Living Wittily

The intellectual life of a highland cow

 
One of the first photos I took with my new camera.

The beast is looking at me with

 

puzzled perplexity thinking,

                                     "Why do these people bother?"

 

monumental boredom sighing,

                                      "You sad man. Get a life."

 

bovine compassion empathising,

                                     "Poor man. So little hair on his wee heid."

 

territorial aggression, calculating,

                                    "Can I get him before he reaches the fence?"

 

existential well concealed joy, ruminating,

                             "Grass, blue skies, celebrity status - I've got it all."

 

The Transformative Authority of the Bible

One of the finest spiritual writers in the Evangelical tradition is only read today in edited versions. Like the Puritans, Andrew Murray's writing could be 'prolix', and like a certain washing machine advert of some years ago, he could go on and on and on. But Andrew Murray (if you Google the name you're likely to encounter a tennis player!) was a profoundly influential teacher in the Holiness tradition in South Africa and in England through the Keswick movement. His commentary on Hebrews, The Holiest of All, was very warmly reviewed by no less than James Denney who didn't call geese swans. What Denney liked was the thoughtful application of evangelical truth to Christian sanctification and behaviour, and the centrality of Christ in all Murray's writings.

Murray wrote one of the best accounts of an Evangelical appropriation of the Bible. Rather than argue for the authority of the text as artefact, he pleaded for a use of the Bible that depended on openness to God and a receptiveness of heart to the transforming work of the Word of Scripture. Here's what he says:

God's Word only works its true blessing when the truth it brings to us has stirred the inner life, and reproduced itself in resolve, trust, love or adoration. When the heart has received the Word through the mind and has had its spiritual powers called out and exercised on it, the Word is no longer void, but it has done that whereunto God has sent it. It has become part of our life, and strengthened us for new purpose and effort.

Andrew Murray, The Inner Chamber and the Inner Life, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1950), 72

Truth that transforms, a Word that is living, dynamic and provocative of response, words through which God speaks now, that is the Word enfleshed, embodied, lived, obeyed - and that is the authority of Scripture that matters most - it authors our lives.  

(Learning slowly how to use my new camera. The photo was taken in the Aberdeen Botanic Gardens)

Recovering a Neglected Text: Songs Based on the Song of Songs

The Song of Songs is one of those hidden treasures of the Bible that is more hidden than treasured in contemporary preaching and liturgy. Its explicit sensuality, its celebration of love in all its emotional fervour and poetic physicality, and its unmistakbable affirmation of love as the utter giving up of the self in deepest longing and passionate embrace, tend to mean that those committed to expository preaching give it a skilled body swerve. 

That's a pity, however understandable.  Some of the most lyrical writing, and spiritually perceptive devotional expression, and profound theological imagining has been produced by those in the Christian tradition who have studied and sung and prayed over this collection of Hebrew Love songs. From the mystical Bernard of Clairvaux and his eighty odd sermons on the first couple of chapters to the equally mystical if evangelical Charles Haddon Spurgeon's communion meditations, from the speculative and extravagant Origen to the restrained devotion of the 19th C. Lutheran Franz Delitzsch, from Samuel Rutherford the intense and volatile Scottish Puritan whose letters are marbled with the sensual imagery of the Song, to Marvin Pope whose Anchor Bible Commentary remains the vade mecum of previous interpretations, from such diverse directions in the tradition the Song of Songs has been a rich source of devotional and theological nourishment.

But no. It isn't necessarily the text to read out in church of a Sunday morning, either before or after the children leave. And yes, it is probably wise not to decide to do a long detailed series of expositions verse by verse - though that was done 30  odd years ago by the Rev Willie Still in Gilcomston South Church in Aberdeen.

But still, this book about love and passion and longing is there, right in the middle of the Bible, and it won't go away. So what to do with it. Read it. Think about it. It has much to teach a culture saturated by overstated desire, tone deaf to tenderness and delicacy, suffering an ennui of the heart and losing the capacity for imaginative and winsome discourse (a recent article mercilessly mocked the crass opening chat up lines that now pass for respectful introduction and consideration for the other).

