Mondays with Peter Davids ... Part Eight

This is the final installment of an eight-part interview with Dr. Peter Davids, Professor of Biblical Theology at St. Stephen's University in New Brunswick.

Dr. Davids was interviewed because he is a highly-regarded New Testament exegete, and also believes that all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are for today. He discusses some his experiences of the Spirit here.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation to Dr. Davids for his generosity with his time.

JR: What writing projects do you have planned for the future?

DAVIDS: In the past I have not planned my writing projects. While I did purposely write my first two articles, one a scholarly one on a word in James, published in New Testament Studies, and the other a popular one on Jesus and wealth published in what became Sojourners, and did so because those were areas I wanted to continue to write in, that was not how my books happened.

I was invited "out of the blue" to write my first commentary (James) and then a second, also on James. When I was almost finished with my first James commentary F. F. Bruce, a close friend of I. Howard Marshall, was aware of the fact and invited me to write on 1 – 2 Peter (the person to who it had been previous assigned had not managed to produce a commentary after 25 years and he hoped I would be faster). I gave the 2 Peter part away, but finished 1 Peter and thought I might be through when God told me that writing was part of my call. I wrote that to an elder in my former church, posted the letter, turned back to my work on my desk, and an hour or so later InterVarsity Press called to invite me to write More Hard Sayings of the New Testament, later incorporated into Hard Sayings of the Bible. Later they would invited me to help edit the Dictionary of the Later New Testament. Then I was invited by the series editor to write 2 Peter – Jude. I have always had a book going, normally producing one slowly, but in each case I have been invited to write the book rather than coming up with the idea on my own. The latest in this category is a Greek handbook on 2 Peter – Jude for Baylor University Press.

However, I do have projects that I want to do. I started and never finished a New Testament survey book (I wrote a rough draft), but what I think I really wanted to do was write a NT theology that consistently looks at the text from a kingdom of God perspective. That may be an after retirement project, so in another 9 or 10 years (I am presently 60).

Another project that fascinates me is the idea of writing a book applying Bowenian family emotional systems insights to biblical interpretation. I think that it could be as helpful as applying sociological theory, rhetorical insights, and the like have been. Jesus is the most well-differentiated person who has lived. The fall narrative can be analyzed from the point of view of the rise in anxiety and the reactivity that this engendered. The many commands against judging are not just God telling us how to behave, but family systems shows that focusing on the sins of others keeps us from looking at our own contribution to the system and focuses us on what we cannot change rather than on we can change (i.e. us), so it is unproductive as well as evil (in other words, sin is not good for us, which should come as no surprise). There are a number of ways that I use this type of analysis in teaching already, but there is so much more to do. This is not reductionism, but rather using a tool to help understand the dynamics in texts in a different (perhaps deeper) way. Or, to put it another, way, using a tool God has given me to help others understand the Bible, just as I use linguistic tools, historical tools, etc. to help people understand the Bible.

But right now I am teaching five courses per term plus doing some writing and church work – and our house is being renovated because our daughter, husband and family are living with us while he studies at St. Stephen’s University. Any writing that I do will probably have to wait until next summer, assuming that the Lord does not have plans for that summer which do not include writing.

JR: Thanks again, Dr. Davids.

Friday's with Craig Keener ... Part Seven

This is the seventh installment of an eight-part interview with Dr. Craig Keener, Professor of New Testament at Palmer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.

In today's installment, Craig pays tribute to three men who influenced him toward becoming a New Testament scholar.

Two of those men have been featured on this blog previously: a tribute to Gordon Fee can be read here, and an entry referencing Ben Aker can be read here.

In the interview, Craig mentions New Testament Survey tapes by Gordon Fee. A set of such tapes (an updated set, not the set Craig used almost 30 years ago) is available here.

JR: Knowing that you have great admiration for Gordon Fee (as I do, as well), I can't let this interview close without giving you an opportunity to explain something of what Gordon Fee has meant to you.

KEENER: When I was an undergraduate, three people most influenced me toward scholarship: Gordon Fee, Ben Aker and George Eldon Ladd (two Pentecostals and an evangelical whose theology of the kingdom informs the Vineyard movement). Ladd was extremely influential on me (through his writings), and I doubt that I would have become a scholar without his influence as well as that of the other two. Nevertheless, given the main issue at hand in this interview, I will focus on Gordon --- and, if you'll permit me, Ben.

I had been an atheist since at least age nine until my conversion, and had connected that posture to my other intellectual pursuits. After I was converted through an encounter with Christ, I initially viewed my mind as an idol and tried to suppress it while I let the church teach me. Unfortunately for that plan, as I was reading the Bible I kept noticing conflicts with what I was being taught, and having questions about what I was reading in the Bible. It was actually in my charismatic experiences with the Spirit that I began to hear God teaching me that I should use my mind. It was not my god, but it was a tool I could use in serving God. I still had all my unsettled questions left over from atheism that I then had to confront, which was a painful and lengthy process.

