History & the Hexaëmeron

St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (c. 1217–1274) placed a high value on the doctrine of creation, as is manifest in his several discussions of the doctrine throughout his career. Getting clear on creation, Bonaventure believed, entailed not only knowing the creature better, but also knowing the creature in terms of the Creator. Higher still is the…
Creation & Time in Basil’s Hexaemeron

Basil is finding a new level of popularity in young-earth creationist (YEC) writings, and no wonder. He explicitly turns away from the allegorical approach that led Origen and later Augustine to embrace instantaneous creation, and professes a literalism in his Homilies on the Hexaemeron that seems to spare Genesis 1 from the sorts of interpretive…
Reading Genesis with the Church

As a member of my church’s education committee, I share the duty of planning and organizing the topics and teachers for the various adult Bible classes. All adult classes work through the same biblical books, and we are used to kicking around names of potential teachers within the congregation and then assigning them to a…
Reading Theologically

John Webster’s Holy Scripture is arguably the most academically significant book in English to deal with the Bible from a theological point of view since the publication four decades ago of David Kelsey’s Proving Doctrine: The Uses of Scripture in Modern Theology. Webster’s little book is widely cited and has been assessed by a variety…
Theological Anthropology: A Review of Webster’s “Eschatology, Anthropology, and Postmodernity”

If he is known for anything, John Webster’s name stands for “theological theology” and a fastidious, full-throated commitment to doing theology as if God mattered and as God continues to act. His much-discussed Oxford inaugural lecture heralded a reorienting of the theological task away from conversations or earlier correlations and back toward what could be…