Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Highlights from Tyndale Conference

These include:

(1) Chris Wright's lecture on social transformation and mission.

Chris did a good job of describing the social concerns of the OT and its NT appropriation. He also said that the issue of balancing social justice and evangelism continues to plague evangelicalism. He didn't like the notion of the "priority" of evangelism since "priority" all to quickly becomes "only". Instead he preferred the "ultimacy" of evangelism.

(2) Drinkies with Steve Walton and Paul Woodbridge at a pub called "The Leopard".

(3) The realization that about 10% of the conference participants were Australian.

All of the Aussies were from NSW except me being from QLD. Oh, the joy in informing these NSWer's that QLD beat NSW in the deciding State of Origin match (i.e. rugby league version of the super bowl).

(4) Gary Burge's paper, "Land inheritance the ethics of the OT prophets for Christian views of justice".

Superb presentation on the mis-application of the OT passages to the situation in the middle east. There are even Christians out there who think that Israel should conquer the land in the same manner as Joshua did and simply drive out or exterminate the populance. I also learnt that the most popular text in Palestinian Christian circles is 1 Kings 21 on Naboth's Vineyard.

(5) K.A. Kitchen's paper on ANE archaeology and the OT.

I liked his point that we should be modest and not minimalist in our conclusions (I couldn't help but think of Jim West and Joe Cathy here).

(6) I. Howard Marshall taking notes.

Howard Marshall has probably forgotten more than many us will ever know about the NT; but at every session he attended this fella took notes. This taught me a few things: the learning never stops and always take a notebook and pen to a lecture no matter what topic, lecturer, or ocassion.

(7) Meeting 3 Italian guys at the conference who were rather thrilled (to say the least) by Italy's semi-final victory over Germany.

1 comment:

abcaneday said...

I observed the same thing about Howard Marshall last week in St. Andrews at the Conference on Hebrews & Theology. I sat next to him during some sessions, and he took notes throughout those sessions.

The same is true of Morna Hooker. I sat near her in some afternoon sessions. She also took copious notes.