I had enrolled at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, and one of my teachers was Ben Aker. I heard some prosperity-teaching-oriented students complain that Ben Aker just cared about the Bible, whereas real people of faith ought to be able to see the sick healed. (I later learned that my professors' rate of people being healed was comparable to that of the prosperity teachers.) So I was praying for Ben Aker that God would convict him, when suddenly the Holy Spirit convicted me instead. "I have given him the gift of teaching," I felt the Lord say, "and you need to listen to him." I signed up for three classes with Ben Aker the next semester. Things that God would teach me in prayer, I would hear from Ben Aker's exegesis the next week in class. I realized that one could hear God exegetically as well as charismatically, and learned from Scripture that the Spirit is behind both ways.

I had planned to attend Bible college for two years, then go out and preach, since God had called me to minister in His Word. But toward the end of those two years, I felt increasingly drawn to the example I saw in Ben Aker: a ministry of the Word that equipped other ministers of the Word. As I kept praying, I felt increasingly this direction in my calling, and felt that I should finish college. If I had known that the Lord was going to lead me through seminary and a Ph.D. after that, I might have balked! (But He did pay for it, though I needed to live very simply.)

Gordon Fee was about the only model we had for Pentecostal scholarship in the wider world that we had at the time. We had Pentecostal scholars who had given their whole lives to the Pentecostal movement, so we could have the opportunities we had in Bible college. But as far as an example of an open Pentecostal who was making a difference in larger evangelical and mainstream scholarship, Gordon Fee was the only one we knew of. Some people did not appreciate Gordon's determination to grapple with Scripture honestly in the larger academy, and one particularly dogmatic teacher was heard to denounce him as a "heretic." Once we heard that, those of us who were annoyed by that particular teacher's ranting against honest exegesis found Gordon Fee's New Testament survey tapes in our library. I listened to them over and over, taking notes more copiously than I could have if he were my professor.

One of my pet peeves at the school was that those who could voice their views publicly were pretribulational. With all due respect to those who disagree, including close friends of mine, I couldn't see it. I had tried to believe it, but as I kept reading Scripture it became clear to me that every single text used to support that teaching was out of context. An evangelist browbeat me into believing it as a young Christian, around 1976 or so. I answered every text he gave me with its context, but exasperated, he finally warned me that all men of God, like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, were pretrib, and I had been a Christian for just a year. Who did I think I was? I reluctantly conceded his point, but a few months later learned that no one until 1830 had even heard of the doctrine, so most men and women of God through history, as well as many today, did NOT believe the doctrine. That was a turning point in my life: I decided never to believe what someone told me the Bible said without honestly grappling with it myself. The Bible's authority was not just a doctrine to be placed alongside our other doctrines: it was the source for all true doctrine.

When I was going through Gordon Fee's tapes, he declared that someone who asserted that the church would not go through the tribulation had simply never read the New Testament. Because that was such an issue in my environment, I gravitated toward Gordon and toward Ladd's books, because I felt that they would do honest exegesis no matter what the popular opinion was. If my calling was to call believers back to Scripture, then that has to mean Scripture over denominational tradition, as well as Scripture over culture (a problem in some liberal churches) and over experience (a problem in some charismatic churches).

A lot of our graduates were going off to Gordon-Conwell to study with Gordon; I could not afford the move at the time, so I stayed, and Gordon soon left for Regent anyway. It was only years later, while I was doing my doctoral work at Duke and he came to speak in the area, that I was able to meet him in person and tell him what his example meant to me. In subsequent years I have gotten to know him better in person. When he mentored me, however, it was not in person (like Ben Aker) or through his books (like George Ladd). It was, amazingly enough, through his New Testament survey tapes in our library, which circulated like contraband in defiance of an overly dogmatic professor's criticisms. I guess that should be an encouragement to us that if we are faithful to what God called us to do, He is able to make a difference through us for the kingdom even in ways we cannot yet see.

NEXT FRIDAY'S QUESTION: Go ahead and tell us about George Ladd's influence on you. I know the readers will be fascinated.

Mondays with Peter Davids ... Part Seven

This is the seventh installment of an eight-part interview with Dr. Peter Davids, Professor of Biblical Theology at St. Stephen's University in New Brunswick.

JR: You are probably best known as a New Testament exegete, but having a bachelor's degree in psychology, you and your wife are involved in a counseling ministry, as well. Please tell us a bit about that.

DAVIDS: I went to Wheaton to study Bible, there is no doubt about that, but I was already interested in psychology. My old brother had taken an introductory course in psychology in university, and I had dipped into his textbook enough to be fascinated. One reason for this is that it put a name to my mother’s paranoid/ paranoid schizophrenic breaks that the family experienced but did not talk about.

