pretty decent.  (The journal holdings are not as good.)  Two things mitigate the problem.  1) If you need a book, just ask your supervisor and they’ll buy a copy for the library.  2) They also give an £80 research stipend each year for interlibrary loan and photocopying.  (It’s £2.50 per book or article, and most come in about a 1 week.) 

This year they had better recruiting in the arts and humanities faculty (~school of), so each department got a one-time chunk of extra money.  The theology department split it up into different things, but most went to bursaries (~scholarships) and library purchases.  For the library they just asked postgrads what we wanted.  I sent off a list of about 25 books, maybe 5-10 are ones I will need and the rest were ones that just looked promising.  Practically all the books put in by all of us were purchased, and a big chunk of them arrived today, which made me think about this post. 

So, is the library what I would hope it would be?  Nope.  But it’s workable (with purchases like this and purchase requests you put through your supervisor).  Also, the Cathedral and St John’s college also have theological libraries that are pretty decent for major monographs and commentaries.  Between the three you can find most things, and then you just interlibrary and photocopy the rest.  Plus, if it was perfect, you wouldn’t have a good excuse to tell your wife that you “need” to go visit other libraries like Tyndale House.

 

Patristics at Durham

With Andrew Louth retiring in a couple of years, the direction of patristics in Durham is at a cross roads.  With Carol Harrison, his wife, strongly representing Augustinian studies, the loss of Father Andrew will be a great hole to fill.  Durham recently hired three people that will be a great step towards filling the hole.  The first to be hired was Mark McIntosh (from Loyola in Chicago), as I mentioned earlier, who was hired for systematic theology but has a fair about of experience with patristic thought.  Then they hired Father Andrew’s expected direct replacement: Krastu Banev, who finished his PhD at Cambridge in the past two or three years.  And most recently, they hired Lewis Ayres (from Emory) as the Bede Chair in Catholic Theology.  McIntosh and Ayres won’t be here until 2009, but Durham patristic studies will definitely be in good hands with these three.

 

Durham-Duke Symposium: Identity (2)

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.

 

Durham-Duke Symposium: Identity (1)

Last weekend 9 faculty from Duke came over to Durham (UK) for a colloquium on identity.  Besides those listed as presenting (below), Richard Hays and Ed Phillips also came. John Barclay was the point person on this side, and he asked me to help out a bit with the organisation. It took a bit of my time but the conference came off pretty well.

Plenary Session: Seth Kunin (Durham), ‘De-essentialising Models of Identity’

Old Testament
Stephen Chapman (Duke), ‘Ecclesiocentric Interpretation of the Old Testament in America’
Rob Barrett (Durham/London), ‘Identity against Empire: Learning from Judah and Assyria’
Richard Briggs (Durham), ‘The Virtuous Reader: Identity and the Implied Reader of the Old Testament’
Thea Portier-Young (Duke), ‘Languages of Identity and Obligation: Daniel as Bilingual Book’
Nathan MacDonald (St. Andrews), ‘Narrative Identity, the Old Testament, and the Regula Fidei’

New Testament and Early Christianity
Francis Watson (Durham), ‘Once Again: Beyond the New Perspective on Paul’
Loren Stuckenbruck (Durham), ‘The Pentateuch and Biblical Interpretation in the Enoch Literature from the 2nd Century BCE’
Joel Marcus (Duke), ‘The Birkat Ha-Minim, the 18 Benedictions and Jewish and Christian Identity’
Lucas van Rompay (Duke), ‘Fourth Century Syriac Christianity: Between Jews and Marcionites’
Short Papers:
a. Clare Stancliffe (Durham), ‘Church, Heresy, and the Emergence of Separate Welsh and English Identities’
b. Andrew Louth (Durham), ‘Defining Orthodox Identity in the 7th and 8th Centuries’

Theology and Religion
Wesley Kort (Duke), ‘Autobiography and Religious Identity’
Douglas Davies (Durham), ‘Identity, Death and Eschatology’
Mary McClintock Fulkerson (Duke), ‘Feminist Theology and the Challenges of Identity Politics’
Gerard Loughlin (Durham), ‘Excitable Christian Speech: Hatred, Homosexuality and Law’
Paul Griffiths (Duke), ‘The Staurocentric Fulcrum of Politics: Expropriating Agamben on Paul’

I thought I’d give the general info in this post and then my impressions in a second post.

 

18 Month Review

A week or so ago I had my 18 Month review.  As with the 12 month review, you turn in a chapter (~10k words+) and then have a meeting with your two supervisors.  Loren Stuckenbruck is on research leave for the rest of the summer, so Stephen Barton took his place.  I had turned in my chapter on Cyril’s view of deification, and it served as the basis of our discussion.  I was most pleased since it was well received by both John and Stephen.  Based on their comments, and my own opinion, it was much more clearly written and in better style than my Irenaeus chapter.  I was a little worried about this because John always finds grammar mistakes and typos, and I wanted this one to be more refined so I didn’t look so lazy in that area.  There were still mistakes but about 1/2 as many as other papers, so I was happy. 

The majority of the meeting was spent discussing my primary research questions.  We hadn’t actually re-addressed these specifically since my 6 month meeting.  But, with my rearrangement of my outline, some key aspects of my work had to be redefined.  I had brought some typed-up thoughts on the redefined questions to the meeting, and that prepatory work was well received.  Having Stephen in the meeting was great because he asked some probing questions as a first-time participant in the project that really helped us focus on central issues. 

