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FF Bruce and the Epistle to the Hebrews – A Test Case for Evangelical Critical Scholarship Half a Century Ago.

Eerdmans have announced a new commentary on Hebrews. It's a new entry to the New International Commentary on the New Testament and it will replace the commentary of F F Bruce which anyone interested in evangelical New Testament scholarship reveres as a fine combination of historical exposition, textual exposition and theological exegesis. At a time when others were defensively negative about historical critical study of the New Testament, F F Bruce personified the confessional integrity of a man of thoughtful and committed Christian faith, unafraid of critical questions and warmly responsive to the spiritual message of the New Testament.

There are several reasons why Bruce was an ideal commentator on Hebrews for a commentary series launching into the market unsure of its credibility beyond evangelicalism. Bruce was a member of the Christian Brethren, a moderately conservative evangelical (how he tired of these carefully worded theological categories), and there are few traditions more theologically sympathetic to the rich symbolism and typology and the book of Hebrews. He was also a first rate historian, an erudite and meticulous scholar, and with an intellect weighted with both intelligence and integrity.

His commentary was commissioned in 1954, published in 1963 and revised in 1990, the year of his death. From the start Bruce on Hebrews was recognised as a lucid, historically thoughtful and theologically sensitive commentary which has enabled generations of readers to make sense of a book that is enigmatic, mysterious and for some downright perplexing in places. Melchizedek was as puzzling to readers in the 1960's as any complex theory of Derridean postmodern hermeneutics!

The replacement volume will be twice the length of Bruce, and will reflect current approaches to hermeneutics and literary social approaches to the text, majoring on chiasmus as the hermeneutic key. It will have to sit alongside strong competition from Peter O'Brien's Pillar commentary which is becoming the preferred treatment for evangelicals, not forgetting Paul Ellingworth's NICGT volume which is a massive treatment now showing its own age, and the even more comprehensive and richly informed Word commentary by W Lane. Then there is L T Johnson's fine commentary in the New Testament Library series, and Craig Koester's Anchor volume, and Fred Craddocks elegant exegesis in the New Interpreter's Bible.

So it's interesting that Bruce's volume will remain in print as a stand alone treatment of Hebrews. Much of his exposition is not significantly qualified by more recent scholarship and it remains a responsible and spiritually rewarding companion. Old fashioned it may be, but fashions of hermeneutic theory and practice are not the only criteria for exegesis that is faithful to the text because arising from within the faith tradition of the documents that are that same faith's foundation charters. Anyway, Bruce's commentary has no use by date, and in my view no expiry date.

I mention the replacement of a commentary for two reasons. First I own two copies of this commentary. It was one of the first commentaries I bought as a student minister and I read it through. my second copy was a gift from the library of the late Dr Eleanor Walker who died over a decade ago, before she could complete her studies for the Church of Scotland ministry.

Second, I have all the commentaries mentioned above, and I still go back to this veteran commentary by a veteran scholar who changed the opinion of the academy about the seriousness, creativity and integrity of evangelical critical scholarship. Bruce almost singlehandedly demonstrated the possibility that those three words could sit together without threatening oxymoron.

6 August 2012
Roses and Castles and the Politics of Life

Just spent a few days in Northumberland. The ruin of Dunstanburgh Castle is one of those impressive reminders of dangerous times, human power games and the labour and ingenuity that goes into territorial defence and territorial aggression. These were built to last, 700 years ago

Then there was the beauty and alternative worldview of Alnwick Gardens. The rose garden was past its best and had been battered by rain, but there's a defiance in flowers quite different from the defiance of stone and rock against sea, wind and human determination.

Whether in the shared harmony and profusion of colour and scent, or the single glory of fragile transience shaped into such modest loveliness below, the contrast of rose and rock, garden and castle, vulnerability and power, is one of the distinctions too easily overlooked in the politics of human life. I don't mean we don't need castles in a world of fractured and changing loyalties. But the question of why we need them, is one of the moral perplexities we may be losing the will and capacity to go on interrogating.

