A Steep Ascent

By Tom Petter
Assistant Professor of Old Testament

Last week was pretty busy here on campus. Several hundred people gathered for the conference “Renewing the Evangelical Mission” in honor of David F. Wells who recently retired from teaching at the seminary. Few would question the profound impact Dr. Wells has had upon the Evangelical movement in recent years. This could certainly be seen by the distinguished list of speakers, a literal Who’s Who is current Evangelical Protestant thinking: Mark Noll, Bruce McCormack, Cornelius Plantiga, among others. For me, one particularly gratifying aspect was to note among the conference attendants several of my former fellow Gordon-Conwell students of the 1990’s (I’m sure there were plenty of alums from before my time as well). They are now pastors, professors and/or occupying various positions of leadership in the Body of Christ. Yet, they chose to carve time away from family and busy schedules to come back to Gordon-Conwell to see their teacher and friend. This reminded me that Dr. Wells’ influence has been felt not only in print but also in (and out) of the classroom. Well done good and faithful servant.

A highlight of the conference for me was Dr. Bruce McCormack’s presentation on the atonement. In his own words, he took us on a “steep ascent” into the mysteries of the relationship between the Father and the Son in the atoning death of Christ. I will look forward to digesting some of the specifics of his arguments when the paper comes out in an edited volume. For a more immediate reaction, McCormack’s (professor of Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary) characterization of Protestant identity framed by both the authority of Scripture and forensic justification (the so-called formal and material principles) seems particularly a propos. In the current climate where the Protestant doctrine of justification is being questioned and/or revised (see Jack Davis’s blog on NT Wright’s new book on justification), McCormack’s (and David Wells’) clarion call is a timely reminder for us to rise up and defend that which defines us at the core. My sense is that, we too are on a “steep ascent” of sort as we try to articulate and contextualize these traditional core beliefs for our generation.

Codex Moment

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Regular readers of Every Thought Captive are likely interested, in one way or another, in the intellectual life of the church (anyone who wandered to this url while looking for Jonas Brothers ringtones or Red Sox updates can just consider all of this a kind of field trip to the Boring Zoo). So they may be less surprised than others that I recently found great inspiration in an article on early Christian use of the codex by Graham Stanton in his book Jesus and Gospel.

The title of the article is “Why Were Early Christians Addicted to the Codex?”¹ It refers to the remarkable early Christian preference for book-like documents (codices) over the generally more popular scroll form. He puts forward the thesis that the church’s addiction to codices stemmed from its prior use of codex-like notebooks which “were used by the very first followers of Jesus for excerpts from Scripture, for drafts and copies of letters, and perhaps even for the transmission of some Jesus traditions” (Jesus and Gospel, p.6).

Stanton’s thesis seems quite plausible to me, but his precise reconstruction was not what struck me. It was instead the image of these early Christians – apostles, associates, couriers, scribes – running around the Mediterranean with their back-pack full of sermon notes and Scripture passages and who knows what else…rather like the modern-day seminary student (without the laptop). The church was not only thinking and preaching about the revelation of God in Christ from the beginning – they were also engaged in at least a simple form of academic endeavor involving the written word.

None of this will be particularly earth-shattering to even the beginning seminary student: Paul’s note in 2 Tim. 4:13 (“When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments”) is enough to let us know of the importance of written documents in the early church. But there was something about the sheer physicality of Stanton’s discussion – the wax tablets and leather thongs and papyri – that brought home to me the reality of early Christian scholarly work.

Scholarship is not always valued in society at large, and sometimes it is valued even less in the church. We can often have the haunting feeling (especially when we are convincing ourselves that looking at the Greek text is not critical for this sermon preparation, or that no possible good could come from my memorization of hollow Hebrew verbs) that Christian academic work is a late, unnecessary addition to the pristine faith, a kind of luxury option that ought to be eschewed in favor of more pressing matters.

It is encouraging to know that right from the beginning Christians have been doing what most of us reading this column are doing: laboring for the gospel by our careful preservation of the gospel tradition. It may involve literal note-taking in little books not all that different from the ones used in the first-century; or posting some relevant biblical background on the church web-site; or writing a lengthy monograph on verbal aspect in Koine Greek. Scholarly work is not all the church should do; but it is a vital part of the life of God’s people. It is a privilege to teach at an institution where that tradition is maintained.

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¹ You can get at least a taste of the article at http://books.google.com/books?id=A7wNGMrAiD0C&pg=PA165&lpg=PA165&dq=stanton+why+were+early+christians+addicted+to+the+codex&source=bl&ots=2302WSOs_0&sig=qiNHpTozF_IA2dm_FVGgo-oUSMg&hl=en&ei=-d9xSvjgA47aNri76LAM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1.