timjdavy Bible and Mission

Old Testament and Ecology blog

In my post on Friday on Old Testament and the Environment I mentioned a blog I have recently come across: Old Testament and Ecology. I think it deserves a post in its own right.

It is written by Justin Allison, a PhD student in Old Testament based in the States, and is partly a record of his journal through doctoral studies, but also contains regular posts on environmental issues and the theme of the environment in the Scriptures. He also does podcasts.

Have a look, for example, at his post the other day on God as Creator in Zechariah

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Old Testament and the Environment

One of the modules available on Redcliffe’s MA in Global Issues in Contemporary Mission is ‘The Greening of Mission’. Today I joined the class to look at some material on creation and the environment in the Old Testament.

I gave them three pieces of preparatory reading:

1. Read ch.4 of C.J.H. Wright’s Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Leicester: IVP, 2004);

2. Read Gordon Wenham’s article, The Bible and the Environment, which is available on the John Ray Initiative website; [edit: no longer available on JRI, if you have access to Tranformation journal you can find it here.]

3. Have a look at the Old Testament and Ecology blog. This is one I’ve recently discovered, which is written by a Justin Allison, a PhD student in Old Testament based in the States.

Here’s a quote from Wenham’s article:

Two terms are used in Genesis to describe man’s management function vis-a-vis the rest of creation. He is told to ‘have dominion’ (Hebrew radah) over other living creatures, fish, birds, cattle and creeping things and to ‘subdue’ (kabash) the earth. ‘Have dominion’ is quite a positive term for ruling. Whereas many people today have an anarchist streak, or at least an antipathy to those in authority, that was not the official outlook of the ancient Near East, who saw kings as essentially benevolent and concerned with their subjects’ welfare. Psalm 72 puts this message powerfully:

Give the king thy justice, O God,
May he judge thy people with righteousness
and thy poor with justice!
Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness!
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor!
(Psalm 72: 1-3)

To ‘have dominion’ means to be in charge of something, e.g. workers (1 Kings 4: 24; 9: 23). To be sure some people may abuse their authority and exercise power harshly (Leviticus 25: 43), but that is clearly not the intention here. Man is created in God’s image, and so as his representative is expected to act in a Godlike way, and God throughout Genesis 1 and 2 is portrayed as a thoroughly creation-friendly deity.

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Ian Stackhouse on the Psalms

In his excellent The Day is Yours: Slow Spirituality in a Fast-Moving World (Paternoster, 2008) Ian Stackhouse illustrates something of the wonder and power of the Psalms. In a short chapter on Praying the Psalms he comments:

Before the world gets its teeth into us, the Psalms do their own work of slowing us down, getting us to see ‘heaven in ordinarie’. Instead of bringing God into our world, the Psalms invite us into their world: a world of salvation, grace, trust, thanksgiving, lament, and praise…

When I pray the Psalms the whole company of saints is there with me: those who have gone before and those who are going now. Furthermore, even if I don’t feel what the Psalmist is going through, you can bet that someone else in the community of faith is. Even if I wake up joyful, for a change, and can’t hack why the Psalmist is so downcast – ‘why are so you downcast, I my soul?’ – the simple act of praying the Psalm reminds me that I am part of a community in which at any one time there are people grieving even as I am rejoicing. Conversely, while I am grieving, there are others who are rejoicing. Praying the Psalms tutors us in this community awareness.

Sometimes when I am praying a psalm a face will appear; someone for whom this Psalm describes actual experience. Other times the words of the Psalm sound for all the world like the latest news bulletin from Kosovo, or the Congo, and so, in a strange way, the ancient liturgy helps me to be more up-to-date than I would otherwise be. Precisely because the world hasn’t changed much, and human experience is awful a lot of the time, praying the Psalms, far from representing a retreat into private interiority, is an advance onto the concourse of life. (p.95)

You can my review of the whole book here: The Day is Yours review

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Ernest Lucas ZIBBCOT commentary on Daniel

Ernest Lucas ZIBBCOT commentary on DanielZondervan have made another volume in their Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: Old Testament series available to read online.

This time it’s Ernest Lucas on the book of Daniel. It may not be available for long so take a look while you can: Ernest Lucas ZIBBCOT on Daniel

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The Bible as cross-cultural experience

Why is teaching the Bible in a mission training centre such a privilege? There are numerous ways of answering this but one of them was highlighted to me again today as I taught a couple of sessions on the background to the Gospels.