I didn't think many of those thoughts while on holiday – they began to assert themselves when looking at photos and deciding what to keep and discard. It could be argued quite persuasively that the beauty of gardens requires time, and peace, work and investment, and the hopefulness that others won't come and build a castle on the garden site. To prevent such purposes you need strong castles to deter and defend.

But if all of life is about looking over our shoulder, identifying the dangerous 'other', then maybe we need the reassuring space and viewpoint of a garden. Worryingly, both garden and castle need walls, and the wall is both a necessary part of human civilisation, and an ambiguous symbol that tells of our need to keep danger out and what we love safe.

Roses and castles. Hmmm.

5 August 2012
The Wright Stuff – The Gospel of the Kingdom

I've slowly been reading Tom Wright's How God Became King. One of the strengths of Wright's overall approach to the New Testament is the way he takes hold of us, grabs our shoulders, and turns us round to look at things from a different perspective. In other words he calls in question the received point of view, and by a tour de force compels consideration of an alternative interpretation of the evidence.

This book is a delight to read, and it helps that I happen to agree almost without demur with his overall thesis – the Gospels are indeed about the Kingdom of God; and Jesus is the one in whom we see the kingship of God in all the mystery and majesty of love incarnate and the embodied holiness of God. It is unhelpful to create a tension far less a contention between Paul and Jesus – but for that precise reason, Wright is correct to insist that much of New Testament theology and historical study has carried a presumption of priority for Paul as the theologian par excellence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

A reading of the Gospel that takes them at their face value as accounts of the life, ministry and meaning of Jesus restores a necessary balance and provides the major canonical corrective, holding the balance between event and interpretation, between the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and the lived reflection of the first Christian communities. Gospels and Epistles create an essential conversation between the Gospel of Jesus and hermeneutic reflection emeging from the church's experience in the life of the Spirit. This and much more comes from Wright's characteristic combination of creative scepticism about received assumptions and persuasive argument built on analytic and synthetic control of the full range of material necessary for constructive New Testament theology and history.

I am enjoying this book.

The plaque above is by Ghiberti, from the Florence Baptistry of San Giovanni, and shows the Triumphal Entry – a key event not only for understanding the KIngdom of God, but as an authoritative statement of Christology. I love the work of Ghiberti.

4 August 2012
Gight Forest in the sunshine 🙂

1 August 2012
The Castle of Gight and the Clan Gordon

Went walking at Forest of Gight and came across the ruin of the Castle of Gight, which used to belong to the Gordons. Unfortunately they ran out of money and it was sold to the Earl of Aberdeen in 1797. By the early 19th Century it fell into disuse and ruin. It still has the outline and some of the features of a Scottish Castle though, and I went in to explore having read the warnings and disclaimers – but I was careful.

From inside I took a couple of photos – one looking up the ruined round tower, and the other through a side window that looked like a stone picture frame.

Here they are:

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31 July 2012
The Mystery of Gratuitous Beauty and Ubiquitous Gift

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

This is the poem that brought Mary Oliver's poetry to my attention and I've read her regulary ever since. On a blue sky sunny day in Westhill, Aberdeenshire, this celebration of life and its unique unrepeatable giftedness is a reminder of responsibility to live life well and grateful for the gift it is and the gifts it brings.

The photo was taken in Aberdeen Botanic Garden – such fragile transient beauty, – cause for wonder, and praise and grateful holding of all that is Gift.

31 July 2012
The Angel Share – The Amber Liquid of Hope….

Had a moving and hilarious night at the cinema watching The Angel's Share. I've heard about it from others who went, and missed it on general release but caught it on a one off showing in Aberdeen. The reviews describe it as a movie about a young ned with a last chance to make something more of his life. No big names in the film, but lots of acting talent and character portrayal – from the caricature to the stereotype.

Everyone will find their own window into this hard world of social realism at the tough end of the socio-economic spectrum. For me there were several stand out moments in a film that simply drew me into the dramas of several lives, as they slowly became the woven strands of the central drama – how to steal the world's rarest cask of whisky without being caught.

