open source theology

“The Voice”, a new translation of the New Testament, was published in 2008, but I only recently became aware of it through some scathing reviews such as this from Chris Rosebrough at Extreme Theology:

“I recently purchased a copy of this fresh “dynamic translation” of Bible and spent some time doing comparative work with key passages of the New Testament from The Voice, The ESV and the Greek text. Sadly I must report that this new Emergent “translation” is so far off the mark that I think one could reasonably argue that by producing their own distorted version of the Bible the Emergent church has crossed the line from being a ‘movement’ to actually becoming a cult.”

Frequenters of OST who follow the debates surrounding Andrew’s radical re-reading of the gospels according to a historical narrative interpretation, and the focus on the Olivet discourse (Mark 13, Matthew 24 and Luke 17), will be interested in Gustavo Martin’s reading of Mark 13 which draws on the principles of Halliday’s register theory (“the set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns, that are typically drawn upon under the specific conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in the realization of these meanings” [Halliday, 1978:23]).

Knowing I would have a few hours to spare here and there on a recent visit to Rovaniemi, just outside the Finnish Arctic Circle (setting of the Sauna episodes in The Demise of Sir Toby’s), I took Tom Wright’s Surprised by Hope with me. I had bought the book some time ago, but irritated by a remark I thought I had seen somewhere that this book made Wright the C.S. Lewis of the 21^st century, I put the book down, having skim-read it, thinking ‘Oh no he isn’t!’. I must have been mistaken about the book. Surprised by Hope is midway between popular and academic theology (I’ve yet to read Wright’s ‘popular’ books), and apologetics it isn’t. Rather, as the title suggests, it is a fresh look at the resurrection, and the nature of Christian hope. I became more enthralled the more I read, finishing the book quickly, and returning to read parts of it more slowly.

It’s been said that the preacher cannot exalt Christ and his own intelligence at the same time. Why not? What’s wrong with impressing the world, just a little, so that we might earn a hearing? Why was Paul so opposed to employing the rhetorical sophistication expected of public speakers by the Corinthians and others of the Hellenistic world? All rhetoric (simple or complex) is designed to be manipulative, right? What about gospel preaching?