18 June 2012

Living With Stress

Peter Enns:

"I've had far too many conversations over the last few years with trained, experienced, and practicing biblical scholars, young, middle aged, and near retirement, working in Evangelical institutions, trying to follow Jesus and use their brains and training to help students navigate the challenging world of biblical interpretation. And they are dying inside.

Just two weeks ago I had the latest in my list of long conversations with a well-known, published, respected biblical scholar, who is under inhuman stress trying to negotiate the line between institutional expectations and academic integrity. His gifts are being squandered. He is questioning his vocation. His family is suffering. He does not know where to turn. I wish this were an isolated incident, but it's not."

In the eyes of many evangelicals, Peter Enns is something of a bogeyman. But here, where Enns is not talking about controversial things like evolution or Genesis or ancient near eastern myth or the diversity of the Old Testament or Second Temple Judaism or whatever, there can be little doubt that he is highlighting a real problem.

Any thoughts on this issue?

09 June 2012

Calvin the Higher Critic

David Williams (on his blog "Brick by Brick") posted two articles on John Calvin during April and May:

The first article is about Calvin and Genesis chapter one.

The second is about Calvin and the authorship of Second Peter.

Williams' point is that some of Calvin's views on these issues make him sound like the sort of Christian who is regularly attacked by the strict evangelicals for interpreting the Bible in a suspect and problematic way...