Our primary focus at Redcliffe is to equip students to live and work in cross-cultural contexts, whether in their home country or elsewhere. As we looked at the history, political and cultural background of the Gospels it struck me once again that reading the Bible is itself a cross-cultural experience.

The Bible was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by people very much unlike myself: different languages, different cultures, different ways of seeing the world. So just as we need to be aware of cultural similarities and differences when engaging with another culture, so too should we be mindful of the cultural (and other) baggage we bring to the text.

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IBMR now available online for free

The International Bulletin of Missionary Research is now available online for free.

The IBMR website www.internationalbulletin.org has everything from 2004 to the present day. It also has a link and username/password to browse back issues through the ATLA database.

I had a quick browse and found a 2006 article by Philip Jenkins on ‘Reading the Bible in the Global South’, which looks interesting. I’m sure a closer inspection would reveal more Bible and Mission related papers.

It’s great that more and more resources are becoming more easily accessible. I know journals need to pay their way, or at least to have a sponsoring organisation behind them, but being freely available makes them accessible to those around the globe who could never dream of being able to afford them.

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Michael Goheen on the Old Testament as a tool of God’s missional purposes

In a recent article (‘Continuing Steps Towards a Missional Hermeneutic’, Fideles (2008), pp.49-99), Michael Goheen makes the point that different texts in the Bible will form God’s missional people for his missional purposes in different ways. Here’s what he says about this in relation to the Old Testament:

The Old Testament Scriptures were written to ‘equip’ God’s people for their missional calling to be a distinctive people. Specifically the Scriptures are an instrument of God’s loving and powerful presence among his people to shape them for their missional calling. N. T. Wright suggests that “a full account of the role of scripture within the life of Israel would appear as a function of Israel’s election by God for the sake of the world. Through scripture, God was equipping his people to serve his purposes.” Equipping, Wright continues, is “inadequate shorthand for the multiple tasks scripture accomplished.”

It is precisely in order that Israel might fulfill her missional calling and be a light to the nations, that the law ordered its national, liturgical, and moral life; that wisdom helped to shape daily conduct in conformity to God’s creational order; that the prophets threatened and warned Israel in their disobedience and promised blessing in obedience; that the psalms brought all of Israel’s life into God’s presence in worship and prayer; that the historical books continued to tell the story of Israel at different points reminding Israel of and calling them to their missional place in the story.

In a similar vein Chris Wright points out that the Old Testament is a missional phenomenon that reflects the struggles of a people called to be a light to the world in their missionary encounter and engagement with competing cultural and religious claims of the surrounding world. Specifically, the story of the exodus in the Torah narrates how the LORD confronts the rival religious claims of the Pharaoh and Egypt; the story of creation is presented as a polemic against the creation myths of the Ancient Near East; the historical narratives and pre-exilic
prophets depict Israel’s struggle with the religious culture of Canaan; the exilic and post-exilic books emerge as Israel’s struggles with their identity in the midst of large empires with competing religious commitments; wisdom texts engage pagan wisdom traditions “with a staunch monotheistic disinfectant”; the psalms and prophets nourish the calling of Israel to be a priestly kingdom in the midst of the nations.

In short, the Old Testament canon was shaped by a people called to be a community of mission, a light to the nations. The various books arose to nurture that calling in various ways. (pp.91-92)

The article as a whole is well worth reading. The books he cites are N.T. Wright’s The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture (New York: Harper Collins, 2005) and C.J.H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2006).

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Happy new year

So what does 2010 hold in store? To give you a flavour of some of the things I’ll be blogging on in future posts:

1. Redcliffe College is launching a Centre for the Study of Bible and Mission, which I am heading up. The centre aims to serve the Church by engaging in research, teaching, writing and speaking on mission in the Bible and the Bible in mission thinking, practice and training. Part of this will be the new…

2. Postgraduate MA in Bible and Mission, which will be starting in September, subject to validation by the University of Gloucestershire.

3. Redcliffe and allnations, the UK’s two specialist centres for mission training, have agreed to the principle of merging.

4. Teaching. Between now and the Summer I’ll be teaching on the Gospels, NT letters and ‘Jesus, the Kingdom of God and Christian Mission’. I’ll also be contributing individual MA sessions on ‘Metaphors we lead by’, ‘The Old Testament and Environmental Concern’, and ‘Suffering in the Bible’. We also have our annual Hebrew Week in June.