Once in Wheaton I vacillated, for I knew I needed to study Bible, but (1) I learned that seminaries existed and (2) I realized that the Bible department was weak. In fact, my good friend had to take graduate courses for undergraduate credit because the Bible department could not offer him the courses he needed for a Bible major. So I took all of the support courses for a Bible major, including Greek and Hebrew, but majored in psychology. This was not counseling, although there was one course in abnormal psychology, but it did help me to look at human behavior on a scientific basis. I am, in fact, still fascinated by learning theory and studies of the human brain and its function.

I entered Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with advanced standing in languages and one or two other areas, so I could continue my two tracks. I took advanced courses in exegesis and biblical languages (e.g. I learned Aramaic), but I also took most if not all of the courses required for a MA in counseling. I did not do the internship, but at the suggestion of Dr. Busby, the psychiatrist who taught some of my courses, I did work for a summer at Lutheran General Hospital, ostensibly as an intern, but in fact so that he could give us access to his patients (and in practice to all of the patients on our unit). And following that my wife and I were houseparents for a year in a girl’s residential high school (we had our own newborn daughter and 23 high school sophomore girls, who were by no means Christians).


JUDY DAVIDS AND COUNSELING

Now my wife was educated as an elementary school teacher, not a counselor. Yet looking back we realized that she was focused on the two or three disturbed children in her class, not on the 22 or so with no emotional or behavior issues. Later in Germany she would spend time in the girls’ dorm listening to the girls. After that in Sewickley, PA she would notice that people might come along the street as she was gardening, stop, and pour out their lives to her. I suggested to her that she had a gift of counseling, she demurred, and I pushed her to take counseling courses in the seminary where I taught. She enjoyed them and also enjoyed learning about prayer counseling. So I suggested using my sabbatical so she could take those courses, add to them, and add a general theological education, and get a degree. That is why we spent the year in Berkeley, CA, and she received a M.C.S. from New College.

But the saga was not over. A year after she received her degree, I started working as teaching elder at Austin Avenue Chapel (Coquitlam, British Columbia) with the explicit agreement that I could split the job with her. After we got settled (with three children that takes some doing in a new country) she started doing pastoral visitation, which turned into starting a prayer counseling ministry (especially after John Wimber came to Vancouver in 1985), which turned into counseling as Burnaby Christian Counseling Group started to offer their Caretakers course, a two year internship-based counseling course (Judy did three years because she was in their first cohort and so after year one they had year 1.5 while they developed the program for year two). I might add that during this time Judy was discipled in spiritual direction by Prof. James Houston, so she can approach an issue from multiple aspects.

Meanwhile, because I had almost not done my Ph.D. in biblical studies but in clinical psychology (which I recognized in the end would have been a leaving of God’s call) and because I had some discouraging experience with marriage counseling as a chaplain in the US Army Reserve (I would later learn that marriage counseling was just too undeveloped at that time to have been helpful), I had backed away from counseling, but was still interested. Eventually I felt led to take Caretakers because, as God explained to me, it would help me understand my students and so be a better teacher. It did more than that, for it helped me grow personally. And I was part of a counseling group at Regent College, working together with Maudine Fee and Rosemary Green. That was for me a life-giving experience, and I more than once drove home praising God for the privilege I had had of entering into someone’s life. But I did not make that my vocation.

Meanwhile Judy sparked the formation of a Christian counseling ministry in Regina, Canada, became a registered clinical counselor with the British Columbia Association of Clinical Counselors, and worked in a Minirth Meir clinic. She had found her vocation. On occasion we would do marriage counseling together.

Judy started to teach counseling while we were in Austria, for she discovered that counseling Eastern Europeans through a translator was too unsatisfactory (she counseled German speakers, but did that in German), so teaching Eastern Europeans to counsel was far more helpful. She also got into working with burnt out pastors, one part of which was helping David Huggett with retreats for pastors.


VINEYARD COUNSELING

Then Judy received an invitation to provide pastoral care for pastors in the Vineyard movement in the USA and to be based in her home town of Houston. But there was no call for me. Well, the Bible says that a man is to lay down his life for his wife, so I believed (and still believe) that God was calling me to do just that – to practice what I knew was in scripture. We moved to Houston where Judy was employed by the Sugar Land Vineyard and ordained by the national director of the Vineyard movement. What she principally did was create and direct multidisciplinary recovery retreats for burnt out pastors and train, deploy, and supervise a group of recovery group leaders and lay counselors for the Sugar Land Vineyard (the team eventually had 30 members, of which I was one).


Meanwhile I taught as an adjunct professor in Houston, did a lot of traveling to teach, and had a lovely time as honorary assistant at All Saints Episcopal Church (which had a wonderful blend of sensitivity to the Spirit and liturgical structure, of contemporary and traditional music and practice).

Through my teaching at Houston Baptist University I was asked to take over a course called Formation for Christian Leadership. It combined the Christian spiritual tradition (e.g. Dallas Willard) with Bowenian family emotional systems. I had the background to teach this and I loved it. I went on to do post-graduate study at the Center for Family Systems in Bethesda, MD, a center started by the late Edwin Friedman, who had first applied Murray Bower’s family systems theory to church and work systems (and eventually to national systems). "Ah, that explains what was going on in that church situation," I realized. "This is what pastors need to know. My wife would have a lot less burnout recover work to do if pastors would take this to heart." More important personally, I realized I now had a tool for working on my own situations and my own issues.

