Wonky light in St Andrews


Nowadays the most hotly debated issue in theology is justification by faith.
   
Last week St Andrews University hosted a 3 day conference on Galatians.   About 150 scholars and wanabees attended.    Since I fitted into the last category along with a Croatian,  a Norwegian and a one-legged lady from Texas,  I went along.  

The New Perspective on justification,  ably communicated by Tom Wright,  is taken as gospel by  academics.    So there was little fighting type debate,  until,  the last keynote address.

This was given by Richard Hays,  Dean and George Washington Ivey Professor at Duke Divinity School,  who spoke for an hour on "Apocalyptic Poiesis in Galatians".    An excellent speaker and erudite,  he convinced me of the dramatic narrative of the epistle.    And I was about to go home and reshape my sermons.

That was until St Andrews' retired professor Richard Bauckham  responded.    Bauckham is somewhat unconvincing in his appearance:    he carries academic papers in a plastic bag,  has a beer gut and always sits on the front left-hand seat. 

He reasoned that Galatians was argumentative and not a descriptive story.     Hays struggled.    Implications that Bauckham wasn't a Pauline scholar didn't weaken his attack.

So I'm now reading Luther on Galatians before rejigging my sermons.

Wonky light on St Andrews Uni campus

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