John Hick on Credal Language

John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, second edition, page 45.
The metaphorical language of the Bible communicates naturally to all who inhabit or can imaginatively enter its universe of discourse. We still have fathers and sons and, less universally, kings and shepherds as part of our conceptual world; and with only a little effort of [...]

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Naive All Over Again?

I’ve been thinking about how a Christian evolves intellectually, and the unexpected turns in the journey. I’ve sketched out these levels of development according to my own experience and what I have seen in others.
Pre-critical naivete. This is where folk theology swells out of a two-dimensional view of the biblical literature, unimpeded by an awareness [...]

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Form and Convention

I suppose I’m broadening the “Text” in Text and Theology to some post-structuralist, Derridian sense in this post, but the following ubiquitous element in journalistic writing gave me pause.
Two of the Senate’s staunchest conservatives, Sens. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Jim Bunning of Kentucky, who have said they intend to vote no on President Barack [...]

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Are All Things Permitted?

Given my previous discussions, in what sense can it be said that the Bible is inspired? I want to articulate the beginnings of a theory of inspiration, one I will call via media (VM) for the time being. VM inspiration, as I conceive it, allows for a high view of the Scriptures while not positing [...]

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Paul Ad Hoc: The Rock was Christ

Earlier I began to explore a view of the inspiration of the Bible that would allow biblical writers greater room for personal creativity and would explain certain phenomena in the biblical texts as human literary activity rather than Divinely-communicated truths. Later I wish to say a few more things about the implications of this, but [...]

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Barr on Natural Theology

The relevance of chapter 27, “Natural Theology within Biblical Theology,” in the 600-page (not including endnotes) The Concept of Biblical Theology eluded me until the conclusion. The author writes:
Biblical theology—not only in its ‘canonical’ forms—has tended to be a very closed, inward-looking discipline. […] The main attraction has lain in gaining the maximum concentration of [...]

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Barr on History in Biblical Theology

James Barr seems at his most trenchant when clarifying concepts normally taken for granted. Though we move easily between the various meanings of “history” in biblical study, Barr helpfully delineates its functions, though, as he himself points out, his categories are by no means mutually exclusive. I hope to make my paraphrase of Barr in [...]

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James Barr on Pure Biblical Theology

In The Concept of Biblical Theology, Barr writes on approaches to this enterprise and how it is conceived of as different from and located between biblical studies and doctrinal theology (biblical theology/biblical theology). In chapter eight Barr quotes Brevard Childs on how he perceives the difference between what he does and the History of Religion [...]

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Creative Revelation and the Limits of Inspiration

When John identifies Jesus as the Logos, is he revealing previously hidden truths, or is he creating them? The underlying issue is the nature of the inspiration of the Bible. My a priori position would be  that John isn’t allowed to make stuff up, and that anything he puts out there for the church must [...]

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Pinnock and Callen on Sola Scriptura

I wrote some thoughts on sola scriptura in practice, but Clark Pinnock and Barry Callen—actual, you know, theologians—put it far better than I in The Scripture Principle (105):
A further safeguard of the truth was located in church authority. Christians began to think in terms of an authoritative institution that would not be subject to human [...]

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