We both decided that God was calling us to leave Houston and come here to St. Stephen, New Brunswick, to teach at St. Stephen’s University. Yes, there was a desire to work in the same organization. And, yes, there was some naivete about St. Stephen’s climate and some misinformation about the situation. But in the end it was surely a strong conviction that persuaded Judy to give up the best paying job either of us had had, leave her native city, her sister, her relatives, and her close friends, and journey to an impoverished county in Canada to work without a salary at a tiny university. My losses paled in comparison to hers. She is now pursuing her calling of caring for burned out pastors (especially Vineyard pastors), but now she has to raise the money to run the retreats.


I am using my family systems insights to help me navigate in this very interesting university setting. And I have slowly won my way in the local diocese, which is conservative liturgically as well as theologically and trying to cope with the fact that young people often leave the province upon graduation, so the province as well as the churches is graying. Serving as interim rector in the local parish gave me an opportunity to fall in love with the people and do a lot of grief counseling. And, yes, God was correct in that I do understand my students much better due to my counseling training.

NEXT MONDAY'S QUESTION: What writing projects do you have planned for the future?

Fridays with Craig Keener ... Part Six

This is the sixth installment of an eight-part interview with Craig Keener, Professor of New Testament at Palmer Theological Seminary in Pennsylania.

He and his wife, Medine, both have doctorates. Their marriage story can be read here.

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JR: You ministered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo this summer. How did that go?

KEENER: Although I was in the DRC for a day, most of the trip was in Republic of Congo (the smaller country also named Congo, across the river), where my wife is from. Ministry went well but I personally learned a lot more from those doing ministry there.

Let me tell one story, about Mama Jan. Because she prays for us regularly, my brother-in-law said she wanted to meet with us. We went to the tin structure outside her home where she meets with people much of the day to pray for their needs. She is not a pastor, but is a deacon in one of the local evangelical churches. (Although the "evangelical church" is the country's mainline Protestant church and is not Pentecostal, there is great openness to any of God's activities in Scripture.) Mama Jan prayed for us and began to prophesy at length, and what she shared about my work was deeply encouraging to me. When we were parting I told her that I have always had very high respect for prophetesses. She responded very humbly.

A few days later we returned, because I was collecting some healing testimonies for a book that I was writing, and my brother-in-law assured me that Mama Jan had some. This humble woman began to narrate various healings in a matter-of-fact way (as if to say, who wouldn't expect Jesus to heal people?), including three people raised from the dead directly through her prayers. (In one case, there was someone in the room who was present at the time and could verify the story; my brother-in-law knew some other people in her stories.) I was dumbfounded. "Mama Jan, if I write these stories in this book, you will have people from the U.S. wanting to come have you pray for them!" She broke up laughing and pointing to an old picture of Jesus on her wall. "It's just Jesus!" she said. In other words, Jesus is the same in the U.S. as he is in Congo.

As I have said about the other questions, I have a lot of growing to do. Some of my fellow charismatics may think, "Keener is a charismatic scholar; that's great." But Keener has a long way to go in the Spirit. I thank God for giving us examples like Mama Jan.

NEXT FRIDAY'S QUESTION: Knowing that you have great admiration for Gordon Fee (as I do, as well), I can't let this interview close without giving you an opportunity to explain something of what Dr. Fee has meant to you.

The Witheringtons write a novel

New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III and his wife, Ann, have written a novel that has just been published.

The Lazarus Effect (Wipf & Stock) is, according to Ben's blog, "an archaeological thriller that can prompt a conversation about Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and how we ought to treat each other."

Well, I'm interested in all of that --- but in a novel?

Since I have not read the novel and Anne Rice has, and seeing how Anne's (no mean novelist, herself) opinion is more meaningful than any I might offer, let's see what she has to say about The Lazarus Effect:

"There's no thriller quite like an archaeological thriller, and when we find ourselves in a biblical mystery, the suspense and the drama are especially delicious. Set against the intense, exotic, and vivid backdrop of modern Israel, yet delving into the deepest mysteries of the time of Christ, The Lazarus Effect will not fail to entertain and inform. Highly recommended," she writes.

I'm in.

Monday's with Peter Davids ... Part Six

This is the sixth installment of an eight-part interview with Dr. Peter Davids, Professor of Biblical Theology at St. Stephen's University in New Brunswick.


JR: Scholars like J. I. Packer are taking firm stands on the tensions currently in the Anglican Church. Have you felt the necessity to identify yourself with either side of the struggle?

DAVIDS: The short answer is, “No.”

