I’m not sure (pace James McGrath) that Ken’s comments today make him a liberal. It’s quite reasonable to criticise people for poor scholarship and arguments. I think that Piper’s riposte to Wright, for example, thoroughly deserves any excoriation that comes its way. After all, Piper rejects any use of Second Temple Judaism as a context because it sullies Paul;s pure Protestant theology.
I find myself less persuaded by Schenck’s criticism of Justification and Variegated Nomism. My own view is that most of the essays in part one are actually quite good, and signally fail to support Carson’s argument, despite his tendentious editorial summary of them. It is bizarre to watch an editor ride roughshod over the scholarship of his contributors in pursuit of his ideological shibboleths.
I have read neither Carson and Beale’s Commentary on the Use of the Old Testament in the New nor Jim West’s thesis. I do, however, note that Ken comments that the NT writers ignore the “original meaning” of their OT citations. Jim refers to the “literary and theological” context. I’m not entirely sure those adjectives refer to quite the same thing. I think, implicitly, both Jim and Ken are saying that the NT authors didn’t read the OT as modern historians. (I also think that different writers use different sources differently.)
Some of this, as John Hobbins’ typically de haut en bas post notes, plays into the ongoing debate (warning: annoying adverts) begun by Dan Wallace about whether evangelicals are treated as proper scholars. I’m afraid that just as some “liberals” are prejudiced by the mere mention of evangelicalism, some evangelicals cry prejudice to excuse the poverty of their scholarship. I have no idea what Denny Burk’s scholarship is like, but when I read a comment such as his on Joel Willitts’ post, I’m going to start with an assumption that it will lean more on preached prejudices than on the text’s realities.
Some evangelical beliefs are so abhorrent to non-evangelicals, that they won’t take you seriously no matter what accomodations you make. Non-evangelicals are never going to like our commitment to exclusivist soteriology. That just doesn’t sell well to the fallen mind apart from grace.
Now that is a particularly bald version of the kind of non-scholarship I find in Piper’s Future of Justification and Carson’s editorials in Justification and Variegated Nomism. I note, however, that one of the primary opponents of both men is another undisputed evangelical, Tom Wright. I think it’s quite important that the cry of “evangelical” is used neither to excuse non-scholarship, nor to ignore good academic work.
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Jim refers to the “literary and theological” context. I’m not entirely sure those adjectives refer to quite the same thing.
I didnt intend for them to be references to one thing. thats why i used two terms. if i had wanted to use one term, i would have.
No – to the same thing as Ken’s “original” meaning, not the same thing as each other
I don’t self-identify as a liberal, although obviously it’s all relative to what you are talking about. I think the rules are different in the Wesleyan/Methodist tradition–we can look “liberal” when we’re just being ourselves.
I agree with you that it is more what Variegated was intended to be that illustrates my point rather than how the essays actually turned out.
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