Last February I did a 12-part review of Douglas Campbell's book The Deliverance of God. As I said at the time, I was interested in the book because many consider it to be a "game changer" in Pauline studies. For me, I was particularly interested in Campbell's devastating critique of "Justification Theory," the theoretical apparatus most Protestants use to understand Paul's soteriology.

In the end, I only reviewed Parts 1-4 of The Deliverance of God (there is a Part 5) but this does allow you to see the core of the argument, Campbell's critique of Justification Theory and his alternative reading of Romans 1-4. This post exists to pull my review posts together so I can link to the whole series on my sidebar.

My posts/parts are grouped under the four Parts (and their respective headings) from The Deliverance of God:

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Praying through the Morning Office this morning (in my backyard with by dog) I was struck by Psalm 101 in light of my post last night about Bob Sutton's Rule. If one doesn't like the name of the Rule it seems you could call it the Psalm 101 Rule.

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Back when this blog was young I wrote what might have been one of my most controversial posts (if letters to the ACU administration is our metric). That post recounted my use of Dr. Bob Sutton's New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week bestselling book to make a few observations about 1 Corinthians 13 in my adult Sunday School class. For example, one of the wonderful insights from Dr. Sutton's book is this:

...the difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know.

And what I found interesting is how sentiments like this, sentiments that should resonate strongly with Christians, were making their way into best selling management books. So it seemed natural, to me at least, to think about the book from a Christian angle.

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Stanley Hauerwas has written that American Christianity has become "too spiritual." That is, the concerns of the church have become other-worldly, with Christians focusing their attention upon the afterlife and the status of their souls.

Such a focus tends to miss the political, social, and economic implications of the Kingdom of God and how the "Kingdom come on earth" might come into conflict with the way Babylon does business.

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I have a good friend and colleague at ACU who just started what he calls The Van Winkle Project.

My friend, a self-confessed news junkie, will be depriving himself of all news for one entire year. He fell asleep--Van Winkled--on September 11 and won't wake up until September 11, 2011. As the blog relates, this involves the following:

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Comedian Stephen Colbert testified before Congress today about immigration.

Amazingly, he did it all "in character." That is, until the end.

In his final moments he comes out of character and explains his motivations for testifying. And in doing so he gives Congress a little theological lesson by quoting the King of Kings:

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For all you Book of Common Prayer fans, you'll have noted that Psalm 88 is the morning psalm today.

What a way to start the day!


(Programming Note: Psalm 88 is a favorite of Winter Christians)

In my post on Type 1 and Type 2 error (which you'll need to read to make sense of this post) I focused mainly upon the selection ratios of conservative and liberal churches. If you recall, I used the idea of a selection ratio to think about the "errors" we can make in our decisions to become more inclusive or exclusive in the Christian church.

But it occurred to me after that post that I wasn't addressing what we think might be going on with the Divine base rate, about who God will save or damn.

(And to be clear, what I'm analyzing here is the crudest form of soteriological thinking. Most of us on this blog don't think about soteriology in these terms, and rightly so. But some people--a lot actually--do frame the issues like this. So it is interesting to see how that thinking might work.)

By analyzing the Divine base rate we quickly realize something I mentioned a few weeks ago: A view of God is often rumbling in the background when we talk about moral or doctrinal issues. That is, while it seems that we might be disagreeing about this or that bit of biblical interpretation or application, what we are really disagreeing about is what God is like. There is, in a sense, only one real argument Christians have: What is God like? Everything we fight about is really just another version, in different guise, of that same question. What is God like?

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I'd like to follow the many CoC bloggers who have posted this podcast about the experience of women in the Churches of Christ (my faith tradition and the host denomination of my university).

For context to "outsiders," in the Churches of Christ women are prohibited from formal teaching (e.g., preaching) and leadership roles (e.g., elders). While any given Church of Christ varies in how restrictive they are in regards to gender inclusivity, the norm is patriarchal and male-dominated.

The podcast, entitled She is Called, is hosted by ACU Bible professor Dr. Stephen Johnson who poignantly guides us through the stories and heartache of four young women, each raised in the Churches of Christ, who have been called to the ministry.

She Is Called by Half the Church

The podcast is hosted at the Half the Church blog.

Today was a nice day on the ACU campus getting to hear Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution, Jesus for President) in multiple venues. The day will be capped off with a Derek Webb concert with both Shane and Derek doing a talk-back afterwards.

Derek Webb's latest album is called The Stockholm Syndrome. The Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological phenomenon where hostages begin to identify with and defend their captors. The syndrome was named after observing hostages in a bank robbery in Stockholm begin to identify with the bank robbers during the days they were being held hostage.

Why would hostages, prisoners, or captives come to identify with their captors and see them as kind and benevolent? Wikipedia lists the following as the causes and conditions behind the syndrome:

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A couple of months ago I watched the movie The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke. The movie is the story of an aging professional wrestler who, knowing nothing else, pushes his body to the breaking point for the entertainment of others. Along the way he befriends Marisa Tomei who is an exotic dancer. In what I saw as a kind of parallelism, the wrestler is the Freudian twin of the exotic dancer. Where one body is used for a sexual outlet the other body is used for an aggressive outlet. Two bodies--wrestler and dancer--used up and consumed for our entertainment and gratification.

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After my Theology of Calvin and Hobbes class this evening I wandered over to the library to catch a bit of the poetry reading by best-selling author (The Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace) Kathleen Norris.

Here was one of the poems that struck me, from her collection Journey:

Imperatives

Look at the birds
Consider the lilies
Drink ye all of it

Ask
Seek
Knock
Enter by the narrow gate

Do not be anxious
Judge not; do not give dogs what is holy
Go: be it done for you
Do not be afraid
Maiden, arise
Young man, I say, arise

Stretch out your hand
Stand up, be still
Rise, let us be going…

Love
Forgive
Remember me

Today in Cornerstone the ACU freshmen got to hear from author and civil rights activist Dr. John Perkins. The talk opened up with the video above, Switchfoot's song honoring the vision of Dr. Perkins and the Civil Rights Movement:

Love is the final fight.

A large part of my day job is teaching statistics. I teach both undergraduate and graduate statistics classes. Theology--this blog--is really just a side hobby of mine. Little of what I talk about here on this blog makes it into my lectures on multiple regression, factor analysis, and Analysis of Variance.

But it is hard, at times, not to see theological issues emerging in my statistical lectures. Worlds collide was it were. For example, consider how Type 1 and Type 2 errors can help us think about who is going to heaven or hell.

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