So lots to keep me busy and, hopefully, lots to interest you. Happy new year,

Tim

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Redcliffe College launches new MA in Bible and Mission

I’m really excited to announce a new postgraduate MA in Bible and Mission that is being launched at Redcliffe College, ready for September 2010. This has been one of my projects over the last couple of years and it is now going through the validation process with the University of Gloucestershire.

I’ve reproduced the MA in Bible and Mission course page from Redcliffe’s website below. A few aspects are worth highlighting. Firstly, the course is being developed in partnership with mission agencies. Among them, Wycliffe Bible Translators and Bible Society have been particularly involved. Secondly, the course will seek to bridge missiology and Biblical studies in an integrated way. Thirdly, it aims to help students reflect on the Bible missionally, and mission biblically. There will be a key emphasis on missional hermeneutics and it also reflects on the Bible as a tool of mission as well as a record and phenomenon of mission.

Any comments or questions? Leave a comment below…

With the increasing complexity of the Church’s mission in the world, clear and deep biblical reflection is essential. Not only should God’s people have a firm grasp of how mission fits into the Scriptures, we should also be confident and competent in using the Bible to engage missionally in a variety of cultural contexts.

Redcliffe’s MA in Bible and Mission enables students to explore mission in the Bible and the Bible in mission thinking and practice. It is being developed in partnership with various agencies including Wycliffe Bible Translators and Bible Society, both of whom will also be involved in the ongoing content of the course.

Students complete three required modules and choose one further module.

Method and Content in Missiological Study: Develop your competence in research methods at postgraduate level and gain an overview of Missiology.

Reading the Bible Missionally: Enhance your understanding of the Bible and mission by applying a ‘missional hermeneutic’ to the Scriptures.

Bible Engagement in Intercultural Contexts: Explore and evaluate different approaches to using the Bible in different cultural contexts, both in the ‘West’ and in the majority world.

Optional choice modules may include:
The Mission of the Church in the Context of Post-colonialism and Globalisation;
Crucial Issues in Asian Mission and Theology;
Crucial Issues in European Mission and Theology;
An Introduction to Global Leadership;
The Greening of Mission.

Studying part time over two years…
Studying the MA part time allows you to study exactly the same curriculum as the full time qualification. The compulsory modules are studied during the first year. The second year includes the optional modules and completion of the dissertation.

Studying the ‘flexible learning mode’ option…
This distance learning style course is ideal for mission practitioners working overseas or on home assignment, international students, and those who are unable to spend an extended period of time away from the workplace or home.

Visit Flexible Learning Mode MA to discover more.

So What Next?
We hope you have found this information helpful. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.

Here are a few links that may be helpful to you right now…

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Dan Beeby on interfaith relations in the Bible

In his excellent little book, Canon and Mission (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999), Dan Beeby has a section he calls, ‘The People and the Nations: Interfaith Relations in the Bible’ (pp.80ff.). Here are the headings that structure his discussion, which begins with the Old Testament and then applies a similar framework to the New Testament, while also adding a further dimension as well.

Israel Existed (Exists?) for the Nations

Israel’s Life was Lived Over Against the Nations
1. The nations as enemies.
2. The nations as God’s instruments of punishment.
3. The nations as witness to Israel’s rebellion.
4. The nations as a religious threat to Israel.

Israel as Debtor to the Nations
1. Egypt.
2. Cultural borrowing.
3. The nations as occasion for revelation.
4. The nations as instruments of liberation.
5. The good pagans.

Israel as Missionary to the Nations
1. Centripetal mission.
2. Other ways of doing mission.

Beeby is very quotable. What, I wonder, is the missional significance of what he says in his discussion about ‘good pagans’, under the third of the above headings?

In contrast to most of the Old Testament, some writers take pleasure – almost perverse pleasure – in pointing to the excellent in the nations as though Israel should be made aware of her debt to them for good examples. Esau, who was later regarded as symbolic of the Gentiles, is shown to be more of the gentleman than his chosen brother Jacob. Pharaoh shows up much better than the timid liar Abraham, who is prepared to sacrifice Sarah to save his own skin. The sailors in the Book of Jonah are splended fellows, and the people of Nineveh the most ready converts imaginable, once given a chance to believe. If we take note of Rahab, we see that even the harlots in Canaan are helpful and dependable, and when Israel wants to describe an ideal woman she turns to the Moabitess Ruth. In her better moments, Israel did not allow her sense of election to obscure the virtues in others, virtues that put her in the nations’ debt. (pp.88-89)