By the end of May, I plan to have a short concluding chapter for the patristic section where I summarise the key aspects of deification that Irenaeus and Cyril describe and also what primary questions should I take from that to help focus my study of Paul.  I also am doing some preliminary work on my ‘methodology’ and theological interpretation–that is, what justification do I have for reading Paul in light of his interpreters.  I’m actually doing the latter first and plan to have a rough draft to throw out here later this week.  It was a very encouraging meeting and I feel good about the project but realise I’ve got a lot of work left to do in Paul.

 

Durham New Testament Seminars - Easter 2008

Here are the papers to be presented at the New Testament Seminar for the Easter term:

21 April: Stephen C. Barton, ‘The economy of the kingdom: theological reflections on money matters in early Christianity’

28 April: Postgraduate presentations:

i. Susan Mathew, ‘Reciprocity in the Pauline Mission: Reflections on the Role and Status of Phoebe in Rom 16:1-2′

ii. Kristian Bendoraitis, ‘My Father in Heaven’ and ‘Angels of God’: Matthew’s Only Omission of Angels (Matt 10:32-33; Luke 12:8-9)

5 May: No meeting due to Bank Holiday

12 May: Walter Moberly, ‘”Interpret the Bible like any other book?” Requiem for an Axiom’
(N.B. This meeting will start at 4.00 pm and will be a joint session with the members of the Old Testament Research Seminar)

16-17 May: Durham-Duke Symposium

 

Lunch with Prof Robert Hayward

A few of us have started taking out different lecturers for lunch to pick their brains about academic life in the UK and other things.  Last term we had an enjoyable lunch with Prof Robert Hayward, who teaches ancient Judaism and OT. I had the pleasure of sitting in on his Genesis Rabbah midrash reading group last year. 

One of our common questions is what books would one recommend for PhD students, especially for those in biblical studies.  For the most part he didn’t give specific books, but he recommended specific areas of reading.  These are: 1) the main Dead Sea Scroll documents, 2) something on church history, 3) something on enlightenment, 4) something on the development of scientifc thought in late 19th c. and critical methods for the Bible study, and 5) post-modernism.  He thought people should understand the factors that influenced the rise of marxism and fascism in the 2oth c., particularly because their fruit has been so murderous.  It wasn’t what we were expecting, but I thought it was good to have reminder that we don’t need to get so tied up into just one small area of thought and to think more widely about the faith.

 

Durham Department of Theology Notes

Van Mildert Chair of Theology
Professor Mark McIntosh, currently of Loyola University (Chicago, USA), has been appointed to the Van Mildert Chair, a Canon Professorship shared with the Cathedral.

Bede Chair of Catholic Theology
The Department of Theology and Religion have raised £2M to endow the Bede Chair in Catholic Theology. Per the Vice Chancellor: ‘Within the UK this is a genuine ‘Durham first’, along with the establishment this year of the Durham Centre for Catholic Studies.’

 

Future of Religion in Britain

Last week I went to Durham’s Religion and Society Seminar and heard Steve Bruce from a sociologist from Aberdeen speak about the ‘Future of Religion in Britain’.  He showed a clear decline in british church attendance over the past 100+ years but no corresponding increase in other religions.  There is some growth, and even a proliferation, of alternative religions, but no popular adoption of these.  The only growth in the UK has typically been only through birthrates, though some new style churches in large urban areas are doing better, but these only represent a very small percentage.  He then offered his analysis of the decline:

His primary thesis is that religion is not innate but rather a cultural construct.  Thus when the cultural supports for Christianity were dismantled due to modernism and post-modernism, Christianity in western Europe began to decline.  In particular, he argued that the egoism, or individual consumerism, that is the basis of the british mind is what is now the context.  This mindset fights against the ‘universal truth’ and institutionalism basis of organised religion.  This is evident from the growing hostility against religion, especially among those that are younger. 

Being a cultural construct, Bruce offered the comparison to that of a people’s language.  When the language is dominant–both parents speak it, the neighbors speak it, the children can easily marry others who speak it, etc.–the language will survive and prosper.  He offered (Welch/Scottish) gaelic as the most dominant parallel.  With English (secularism) as the dominant language, gaelic (Christianity) is increasingly spoken only by those who either 1) live in an isolated area or 2) who choose to.  Eventually, those in group 1 will dwindle and so will those in group two.  Group 2 is what will eventually be where Christianity ends up.  He offered the fact that the US, even with its high egoism/individual consumerism, still has a strong subculture of relgious activity.  He noted particularly, that in the US one can go to fundamentalist education from birth to PhD without any serious interaction with those outside one’s tradition.  With the educational structure in the UK, this would be very difficult. 

This is a difficult pill to swallow, and it comes from a decidedly secularist point of view.  I don’t whole heartedly accept his thesis, but the evidence seems to strongly support it.  It does give one a diffrent view of one’s religion when it isn’t the dominant perspective.  His thesis depends on the egoism of postmodernism remaining dominant, but just as all dominant philosophical paradigms change so will this one.  The question is how long this individualism can survive.  But even beyond that point, I hold a supernatural faith that includes the work of God beyond philosophical worldviews.