Make no mistake about it, I have followed the discussion concerning homosexual practice that has taken place in biblical studies circles. I have sat at the long table where Robin Scroggs and Katherine Kroeger debated the meaning of Pauline passages. And I have yet to be convinced that Paul would approve of homosexual genital behavior for people who called themselves believers in Jesus, even if Paul said relatively little directly about it despite widespread homosexual practice in the surrounding Greek communities.

At the same time, I am also convinced that there are a lot of other things that he would not approve of, nor would Jesus, and yet they are not major issues in the believing community, things like divorce and angry outbursts.

It is also clear that he would not be interested in the behavior of non-Christians, for he makes that clear in 1 Corinthians 5 and applies it to the issue of divorce in 1 Corinthians 7. Those “outside” are not our concern.

So in my mind there is far too much anxiety around the issue of homosexuality.

On the conservative side people are constantly saying that it is not the issue but only a small symptom and then they are constantly coming back to it, which tells me that it is the issue for them.

On the liberal side people try to put the whole opposition to, say Gene Robinson, in terms that make it a moral crusade without looking at the whole complex of issues that it raises.

Both sides seem so anxious, so polarized, so reactive that I feel rather uncomfortable with the debate. Where is there someone who is a calm leader?

Certainly there is the issue of faithfulness to the witness to Jesus in scripture, i.e. obedience to Jesus as Lord, but that was there long before Gene Robinson was consecrated as Bishop of New Hampshire. Those issues were there in spades back when I was ordained, which is almost 30 years ago. And in fact, those issues were around in England back in the 1800’s. This latest surge of high anxiety is not triggered by that per se.

Finally, I see no place in scripture where one is encouraged to leave a church over such issues. There are churches in Revelation where very little positive is said about the church and other churches where nothing positive is said about the church. And yet the followers of Jesus are called to be faithful to Jesus, not to leave and form another group. While that is the clearest example, one should also note that even in Corinth Paul calls for unity, not for separation.

So I am not convinced that I am called to separate, and the stand that I want to make is against the highly reactive atmosphere surrounding the whole situation in the church. I may indeed be forced to make some type of move, for I am canonically resident in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, which is threatening to leave the Episcopal Church, and I live in the Anglican Diocese of Fredericton, that would not approve of that move. Yet right now I feel called to live with tension.

The liberal side does not particularly like me because of what I say about genital homosexual practice both practically and biblically, and the conservative side does not like it that I do not wish to join in with them in their reactivity. But when I feel uncomfortable with this stance, I remember that more than one follower of God/Jesus (depending on the Testament) also found themselves in a similar position.

NEXT MONDAY'S QUESTION: You are probably best known as a New Testament exegete, but having a bachelor's degree in psychology, you and your wife are involved in counseling ministry, as well. Please tell us a bit about that.

Fridays with Craig Keener ... Part Five

This is the fifth installment of an eight-part interview with Dr. Craig Keener, Professor of New Testament at Palmer Theological Seminary.

Craig is co-editing, with Michael Bird, the New Covenant Commentary Series (Wipf & Stock) that is scheduled for publication 2009-2014. He is writing the commentary on Romans for that series. Gordon Fee is contributing the volume on the Revelation.

An 88-page manual that Craig has written on biblical interpretation is made available for free at the Pneuma Foundation website. It can be downloaded here (allow a few seconds for downloading).

JR: In your book, Gift & Giver (Baker Academic), you mention that you have been used in prophecy and prayer for the healing of others. How do your cessationist peers in NT scholarship react to such unabashed charismatic beliefs and practices?

KEENER: Ah, those gifts are in the Bible, aren't they? If it's all right, I'd like to comment briefly on how one of those gifts, prophecy, has shaped me. Regarding the other, healing, it's true that I've seen some people healed in clearly miraculous ways; but the pain I see is inviting me to try to learn to trust God more in that area. I think anybody (cessationist or not) who prays with compassion for the sick and confidence in who God is, will sometimes see God answer their prayer; but I really need to grow in that area.

Regarding prophecy, when I was a young Christian God gave me a deep hunger to hear His voice. When I first started hearing the Spirit privately, I did not realize that it was a common experience. But as far as publicly, I understood that prophecy was biblical; I had been praying in tongues since two days after my conversion from atheism (and before I had ever heard of tongues) but learned from 1 Cor. 14 that for public edification we should seek prophecy more than tongues. So I started praying for the gift, and that one came quickly. Much of what God said shocked me --- both the deeply loving, comforting parts (I had not internalized the reality of such deep love before) and the scarier parts --- such as where the Church is missing it. Some things the Lord warned about back then may be afflicting the U.S. church today even more than back then.

I know that prophecy can take different forms. With a few exceptions, the form in which I have received it has usually not been telling people where their lost donkeys were (as Samuel could do). Mine has usually been less spectacular, yet deeply intertwined with my calling in the Word. It was like I was full of Scripture and the Lord would cause the message of the text to flow through me, to groups or individuals. Sometimes I have trouble even discerning guidance for myself; the more my personal feelings are wrapped up in something, the more difficult the subjectivity becomes for me, and sometimes that very subjectity has invited me to retreat more into objective exegesis of the Word. We very much need the objective foundation in the Word to keep our subjective experience from getting skewed. Yet if we read Scripture very much, we also see that God normally is active in our subjective experience; we can't take Scripture seriously and avoid that.

