From Rags to (Metaphorical) Riches

At different times throughout the day yesterday I thought it was Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. 

It was only Wednesday. 

Perhaps that is the best indication of my mental state these days, or what it has been anyway for the last several weeks.  Since returning from Germany and starting the new semester three days later, the days and weeks have all become one big blur, and if it wasn’t for my calendar, I would have no idea what has transpired throughout them. 

What has transpired throughout them? 

The typical events… in excess of the typical amount:  meetings, illness, early morning runs, hours upon hours of research and writing, hours upon hours upon hours of tutoring (19 hours last week alone!), presentation preparations, and a few hours here and there with friends. 

One of the most nerve-racking experiences of the last three weeks took place this past Tuesday, but consumed what felt like every spare moment from Friday afternoon through the weekend. 

What was this nerve-racking experience? 

Presenting an academic response to a section of N.T. Wright’s soon-to-be-published new book, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, in our weekly New Testament Seminar.  The topic was Paul’s revised understanding of ‘The Problem of Evil’ after his conversion, with the imbedded question of ‘Plight and Solution’.  If you have no idea what that means, I don’t blame you.  I barely know.

The last time I presented anything of an academic nature in a properly academic environment was my senior year of college.  Eight years ago.  Then, it was to my undergraduate peers who knew nothing about what I was presenting.  On Tuesday, it was in front of Professor Wright—a former Bishop and current world-class New Testament scholar, a handful of other faculty, and about 30 postgraduate students—only one of whom was female.  Such is life in this field. 

I’d suggest that I’ve gone from rags to riches in the last eight years, but I’m currently

more poor than I’ve ever been.    

I love public speaking, so it was a great experience.  And I’m thankful for the metaphorical riches, even if the literal riches are yet to come. 

Right.    

Here’s a glimpse into the experience.  The majority of the people are behind the round table, with about ten seated at it.  I like the picture below because the chap in the chair in the background looks like he’s sleeping.  Upon inspection, his eyes are open, but he looks rather comatose.  I blame the room temperature.

Here I’m sure Professor Wright is checking what I’m saying against his Greek New Testament in order to refute my ideas in his response.  Or perhaps he’s simply memorizing the last 5% of the Greek New Testament as he patiently waits for me to finish my drone.  

Notice the date engraved into the fireplace behind us: 1537!

And now I need to write a sermon for Sunday; it will be my first time preaching anywhere outside of Cooke City.  Unlike academic presentations, the gap between preaching then and now is only 1.5 years.  Has it really only been that long? 

Galatians and Theology Conference

Ten years ago I took an undergraduate class at Crown College entirely focused on studying Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  It would not be an understatement to say that that class changed my life.  Previous to taking it, I had anticipated pursuing a career in pediatrics.  And then one day—a day I recall as if it was yesterday—we looked at Paul’s mention of Abraham in the letter.  That day, as if I was experiencing my own revelation (Gal. 1:12), I realized for the first time that the covenant instituted by Christ was in one way entirely new, but was, at the same time, a fulfillment of the original promises given to Abraham back in Genesis 12.  The bible was transformed for me that day from a book of books into one continuous book.  My excitement over this very basic yet fundamental biblical truth led me to change my major to biblical studies and, at least for a while, to put a career in medicine on the back burner. 

The University of St Andrews hosted a Galatians and Theology Conference this past week, of which I was a part of the student organizational team.  It has been nearly ten years since I changed my major to biblical studies, and this week as I sat in sessions with my Greek New Testament open, all I could think was, ‘ten years later and look where I am now’.  No, it’s not an understatement to say that that undergraduate Galatians class changed my life. 

Professors, pastors and students of varying levels traveled from around the world to participate in the conference.  With their Greek New Testaments and prepared papers in hand, each participant was ready to dig in to the ancient text that has had such a strong influence in forming our Protestant and Catholic conceptions of faith, law, justification, ethics and more.  N.T. Wright, John Barclay, Richard Bauckham, Richard Hays, Bruce McCormick, and many other highly influential Protestant and Catholic biblical scholars and theologians engaged the text with fresh insight and renewed emphases.  As my friend John said, ‘Our bibliography is walking around us’!  

For three days, 9am-9pm, the delegates sat together in large and small groups discussing the relatively short letter of Paul to the church in Galatia.  Two questions may come to your mind at this point: (1) How is there anything new to say about a short letter that has been discussed by Christians for nearly 2000 years? and (2) Who would want to sit around and talk about this short letter for three whole days?  You would think that after this long the Church would have come to a conclusion regarding the meaning of the words of Paul in the Letter to the Galatians.  You would think.  Alas, it’s exactly because the church continues to find new things to say about the letter and because people are willing to sit around and talk about it for that long that people like me can still hope to one day find a job doing just that.  Except that, hopefully, one day I will get paid for it, rather than paying for it!

As part of the organizational team, it was a very physically draining week, but as a participant in the conference it was also a very intellectually stimulating week.  The Academy may be filled with a bunch of nerds and odd balls, but they are nerds and odd balls that love God and the Church, and care deeply about helping the Church to understand God’s love more accurately by dedicating their life to studying the nitty gritty details of Scripture that not everyone has time or desire to study.  I was honoured to be part of the conversations, and though I feel like I know just as much about Galatians as I did ten years ago, I am equally as excited about the significance of that revelation now as I was ten years ago.  I look forward to learning more for many years to come.   

And now it’s back to my own work that I’ve neglected for the last two weeks…

N.T. Wright’s Inaugural Address

The primary reason I am pursuing my PhD in New Testament here at the University of St Andrews is because of the supervisor assigned to me.  Depending on who you ask within evangelicalism, he is considered to be anything from the single greatest New Testament scholar in the world today to a heretical academic with the capacity to lead the Church theologically astray.  Whatever one thinks about him, no one denies his brilliance, his capacity to communicate to the masses on all levels, or his mastery of the New Testament and it’s first-century world.  Personally, I highly recommend anything ever written by the man, if for no other reason than to experience the cadence of his writing style and the sheer enjoyment that comes with reading the work of a truly gifted scholarly writer.   

In coming days I hope to get more recommendations of his work up here for you to utilize.  For now though, I want to share a link to his recent Inaugural Address as Research Professor of New Testament at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.  It was a fabulous lecture delivered to a crowd of people in an auditorium packed so full there was little room even for standing.  And for good reason.

The lecture is titled:  “Imagining the Kingdom: Mission and Theology in Early Christianity.”  I won’t summarize it for you here, but will simply admonish you to spend a few minutes of your day reading it.  If you are at all interested in the Bible, how the church historically has approached the Bible or how our culture affects how we interpret the Bible today, particularly the Gospels and the teachings of Jesus, in this case the kingdom of God, then I recommend this lecture to you. 

Click here for the lecture.