Box of old gold


Teachers in the Seminary fall into two categories: permanent and visiting. The visitors are either potential lecturers or retired ones. One of the retirees, Jack Voelkel has just returned to Arizona after a couple of months teaching. He previously worked in the Seminary for 10 years in the 90s and recently had the task of clearing out his old office.

It meant I inherited a number of musty files, lithographed sheets and faded booklets. Amongst them are one or two important documents, for Jack had specialized in missions, especially those in Peru and Colombia. It felt as if someone was passing on original writings from the reformation.

We have little congregational detail of the reformed church at Knox’s time, for records have disappeared. The annoying thing is that in South America, and on missions boards, no one seems to realize that the same process is happening today. The first generation of believers have passed on, with little recorded. Written accounts of churches are rare. History is vanishing, and future generations will be the poorer.

Maybe I ought to get a scanner, a year’s sabbatical and a big bribe for Olwen.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A wonky couple of days

Only two weeks to go before semester finishes. Students are pretty stressed out. They cheered on Friday when class finished. Had a visit last night from an ex-evangelical pastor who's joined the Catholic church and now teaches religion in a an upmarket monks' school. He was keen to justify his actions so feel he's not at peace with the move. It made me think how poor the care of pastors is when things get difficult for them. And how astute Catholic clergy are, more so than their evangelical counterparts. Reading New Testament Theology by Philip Esler, who's trying to justify praying to the saints. Feel it's been a wonky couple of days.
Read more

Dangerous ground in Parliament Hall

It was like taking part in a Harry Potter episode.    The location was Parliament Hall where the Scots Parliament met in 1645-46.   You enter it by pushing open an unmarked door at 66 South Street,  St Andrews.     Bright panelled walls and enormous portraits look down upon you in a friendly manner. We were warned by the Divinity Dean,  Ivor Davidson,  that we were on dangerous ground.   What we were embarking on "involves confession,  petition,  doxology and wonder.   We are at the edges of what we can say".       This was a conference on the Doctrine of the Trinity. The first to speak,  Tom McCall,   had flown in (by aeroplane) from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School,  Chicago.    Since arriving he had spent a night in a tent on Ben Nevis,  and now he spoke at breakneck speed on the biblical data. The second speaker looked as if he had flown in on a broom stick.   Your archetypical kindly wizard,   white bearded  Professor Paul Fiddes of Oxford University
Read more

MacDonalds in the Seminary

Image
Each day I teach 13 students in the Seminary and 650 outside of it. There's my Biblical theology class and my theology internet site. Such is the demand for materials in Spanish that readership of Recursos Teologicos just keeps on growing. Even when I neglect the thing for months, it thrives.This has some unexpected advantages. Marketing people like the site: it's in, effectively, the world's second language and offers a sought after product. In the past year I've been kindly given a string of the latest theological titles for review. The kind of books no minister would ever be allowed to buy. "Darling, do you mind if I spend £60 on Paul Helm's book on Calvin?", has only one answer. And my laptop benefits from £700 of the best Bible Software just for the effort of writing my opinion of it. There are other unexpected developments: people write in with problems. Agony Aunt style, I put my responses on the site's Blog (like a
Read more