The gift that dominates much of my activity now is the gift of teaching, whether it's in explicit teaching or in research and writing. But in my case, that gift is very much shaped by my experience with prophecy. My objectives and goals in teaching are influenced by what I have felt the Lord saying to the church. In the same way, the insights I received in prophecy were bounded by Scripture: the ones I held fast to were the ones I could be sure of from Scripture, even though some of the insights about the state of the church would not have broken through my cultural and personal defense mechanisms without that gift. Prophecy doesn't determine my exegesis, but it influences what I feel passionate about the church needing to hear. That doesn't come out so much in my scholarly commentaries, which are "raw material," but comes out, for example, in application sections of my Revelation commentary, or in my preaching. I want to be tethered to God's heart.

CESSATIONISTS

How do my cessationist peers react? Surprisingly, most of them respond respectfully and graciously. I don't think most evangelical biblical scholars today are cessationist --- it's pretty hard to prove from Scripture. (It is easier to become cessationist by reacting to charismatic excesses. If it weren't for Scripture, I could have gone that route myself, because I often find myself reacting against such excesses!) Moreover, many who are theologically committed to cessationism are really good exegetes --- hence often recognize that the case is not very strong.

Still, even with strong cessationists, I have been quite surprised. The dividing lines in scholarship differ from what they once were. (Of course you have more skeptical scholars who deny anything supernatural today or in the past, but they are not "cessationists.") I have been very painfully and astonishingly torn to shreds over one issue that I did not expect on this level (my support of women in ministry; for several years, that seemed to be the litmus test of orthodoxy on both sides of its divide). But on issues where I expected major controversy, such as eschatology or tongues --- big debates in the 1970s --- it seems that most people who disagree with me have disagreed graciously. To my surprise, some faculty at places like Dallas and Liberty have reached out to me and graciously affirmed my work, focusing on our common ground rather than where we disagree. That has meant a lot to me. My academic training was mostly in Pentecostal, mainline and secular circles, and I had some stereotypes of some parts of evangelicalism that I had to surrender. That is not to say that no one fit the stereotypes, but they did not fit where I expected and I had to repent of my own prejudices.

Some non-Pentecostal, noncharismatic scholars have even approached me with their thoughts because they know that I am charismatic. One well-known evangelical scholar was telling me that it looked to him from the Bible like people should get healed on a regular basis. Then here I was, the charismatic, having to answer, "You do seem to be right but I have to admit that is not yet my experience." Being a biblicist, I realize that my experience is likelier the problem than our exegesis. But many people are hungry for more of the experience they see in Scripture.

On another occasion there was a scholar at SBL who was so sick he was going to leave the meeting and not give his paper the next day. A colleague in Hebrew Bible and I asked if we could pray for him, and laid hands on him in front of the book exhibit area at SBL. Just about that time the exhibit was closing and people were now milling all about us (quite politely, they seemed not to notice us!) I was surprised to learn that the scholar did present his paper the next day, reporting to us that God healed him after we prayed. That has nothing to do with me or my faith (maybe my Hebrew Bible colleague had more --- smile), but with our awesome God eager to show His love, mercy and power. I still have a long way to go in growing in faith, though.

NEXT FRIDAY'S QUESTION: You ministered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo this summer. How did that go?