When Robbie holds his new baby son, and calls him Luke, something changes in the way he looks at the world. When he then faces one of the victims of his drugs fuelled violence there are several minutes of relentless emotional hammering as he hears from his victim, and his victim's mother, the cost and cosequence of his mindless violence. Through tears of bewilderment and guilt he hears the mother demand that he look at her. Look becomes an important word no matter how it is spelled.

The amber liquid made in Scotland from girders is not whisky, but Irn Bru. And the Irn Bru bottles become central to the story as it twists and turns to its conclusion. The contrast between the Community Service Group and those bidding over a million for a cask of whisky is one of Loach's recurring themes of social justice, life chances and young people struggling to remain hopeful aginst all the social forces that do them down.

The combination of humour and pathos, of tenderness and violence, of fluent obscenity and linguistic clarity, of friendship and enmity, and of hopelessness and hopefilled longing, was just this side of confusing cynicism and sentiment. And the ending is both hopeful and ambiguous, which life tends to be, even for the most resilient.

Theological reflection on such a film probably shouldn't be done the morning after. But one thought nags away – the love of a good woman, the birth of a child, and the stated theme from the start, of one more chance at life – this film explores the transforming power of love, whether the love of Leone for her and Robbie's son Luke, or the raging love of the mother confronting her son's attacker at the meeting for restorative justice. And woven throughout, the goodness of the Community Services Supervisor, who offers home, guidance and an expanding world to this Glasgow prodigal son.

30 July 2012
Went to the University Library for a Holiday.

Yesterday I went to the Aberdeen University Library because I was on holiday. I didn't take my camera so this is the photo I took last year when I did the same. If holidays are about relaxing, finding space, being intrigued, discovering new things, having fun, ignoring the watch, then some hours in a book depository does it for me, every time.

No it's not the same as being where it's sunny and warm, and where new cultural experiences, sights and sounds are all around, where food is different and reliably good, and where there is enough distance to feel the ties that bind slacken enough to give freedom from work, relaxing of usual circumstance and some reduction of the pressures of what we misleadingly call "life".

But then again – what worlds there are in a library; what new vistas to be opened up standing surrounded by thousands of books and free to open any one of them. It's a place of reflective silence, of respected space, of generous extravagance and freedom of movement, of deliberately created opportunity to think, and feel, and wonder. You can sit and read in the sun – as I did yesterday from Floor 6 looking out over the North Sea.

It so happened I was looking for paintings and sculpture – pictures thereof. So I was in early Northern Renaisance Netherlands, then Southern Renaissance Venice, then 19th Century Arles in France, before a flying visit to Victorian England. With a visit to Amsterdam looming I wanted to check on what I absolutely must see in the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. But I got waylaid at the end by the Pre-Raphaelite section as well.

I've had several holidays in this same place, this green glass intellectual travel agency where the only limit on destination is imagination, thought and curiosity. Poetry, theology, philosophy, and art tend to my usual intellectual resorts, but with unscheduled trips to other, stranger subject areas. I'll be back, and long before next year….

27 July 2012
Ricky Gervais, Kittens and Cardiff University – or ethics with our eyes open.

Now and again it's the comedian who, like the joker and jester of old, opens the eyes of the audience to unpleasant truth. Ironic that Ricky Gervais has opened the eyes of the wider public to an experiment involving sewing the eyes of 31 kittens closed, and once the experiment was complete, the kittens were destroyed. Cardiff University defends the experiments because they are aimed at understanding the signals between the eye and the brain cortex, an important area of ophthalmic research into lazy eye conditions in humans. You can read more here

The University Ethics committee approved the experiment, which of course begs the question about which criteria are invoked to justify such purposeful cruelty. Interesting that in search of a cure for a human condition, inhumane treatment of non humans is spoken of not only as acceptable but as an imperative claiming moral high ground. Further, the very procedures required suggest a best an emotional confusion for the scientists and vets involved, who we believe are acting out of altruistic compassion. You have to be cruel to be kind isn't to my knowledge a scientifically established procedure.