Alternatively, buy Patrick Hawes' beautiful arrangement of 6 songs on the Song of Songs. The soloist Elin Manahan Thomas has one of the clearest and sharpest voices I've heard. The CD is a really good example of exegesis by lyric and music, a genuine expansion and exposition of ideas that lie at the centre of the Song. These ideas give content and substance to those words we try to use when we speak of love, desire, longing, passion, anticipation and fulfilment, devotedness given and received, the move from fear to trust and therefore to that joy which, if never complete, at least finds its home in the mutual enjoyment of human togetherness.

The Song of Songs has been understood as an allegory of  the love between Christ and the Church, between Christ and the soul, and between a man and a woman. That such rich resources to explore divine and human love lie in this earthy but sublime poetry is one of the great miracles of the canon of Scripture. I guess there are those who, if it were up to them, would have wanted it excluded for reasons of modesty.  And the Holy Spirit thankfully thwarted them! So here it is, between Ecclesiastes with his probing mockery of faith that comes too easy, and Isaiah with his defiant imagination in face of exile and imperial power, daring to hope - and between them, Sage and Prophet, this love letter, this unabashed celebration of love, divine and human, love which in the human heart and in the heart of God is the foundation of existence and the meaning and purpose of life itself.

Ephesians - The Triune God of love eternal and grace immeasurable...

 

From my early years as a Christian I've read and re-read Paul's Prison Epistles (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon). As a pastor I've preached on them often, nearly always with a residual disappointment that mere preaching doesn't begin to convey the 'unsearchable riches of Christ'. If Isaac Newton really did say he felt like a child playing with seashells on the beach when the great ocean of truth lay before him unnoticed, then as a preacher I've felt the same with the unfathomable depths and irresistible currents of a text like Ephesians. That first extravagantly long sentence in Ephesians chapter 1 betrays a mind pushed into theological overdrive, Paul's vision and imagination running out of subordinate clauses as he finds it impossible to end the sentence. Maybe that's what happens when we speak of God - we run out of clauses and the sentence always, but always, finishes with much unsaid and probably unutterable.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached through Ephesians and the published sermons fill 8 thick volumes. By the way the volume on chapter 3, "The Unsearchable Riches of Christ" is a profound account of Christian mysticism illumined by evangelical experience and textual discipline, providing a deeply satisfying exposition of what it means to be in Christ, and for life to be grounded in the eternal love of God made known in Christ.  Here more than anywhere else in his writing. Lloyd-Jones expressed his Welsh fervour, his revival instincts, his theological passion, and through the intensity of his personal experience of Christ, he rhapsodised on the grace unspeakable, the riches inexhaustible, the love unfathomable and the wisdom unsearchable of this God who in Christ reveals His purposes of love and mercy hidden in the ages but revealed in Jesus.

Every now and then I'm drawn back to Ephesians, just as at other times I'm drawn back to other parts of the Bible that to use the old Puritan phrase, 'speak to my condition'. Sometimes Isaiah 40-55;  or the Psalms; the Gospels often, and John most often. But when it comes to Paul the Prison Epistles are where I instinctively go - especially those first chapters in Ephesians and Colossians when Paul sees the universe through the lens of Christ. And my own story is not relativised and reduced by the comparison; it is drawn into it and given a significance that is rooted in precisely that  "grace unspeakable..., those riches inexhaustible, such love unfathomable and the wisdom unsearchable of this God who in Christ reveals His purposes of love and mercy hidden in the ages.

The paradox of revelation and mystery is one we live with as Christians, gladly, gratefully and generously. It's the paradox of the God who comes near in Christ but is beyond our comprehension as the Triune God of love eternal and grace immeasurable. It's the tension of the soul being caught up into the heavenly places while we still deal with the earthly, the everyday, the ordinary, the fragile, the transient, the reality of life as a human being yet as made in the image of God - trying to make sense of this paradox of existence in Christ and living the life that is ours. At those points in our lives when that tension is most acute and that paradox hardest to live with, that's when I read Ephesians 1, and Colossians 1, and Philippians 2. And if I ever need reminding of what it means to deal with the realities of social justice, human values, freedom and community, there's always that short masterpiece of practical theology we call the Letter to Philemon.