Mondays with Peter Davids ... Part Five

This is the fifth installment of an eight-part interview with Dr. Peter Davids, Professor of Biblical Theology at St. Stephen's University in New Brunswick.
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JR: You grew up in the Plymouth Brethren fellowship and have ministered a great deal in Vineyard Fellowship circles, and you are an Episcopalian/Anglican minister. Tell us some of the things you have learned from that ecumenicity and why you have chosen the Anglican/Episcopalian communion as home.
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DAVIDS: The Brethren taught me to immerse myself in scripture and to seek to understand the early church, although in many ways they are as much children of the 1800’s as of the first century. They also taught me that the Lord’s Supper is the central act of worship, something that I believe that both biblical theology and church history confirm.
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Thus when God called me into the Episcopal Church (while I was in Wiedenest), he was confirming some of what I learned in the Brethren. Of course, I had been using the Book of Common Prayer and the classic works of other denominations in my devotions for two or three years by then, so he had been leading me before he spoke to me. But I realized that most of what divides us denominationally has more to do with style and history than with things that the scripture teaches.
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An exegete does a lot of "debunking" in that one often sees that the scriptures used to establish this or that teaching in a movement or denomination do not really support what they are supposed to prove. I started to learn that in Wheaton College where student friends did not all become Brethren when I explained "scriptural principles of gathering" to them.
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So for me the move into the Episcopal Church was not giving up something, but adding new dimensions to my previous commitments, something that the Bishop of Pittsburgh, Robert Appleyard, made easier by accepting me as a transfer of ordination from the Brethen (he accepted commendation as tantamount to ordination) and stating when he ordained me that he was not giving me a ministry but widening my ministry.
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When I left Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry to teach at New College, Berkeley, and later Regent College, it was because I knew that the believing world was wider than evangelical Anglicans. It was at Regent that I got involved with an interdenominational renewal group led by George Mallone and it was that group of 30 pastors that invited John Wimber to Canada.
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John was not an innovative theologian – he used the standard evangelical works I knew well – but he put some "hands and feet" to those truths. Yes, Jesus came to bring the kingdom; yes the gospels were written so that we could follow Jesus; and yes the Holy Spirit is the on-going gift to the church to help us to follow Jesus. All of that I believed. Now, said John Wimber, let’s do it not just here in the meetings but in the streets. There is nothing "un-Brethren" or "un-Episcopal" about that.
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At that time I was involved in both a very progressive Brethren church and an Anglican parish. When the Holy Spirit came to the Brethren church our eldest member, whom I expected would be shaken, instead tapped her cane and said, "O, the glory. O, the glory. I never thought I’d live to see this day." So what I have learned is that each denomination has gifts and that we minister best if we minister using all of the gifts.
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The reason why I call the Anglican or Episcopal communion my home has two parts.
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The first part is that I am convinced that the high point of worship in both Old and New Testament is a meal in the presence of God and in the New Testament we call this the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist. This goes back to my Brethren days and it is one place where I think that the Brethren pick up a significant theme of the New Testament. Thus I feel incomplete in situations where there is worship without the Lord’s Supper, for it is like almost getting to a climax and then stopping. The Episcopal Church is generally Eucharistic for its main service on Sunday and often at other times as well.
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The second part is simply that I am convinced that God did call me both to the communion itself and to ordained ministry in that communion, so while I have drifted away from that call at various points in my career, the more my experience with God, the more I want to follow that call until he calls me elsewhere. Of course, I do like liturgical worship, for it is thoughtful and absolutely full of scripture; I do like the continuity down the ages that the liturgy gives one; and I recognize that many groups are led by "bishops" whether or not they call them "bishop" (so why not be part of a group that selects its bishops through a relatively open process), but those first two reasons are the main reasons.
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I might add that I see my ability to enjoy multiple traditions to be a gift. I know that all do not have this gift. In fact, my wife finds it difficult and normally focuses on the Vineyard alone. I accept it as a gift and try to use it for God’s glory. So presently I am a theological advisor to the German-speaking Vineyard movement, am sometimes called upon for an article or theological advice by the Canadian Vineyard movement, but generally minister in Anglican churches in New Brunswick or Episcopal churches in Maine (other than a lovely 10 week stint earlier this year teaching at a church-based Anglican training college in London).
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God loves his whole church, so I hope I can copy him just a little and embrace as much of it as he makes possible for me, all the while keeping my roots in that part of his church where he has planted me.
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NEXT MONDAY'S QUESTION: Scholars like J. I. Packer are taking firm stands on the tensions currently in the Anglican Church. Have you felt the necessity to identify yourself with either side of the struggle?

Fridays with Craig Keener ... Part Four

This is the fourth installment of an eight-part interview with Craig Keener, Professor of New Testament at Palmer Theological Seminary.

Craig and his wife, Medine (pictured on the left), both have doctorates. Their marriage story can be read here.

Craig is co-editing, with Michael Bird, the New Covenant Commentary Series (Wipf & Stock) that is scheduled for publication from 2009 to 2014. He is writing the commentary on Romans for that series. Gordon Fee is contributing the volume on The Revelation.

An 88-page manual that Craig has written on biblical interpretation is made available for free at the Pneuma Foundation website. It can be downloaded here (allow a few seconds for downloading).

JR: You have also written more slender commentaries. Given your proclivity to thoroughness, is that type of writing somewhat frustrating for you?

KEENER: The smaller Matthew commentary I wrote was frustrating for me because I had to leave so much out --- that was why I wrote the bigger one for Eerdmans. (Because it started that way, it did keep it from being as big as it might have been otherwise.) I think the bigger one for Eerdmans uses over 10,000 references from ancient sources besides the Bible, and the John commentary uses about 20,000 (a bit more or less, depending on whether one counts the Apocrypha as extrabiblical --- smile). The Revelation commentary was a bigger frustration--I wanted to put in enough that I would not have to write another scholarly commentary later. Some material was cut in the notes, and it tempted me to write a scholarly one later (though I think it has enough background material to satisfy most readers, and I can probably live with it).