On any ethically responsible investment portfolio it would be difficult to justify making money, or putting money into, what by any definition is such an extreme form of animal cruelty. What makes this situation more unacceptable is that tax payers' money funds this particular research project. I not only object to that; I protest against whatever guidelines make it possible to sanction such behaviour.

Then there is the question of animal rights which are the flip side of human obligations. What is it, what exactly and precisely is the basis for human beings treating other life-forms as if pain, suffering and abbreviated life is at the behest of human self interest? We rightly prosecute those who are cruel to animals. Why wasn't the Cardiff University experiment articulated truthfully and transparently, and only when outed is there the usual ethical smokescreen of the greater good?

Is it really necessary cruelty? Even if it is necessary to find a cure for lazy eye, does that necessity and the perceived possible benefit override the cost to the animals, and the desnesitizing impact such behaviour has on human attitudes to other sentient beings? Sewing a kitten's eyes shut is rather different from recalibrating a tool, rebooting a computer, or trying out a new golf club! Different too from putting a car through a road impact test that wrecks it. I mean different in kind – inanimate as opposed to animate. Sentient life is not a mere commodity for human consumption, and animal suffering is not to be discounted merely because scientific research is furthered by it. The balance is finer than that, and the moral implications of sanctioned cruelty far more dangerous, and requiring higher ethical norms than utilitarianism.

University Research Ethics Committees are highly responsible, ethically informed and composed of people who combine commonsense, humanity and expertise. As such they are expected to acknowledge the profound responsibility of acting under public trust, and in decision-making be transparent and outward looking beyond the immediate interests of its researchers. This is true especially in areas of such heightened sensitivity as balancing animal welfare and perceived human benefit, or animal suffering and assumed advances in knowledge.

This however, was not an experiment in the search for a cure of a life threatening condition. Even if it were, misgivings and safeguards ought still to be an essential part of a process that demonstrates there is no other way. Even then such a conclusion is not itself a sufficient reason for proceeding with an experiment of inflicted suffering. It is a legitimate question -where are the boundaries of human behaviour and inumane behaviour in pursuit of human welfare?

All readers of this blog know I'm a cat lover. But if the experiment were carried out on mice, rats or rabbits the arguments would be the same, and the outrage as real. So I'm not special pleading for my own pet preferences. Therefore no cute pictures of cuddly kittens in this post – and no distressing images of mutilated animals either. Instead I post a protest at the hubris and callousness of human behaviour towards creatures over whom we have absolute control and the power of death or worse. That power brings with it responsibility and the institutional imperative of a University that life never be discounted, and suffering of animals never be dismissed as the mere emotional inconvenience of an oversensitive public.

And as a taxpayer I express outrage that I am implicated through public funding in practices that would – rightly - have me jailed if done outside a laboratory. Public opinion may be deemed fickle by the scientific community who are well into data and statistics and social trends – but public instincts and disapproval are important guidelines for decision-makers. And there are times when what is done in our name is plain wrong – this is such a case.

25 July 2012
A day on the Moray Coast

Today we followed the sun up to the Moray coast, and spent the afternoon in Banff. By now we are all but acclimatised to wet, cold, mist and pretending life's happiness and contentment doesn't depend entirely on the weather. So this photo captures evidence to the contrary – happy folk on a North Scottish beach!

Walking along the costal trail the sun came and went, and the sky changed like the backdrops of a theatre show, quietly and stealthily shifting scene without giving the show away. Then I looked out at the sea and saw this, like a split photo in which one side has had the colour faded for effect. The mackerel sky and the blue sky reflected on the water. It was a magic moment.

And from the macro-picture to the micro-picture - a botanical juxtaposition.

On top of all this, a prolonged sighting of a seal bottling, suspending itself with its head and neck out the water like a curious tourist wondering where the best fish supper is to be had. And the school of dolphins tailing and piloting the Lifeboat out doing its routine training and servicing, graceful movement and the uncanny sense that they were the ones playing along with those limited intelligence creatures who need a boat to cope with water!

25 July 2012