All of which arises because I've had on my desk one of the first commentaries I ever bought and which I treasure as a spiritual artefact, a sacred gift to myself, a trusted exegetical companion - Paul's Letters from Prison,G B Caird (Oxford, Clarendon: 1976) Bought in the John Smith Bookshop on the Campus of Stirling University, in March 1976 - cost then - £2.25! I doubt I ever spent money on a book more wisely and for better reward.  Yes there are the big heavies - and I have most of them (Markus Barth, Ernest Best, Andrew Lincoln, P T O'Brien, and just arrived Clinton Arnold and Frank Thielman - no space for Hoehner's encyclopedic doorstopper). But there is an elegance in Caird's 90 pages on Ephesians, and for me an affection for this careful scholar, that makes this small book special. It's one of the very few commentaries I've ever slipped  into a flight bag and read at an airport! I know - sad - better to read Lee Child, or Henning Mankell, Ian McEwan.

Maybe so. But for the umpteenth time I'm keeping company with G B Caird on Ephesians, trying to live with the tensions and paradoxes of grace unspeakable, unsearchable riches, all summed up in Ephesians 2.4-5, "But because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved". That's the greatest paradox of them all - our transgressions and God's great love for us. Who would ever have thought they could be reconciled - except God, who is rich in mercy?

The Gospel of John - not being afraid of deep water

Since College days when I patiently and conscientiously worked through C K Barrett's commentary on the Gospel of John I have loved this New Testament text. And alongside those evenings slowly turning the pages and making notes I still have in neat handwritten, pre-computer script, we were walked through the text by our New Testament teacher, R E O White. It was an immersion in text that taught me to swim, and not to be too afraid of deep water. In the years since I've slowly worked through numerous commentaries and monographs and tried to stay current with Johannine scholarship. Some big names are familiar companions - Barrett, Brown, Schnackenburg, Morris, Carson, Beasley-Murray ( a scandalously restricted volume in the Word series given the three volume sprawlers on Luke and Revelation) - more recently Moloney, Lincoln, and monographs by Ashton, Koester, Robinson, Bauckham et al.

And then there are those books which use John for spiritual formation, from Jean Vanier, to William Countryman to Francis Moloney. I have to say I'm less enamoured of such attempts to feed the Gospel of John through a Christian spirituality grid. Lesslie Newbiggin's The Light Has Come is a different category altogether. A theological gem.

But the reason for all this Johannine enthusiasm is the imminent arrival of John Ramsey Michael's commentary on John. I met him once when i was teaching in Hanover, New Hampshire. He is a wise, shrewd and deeply learned man, whose scholarship range is wide and deep. I was teaching on Julian of Norwich, George Herbert and Charles Wesley - he was teaching on John Bunyan. His literary sensitivity, theological resourcefulness and open minded interest levels made him a source of much fun and much learning. His commentary is already being described as readable, progressing Johannine scholarship, and a gift to the preaching of the church. Not surprised. And it will be the commentary I'll saunter through for the next few months - if it arrives by Advent it'll be fun reading him on the greatest advent hymn of them all - "In the beginning was the Word.....and the Word became flesh..." So swimming at the deep end, standing at the edge of the reservoir, not being afraid of deep water - my theological hero James Denney had his own take on the deep water metaphor - about Jesus and his passion he urged that we hear 'the plunge of lead into fathomless waters'. That's what happens when I dive into the text of John's Gospel.

Gordon Fee as Exegete: Giving Paul his due and the importance of word order

Two examples of Fee's no nonsense exegetical comments:

"R F Collins argues (unconvincingly) that Paul has here taken over an earlier formula and adapted it to his own purposes. While all things are possible, not all possible things are equally probable. Indeed, it is of considerable interest that the most creative theologian in the early church is seen as not capable of being creative at points like this, but must be assumed to be borrowing from others - and that without evidence."

............................

