Abstracts
Abstract
This essay was presented at the “Who is my Neighbour? Theological Education in the Global Villiage of the 21st Century” symposium hosted by the McGill School of Religious Studies in the Fall of 2022. It offers an accessible set of reflections on how a liberal biblical theology can help people connect with the content of the Bible in ways that speak to their lived experience, thereby allowing the heart of the Bible to become more familiar and more widely accessible. In modern society, where the letters G-O-D seem like antiquated fiction and where the church has often failed to adequately and meaningfully explicate the Bible in ways that people can connect with, such a sound, gracious liberal biblical theology can be a source of renewal for both Liberal Protestantism and Christian theological education. To demonstrate this I will undertake an exercise in liberal biblical theology, contrasting the traditional Trinitarian language used by G. B. Caird (1951) to explore the unity of the New Testament with more accessible theological language, language arrived at by drawing from the work of Ralph Harper, Samuel Terrien, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eric Fromm, Howard Thurman, and Robert Frost.
Keywords:
- liberal theology,
- biblical theology,
- G. B. Caird,
- theology of presence
Appendices
Bibliography
- Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ethics. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott. Vol. 6 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, edited by Victoria J. Barnett. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005.
- Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. London: 1933–1935. Edited by Keith Clements. Translated by Isabel Best. Vol. 13 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, edited by Victoria J. Barnett. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2007.
- Bultmann, Rudolf. Faith and Understanding. 1st U.S. ed. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1969.
- Caird, G. B. “The New Testament View of Life.” Montreal: McGill University Press, 1951.
- Collins, John J. Encounters with Biblical Theology. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005.
- Curry, Michael B., and Sara Grace. Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times. New York: Avery, 2020.
- Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. New York: Rinehart and Company, 1941.
- Frost, Robert. The Complete Poetry of Robert Frost. Edited by Edward Connery Lathem. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1969.
- Harper, Ralph. On Presence: Variations and Reflections. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991.
- Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. New York: One World, 2019.
- MacLeish, Archibald. “‘J. B.’: A Play in Verse.” Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
- Sanders, J. A. “Adaptable for Life: The Nature and Function of Canon.” In Magnalia Dei, the Mighty Acts of God: Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Memory of G. Ernest Wright, edited by Frank Moore Cross, Werner E. Lemke, and Patrick D. Miller, Jr., 531–60. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1976.
- Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Edited by G. C. Clark and W. A. Wright. United Kingdom: Parragon Publishing, 2000.
- Smart, James D. The Strange Silence of the Bible in the Church: A Study in Hermeneutics. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970.
- Terrien, Samuel. The Elusive Presence: The Heart of Biblical Theology. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978.
- Thurman, Howard. With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman. Orlando: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1979.
- Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology, Vol. 3: Life and the Spirit; History and the Kingdom of God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.
- Wesley, John. Wesley's Standard Sermons: Consisting of Forty-Four Discourses, Published in Four Volumes, in 1746, 1748, 1750, and 1760 (Fourth edition, 1787); To Which Are Added Nine Additional Sermons, Published in Vols. I to IV of Wesley's Collected Works, 1771. Edited by Edward H. Sugden. 6th annotated ed. London: Epworth Press, 1966.