I recently introduced Dr. Greg Carey’s NTGeeks blog as a simple text link, among a number of text links. I think his work deserves a bigger introduction than it was originally given.
Greg is a New Testament scholar of the highest caliber. Said differently, Greg is one who honestly doesn’t want to limit his Biblical scholarship to the ivory towers of academia, but honestly desires for it to be a real catalyst for deep social, religious, and political change. You may or may not take the same stance(s) as Prof. Carey on all of the issues, but you will walk away from any engagement with him with a deep appreciation of his deep breadth of knowledge and unwavering zeal for the Bible … and more importantly that towards which it ultimately points.
Greg Carey is Professor of New Testament at Lancaster Theological Seminary. You can visit his faculty profile page at the seminary website. He received his Degrees and Education @ B.A., Rhodes College, 1987; M.A., Vanderbilt University, 1995; Ph.D., Vanderbilt University, 1996.
His major publications include: Sinners: Jesus and His Earliest Followers (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2009); Ultimate Things: An Introduction to Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic Literature (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2005); Vision and Persuasion: Rhetorical Dimensions of Apocalyptic Discourse Co-editor with L. Gregory Bloomquist. (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1999); Elusive Apocalypse: Reading Authority in the Revelation to John; Studies in American Biblical Hermeneutics 15. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999).
I’m currently reading Sinners: Jesus and His Earliest Followers, his latest work. I highly recommend it.
I also highly recommend subscribing to his blog too. There you will get to interact with Prof. Carey yourself. I had the privilege of actually studying with Greg at Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is as enlightening and challenging as he is supportive and friendly. So, do yourself a huge favor and check out his writing over at NTGeeks regularly. You will learn something, I promise.
In fact, the following is a excerpt from his most recent post concerning Evangelical conversations about the Bible:
Nevertheless, many evangelicals never found themselves satisfied with the inerrancy position. They knew several things. In particular, they knew Christians don’t apply all of the Bible’s teaching. None of us do. We borrow at interest (prohibited in scripture) and oppose slave labor (legitimized in scripture). And sometimes they knew it was time for the churches to move beyond the literal words of the Bible and follow the lead of the Holy Spirit, as in the case of women’s equality and leadership. No surprises for us progressive mainline people yet.
But being evangelicals, people like McKnight and Dunn have turned to the Bible to articulate their position. Here they have some things to teach us. The Bible, both scholars demonstrate is not — and never was — static. Biblical figures, including “minor” characters like Jesus and Paul, regarded scripture as a living tradition to be appropriated in new and fresh ways in emergent contexts. This explains one major event related in the New Testament, the full inclusion of Gentiles without their conversion to Judaism. Scripture never authorized such a thing, but the Holy Spirit sure did (see Acts 10-11 and Galatians 3:1-5 for this line of thought).
Dunn and McKnight use different language for this phenomenon, but they’re both on the same trail. Dunn regards scripture as a “living word,” never finally fixed by an ancient context in its potential relevance for us today. McKnight regards the Bible as a huge story about God’s ways in the world. Rather than cook the Bible down to doctrine nuggets, faithful readers are to recognize that God spoke to in one way to Moses in Moses’ day, in another to Paul in Paul’s day, and in still another to us in our day. For both Dunn and McKnight, the Bible’s word for today emerges in conversation with its word “back then” — but it is not limited to its “back then” meaning. Scripture, then, is a living word.
The above statement is incredibly helpful for those of us who would communicate God’s Living Word/Revelation apart from its socio-modern/biblicist understanding. Those of us who would approach Scripture as something greater than a culturally static/trapped book of convenient rules (convenient = we all conveniently pick and choose which rules and/or which aspects of the rules we are going to apply to our context) find inspiration in statements like the one above. Those of us who approach Scripture as God’s revealed truth, communicated through continuous and continuing redemptive analogies, look towards that which scripture ultimately points: A living, active, and real-time relationship with God the Father, through the Son, and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now THAT’S good use of the Bible! Go forth, and read NTGEEKS.
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