On Paul's use of charis and shalom in the greeting:

"Paul salutes his brothers and sisters in Christ with "grace to you - and peace." It is worth noting that this is the invariable order of Paul's words, not "grace and peace to you" as in most translations. Very likely there is significance to this order: the grace of God and Christ is what is given to God's people; peace is what results from such a gift. Hence "grace to you - and peace."...The sum total of God's activity towards his human creatures is found in the word "grace"; God has given himself to his people bountifully and mercifully in Christ. Nothing is deserved, nothing can be achieved. The sum total of those benefits  as they are experienced by the recipients of God's grace is "peace", God's eschatological shalom, both now and to come."

......................

If the task of the exegete is to enable later readers to hear as clearly as possible, the voice of the one speaking in the text, then these two brief quotations are good examples of why Gordon Fee is a trusted guide. For myself, I wholly concur with his pedantic care in translating Paul's greeting "grace to you - and peace". Allowing the brief pause between the two both distinguishes and connects them in a way that is profoundly theological.

On another note, the Scottish Baptist College Blog is being revived into a discussion forum for issues that we as part of the Scottish Baptist community want to explore in conversation. In particular we want to explore areas of theological education, ministry formation, discipleship in 21st Century Culture, and we will include occasional book reviews. It will also contain news and comment from our College community and have some guest posts from students and others now and again. You might want to go look - I'll occasionally flag it up here as new material is added. 

Gordon Fee and the intellectual deference of a New Testament scholar.

There are occasional Bible commentaries that have a long shelf life, and then there are those that are hacked out to meet the voracious appetite of publishers for niche series. The carbon footprint of commentary mania is brontosauran in its scale. There are currently around 125 biblical commentary series in production in various North Western World publishers. You can see them here if you click on Series button on the upper menu bar. I'm not sure whether to describe this as ludicrous, wasteful, exegetical overkill, marketing madness, unbiblical abuse of creation gifts, or just plain stupid. But out there somewhere people are buying them, seduced by claims of niche market, latest scholarship, and that underlying assumption that if the book is about the Bible it must be justified.

So. When I buy a new commentary now (it was not always thus for me), I have to have a good reason. It has to give me what I don't have and really need. The fact that it rehearses what everyone else has said, or the concern to defend particular positions, or the claim that it now adds a different perspective isn't enough. Nor do I want a commentary that forecloses exegetical options because the publisher takes a particular theological line - and that goes both for the conservative and the critical.

For the discerning commentary reader and user there are certain names that are the gold standard. Gordon Fee is one. Now Professor Emeritus of New Testament Exegesis at Regent's College Vancouver, he is a retired Pentecostal scholar of singular standing across the denominations. His exegetical honesty, focused erudition, rigorous scholarship, and crisp no nonsense writing style laced with fun and gentle critique of others' positions, make him a joy to read. His First Corinthians and Philippians are amongst my most used volumes - I've read them both and used them constantly. His two massive exegetical studies of the Holy Spirit (God's Empowering Presence) and of Christology (Pauline Christology) as well as his up-front honest exegesis of the Pastoral Epistles, are full of help for those who want to break sweat doing some exegetical excavations.

So now I am slowly reading my way through his newest volume on the Thessalonian Epistles. I'm going to blog on Fee once a week for a while - just highlighting what makes him interesting, reliable, for me the commentator of choice on any book he chooses to work on. And not because he is always right, or says what I'd like to confirm my own exegetical prejudices; but because he is to be trusted with a text, which he treats with an intellectual deference that nonetheless tolerates the hard questions. And because he knows when to expose nonsense, question unexamined assumptions, and link up creative connections across the range of the Bible, while making sure that pastors and preachers, scholars and enquirers see both the wood and the trees, and learn to love the view. Tomorrow a few characteristic quotes from Fee to show that all the above isn't just another sales pitch for another commentary to take up further space in an already overpopulated market. 

Of the making of many books, and the pricing upwards of many books, there is no limit.

When it comes to possessing a book, like most bibliophiles I prefer a substantial stitched hardback. Especially if it is an important book. And because I just so enjoy handling a well bound book, printed on quality paper, where font and layout and editing and production standards each contribute to a book that is a joy to hold and behold, to handle and read. And if the price is halfway reasonable then here's my money. The book below is the hardback edition of George Herbert at £90 - I got it for half the price from a sensible bookseller in Cambridge. "A thing of beauty and a joy forever".