But I also am old enough now to realize that I cannot do everything I once dreamed of doing. I have so much material that I wanted to write on the entire New Testament --- and be done by 40 (though I knew that ideal wasn't really realistic, I never thought I'd have covered so little of the NT by age 48). I didn't realize that even if one is sitting on mounds of information, it still takes time to write a good commentary, and then one has to proofread, plus check the editor's proofreading, plus do indexing. The John commentary took about 3-4 months of 60-hour weeks just for indexing, and sleep was very difficult once I started dreaming about indexing at night!

After all that, shorter commentaries become somewhat more appealing, and I will probably do some more of them in the future. For awhile now my friend Ben Witherington has been suggesting I move in that direction, and it's no coincidence that I wrote my most concise commentary (on 1-2 Corinthians) for his series. I had to choose judiciously among my information, using maybe one-tenth to one-seventh of my sources. What I discovered, though, was that if I didn't try to do everything, I could write a commentary informed by ancient sources in a few months. I hoped to do a scholarly commentary on 1 Corinthians someday, so I didn't feel like my readers were missing out too much.

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Encouraged that I might realistically finish publishing my notes on the NT and be able to retire and go back to some other form of ministry, I calculated how long it would take me to finish the NT if I did short volumes. It still looked like it would take me till I was 70 at that rate, so I have narrowed my focus regarding which books I'll write commentaries on. The big thing is that life is too short to duplicate someone else's effort (if I can't offer something significant that isn't already offered, I'll just recommend what is already offered). So whether a commentary is short or long, I want to offer some fresh material that readers wouldn't likely get on their own. Even in the short 1-2 Corinthians commentary, I was able to illumine a lot of turns of phrase in Paul's letters from other ancient letters and various other sources.

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There is so much to do and my heart burns for God's Word. I am also aware that many brothers and sisters would have loved to do what I am doing, but the doors were not open to them. For many years as I went through college, seminary and doctoral work I did not know where the money would come from; God supplied my needs. He did the miracles I needed at all the decisive moments, or I would not have the opportunity to do what I am doing now. Because I know that God blessed me to do what I love so much --- handling His Word --- I feel keenly the responsibility to do my best. I try to be diligent in providing as much of this work as I can to the rest of the body of Christ. That is the main reason God gives us gifts in the body of Christ --- to use us as conduits of His blessing to others.

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I know that many people pray for their pastors and for prominent ministers of the Word. I hope people will not forget to pray for us scholars, too. We need God's leading and God's blessing.

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NEXT FRIDAY'S QUESTION: In your book, Gift & Giver (Baker Academic), you mention that you have been used in prophecy and prayer for the healing of others. How do your cessationist peers in NT scholarship react to such unbashed charismatic beliefs and practices?

Mondays with Peter Davids ... Part Four

This is the fourth installment of an eight-part interview with Dr. Peter Davids, Professor of Biblical Theology at St. Stephen's University in New Brunswick.

His highly-regarded commentary on the epistle of James is part of The New International Greek Testament Commentary series (Eerdmans), edited by I. Howard Marshall and W. Ward Gasque.

JR: Your highly-regarded commentary on James' epistle was published in 1982, just as the explosion of evangelical commentary publishing was beginning. From a scholar's point of view, what do make of this explosion?

DAVIDS: I think that things had been building for a number of years. F. F. Bruce and some others had started the Tyndale Fellowship back in 1935, I believe, when no faculty in the UK had an evangelical biblical scholar. When I was there in the early 70s, no faculty did not have an evangelical biblical scholar.

Back in the USA evangelicalism was maturing, often coaxed and coached by British evangelicals. Rather than defensive biblical scholarship ("How the liberals are wrong"), more and more were feeling secure enough to ask questions that had not been asked before and explore the text with historical eyes rather than simply repeat the answers that their dogmatic tradition demanded that they give.

Parallel to this maturing of scholars came the maturing of presses. Eerdmans was joined by InterVarsity Press and then Zondervan and Baker as presses that wanted their own place in the evangelical scholarly market. When I was in seminary, only Eerdmans was in that market.

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So you have the maturing of scholars and scholarship at the same time that you had presses that all wanted to be in the scholarly market, broadly defined, and that led to the explosion of commentaries.

I did not set out to write a commentary on James. I was teaching in Wiedenest when Ward Gasque visited me (as a fellow Brethren – he was on his way to a conference elsewhere) and read my thesis one night, unbeknown to me, then consulted with I. Howard Marshall and offered me a contract to write that commentary. They wanted someone able and ready to produce a commentary for their new series. Scholars in Tyndale Fellowship wanted to create an evangelical scholarly tool, a press was amenable, so they sought out other scholars to write.

That pattern was repeated multiple times, although in some cases presses decided that they needed a series (often because of the success that they saw at other presses) and sought scholars to be editors and recruit the writers of the volumes.

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NEXT MONDAY'S QUESTION: You grew up in the Plymouth Brethren fellowship and have ministered a great deal in Vineyard Fellowship circles, and you are an Episcopalian/Anglican minister. Tell us some of the things you have learned from that ecumenicity and why you have chosen the Anglican/Episcopalian communion as home.