But I also want to write in praise of the well intentioned paperback. Sometimes the hardback is ridiculously expensive and impossible to justify - and there's no paperback edition. Take for example Susan Gillingham's Psalms Through the Centuries volume 1 - £57 and the second volume will be even more expensive. And no chance of a paperback version, despite the fact that this is a series of commentaries aimed at students! So either you borrow it from a library (if it has it), or from inter-library loan - but what if it's a book you want to read and refer to often, huh? Writing to the publisher of Gillingham's book to point out the unattainability of these prices for all but institutional libraries I received a courteous negative response, essentially the same as one I first encountered and learned to live with when I was twenty one and at University.

I still have an essay I did all those years ago on the hard to make case for the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy. I began with the disclaimer that much as I would like to establish the case for Mosaic authorship, the historical and textual evidence did not point that way. One of the most illuminating feedback comments I've ever had was pencilled in the margin, "Tough!" It was a hard response for a fragile young Evangelical, but one that has served me well - and I still have the essay. The lecturer was himself an agnostic who sympathised deeply with people of faith trying to re-negotiate the foundations of that faith by intellectual dialogue and critical thinking in what could seem a hostile environment.

The point is, the publisher's response for all its courteous explanations of why they couldn't afford to make the book affordable for individual purchasers, came down to that one word I learned to live with decades ago - "Tough!" Now there aren't many books I want to own that I'm not prepared to pay for, and do without other things to buy them. Choices about disposable income are real giveaway clues to our ethics, stewardship, taste, and peculiar but likeable daftness. But even I can't bring myself to spend £115 on, for example, the second volume of Michael Watts The Dissenters, a magisterial history that is simply unmatched in the subject field. The first volume was issued in both hardback and paperback - but not the second. Tough!

And likewise Carol Newsom's The Book of Job A Contest of Moral Imaginations at £66 - but a book of great originality, penetrative in its insight into how this magnificent text interprets us and our world, and our human brokenness and longing for wholeness, before we ever get near an interpretation of it. So at £66, "Tough!" But it has just been published at £13.99 in an Oxford Paperback. The lesson being, sometimes you can't get all you want - I'm still waiting for Gillingham on the Psalms to be affordable, and Watts Dissenters to not need a mortgage preceded by a credit check - so, "tough". But now and again life has unlooked for blessing - and something you want is not only affordable, but a bargain at twice the price - as is Newsom's work on Job, in paperback.

For those interested, Newsom's commentary on Job in the New Interpreter's Bible represents along with Sam Balentine's Smyth and Helwys volume on Job, the finest exegetical conversation on Job I know. And with Newsom bound in the same volume as Clinton McCann's commentary on Psalms, that NIB volume costing around £40 is simply gold at the price of lead. I exaggerate - but only very slightly.

Philippians - a huge commentary that should have been twice the size!

Earlier this year John Reumann's Anchor Bible commentary on Philippians was published. It has xxiv, + 805 pages. By any standards a massive volume. (By the way, I think the woodcuts used in the dustcovers of the Yale Anchor Commentaries are powerful images resonating with the biblical text). In the Preface readers are informed that Reumann's original manuscript was nearly halved to fit the publisher's demands. When it came into the College Library, given my interest in kenosis,  I had a read at Reumann's treatment of 2.5-11, the great Christ Hymn. The section was hard to read, frustrating to follow, and mostly made up of highly condensed notes. It felt like notes for a commentary rather than the notes of a commentary. Anyone people-watching in the library would have seen disappointment written in giant font bold italics underlined and filling the screen of my face.

The recent review of Reumann's work by James Dunn places the blame for the virtual un-useability of the volume on the publishers. Given Reumann worked on this commentary for over thirty years, the work should have been allowed two volumes, the same as Ephesians by Markus Barth. When it comes to metaphorical images, Dunn uses one to describe the failed editing process that is memorably incongruous and hilariously apt.

"Overall the volume gives the impression of being subjected to a form of liposuction with the resulting "lumpiness" caused by "oversuction"."

I refrain from offering any graphics. You can read the whole review over here. Meanwhile us Philippians buffs are now waiting for the next commentary blockbusters - Paul Holloway's volume in Hermeneia (still a few years off), and the new International Critical Commentary by N T Wright, the Bishop of Durham and storm centre of much debate about what Paul did and didn't mean - I hope Wright's will be published this side of the eschaton - otherwise there may be a few exegetical debates in heaven between Paul and N T Wright, or as his less charitable opponents call him, N T Wrong.

O Felix Culpa! The happy fault of having too many commentaries.....

Blame Jason. It's his fault. He started me off. One of my lifelong interests is how Scripture has been commented on through the centuries. I can be boringly enthusiastic about what I consider one of the richest veins of Christian reflection, combining devotional theology and biblical scholarship - the magnificent tradition of Christian biblical commentary. A couple of weeks ago Jason suggested several "travelling companions" for my sojourn with Colossians, which is all the excuse I need to desiderate.

I'm already well into Dunn's volume in the New International Greek Commentary, which along with O'Brien in the Word Biblical Commentary deals with the Greek text. Marianne Meye Thompson's Two Horizon Commentary and A T Lincoln in the New Intepreter's Bible provide hefty nudges in the right direction for theological reflection.  Colossians Remixed. Subverting the Empire, by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmat I read a couple of years ago and found it a stunning eye opener to the political implications of Paul's vision of Christ, creation, church and cross ( these four inter-related themes in Colossians I'm currently preparing as a series of sermons). And if those aren't enough G B Caird deals with Colossians in the distilled elegance of his  Paul's Letters from Prison, and N T Wright's earliest published volume in the Tyndale series is still a wee gem.

From a generation earlier C F D Moule's New Cambridge Greek Testament is a wise and concise treatment in which Moule makes optimistic assumptions about the studen'ts competence in NT Greek, though his most important comments are now absorbed in the work of those who were fortunate enough to learn from him e.g. Jimmy Dunn and N T Wright. And Markus Barth's volume in the Anchor Bible might be good, though reviews were mixed - but that's because anyone who has used his two Anchor Bible volumes on Ephesians is likely to be disappointed by any subsequent work that tries to go beyond it in scope, penetration and independent conclusion. I love those two volumes, bought now 30 years ago and many a time browsed and some pages read for the sheer pleasure of it.

Recently published commentaries on Colossians might include (but not for me this time) the New International Critical Commentary by R McL Wilson; the Pillar volume by Douglas Moo; J L Sumney in the New Testament Library Series; C H Talbert in the Paidea series; and Ben Witherington's socio-rhetorical treatment of Ephesians and Colossians. But then there are older and too often neglected ones which I will peep into - J B Lightfoot's benchmark Greek commentary is obvious; Bishop Handley Carr Glynn Moule in the Cambridge Greek Testament from over a century ago, and whose writings on Paul's epistles are virtually Keswick holiness teaching with a deep Calvinist tinge; Alexander MacLaren's exposition in the old Expositor's Bible, a gem of Evangelical devotional theology from an unjustly neglected pastoral expositor.

From the continent Lohse in the Hermeneia series now over 35 years in print (which I once worked through page by page - and believe it did me good!), and Eduard Schweizer's theologically sharp exegesis as a stand alone engagement (I still think his commentary on Mark is in the top 4 of the Gospel Premiership). Ancient works include the homilies of Chrysostom, and treatments by Calvin, and (Jason tells me) Melancthon, and a big fat Banner of Truth reprint of Bishop Davenant's 17th Century Reformed commentary on which Spurgeon desiderated (probably not a felicitous expression).

In reality though, the whole commentary industry today is in danger of publication overkill and encouraged mediocrity, as publishers try to find yet another market niche nobody else has yet thought of and then try to persuade us that despite the multifarious options, this is a definite must have for the serious bible scholar. Aye right!

But meantime I have a few of the above as my panel of experts and "cloud of witnesses" who will try to keep me close to the text and open to God.