The Princeton Seminary Bulletin
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
. FOR USF. IN LIBRARY ONLY ^LOGICAL SEMINARY PER BV 4070 . P712 N.S. v.17 c.2 Princeton Theological Seminary The Princeton Seminary illetin FOR USE IN LIBRARY ONLY THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN VOLUME XVII NUMBER I NEW SERIES 1996 v rp ' Convocation Address Growing in the Knowledge of God THOMAS W. GILLESPIE Inaugural Address “Your Word Is Truth”: Some Reflections on a Hard Saying DONALD H. JUEL Inaugural Address Our Mother St. Paul: Toward the Recovery of a Neglected Theme BEVERLY ROBERTS gaventa Warfield Lecture The Way, the Truth, and the Life in the Religions of the World SHIRLEY C. GUTHRIE I Sermons Fences and Neighbors KATHARINE DOOB SAKENFELD Serving Lessons LEONORA TUBBS TISDALE Mission in a Violent World DANIEL L. MIGLIORE Princetoniana Schmucker at Princeton — 175 Years Ago E. THEODORE BACHMANN PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Thomas W. Gillespie, President BOARD OF TRUSTEES Johannes R. Krahmer, Chair Robert M. Adams, Vice Chair Louise Upchurch Lawson, Secretary Clarence B. Ammons Thomas R. Johnson Fred R. Anderson Curtis A. Jones M. Craig Barnes Henry Luce III Eve S. Bogle David M. Mace Robert W. Bohl Kari Turner McClellan Warren D. Chinn M. Scott McClure Stewart B. Clifford Young Pai John H. Donelik Earl F. Palmer Peter E. B. Erdman Thomas J. Rosser Rosemary Hall Evans Audrey L. Schindler Mary Lee Fitzgerald Arthur F. Sueltz John T. Galloway, Jr. Thomas K. Tewell Francisco O. Garcia-Treto Jay Vawter C. Thomas Hilton David B. Watermulder David H. Hughes Barbara Sterling Willson Jane G. Irwin George B. Wirth F. Martin Johnson Ralph M. Wyman Justin M. Johnson TRUSTEES EMERITI/AE Frederick E. Christian William H. Scheide Sarah B. Gambrell Laird H. Simons, Jr. Margaret W. Harmon John M. Templeton Bryant M. Kirkland William P. Thompson Raymond I. Lindquist Samuel G. Warr George T. Piercy THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN VOLUME XVII NUMBER i NEW SERIES 1996 James F. Kay, EDITOR Daniel L. Migliore, BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Steven R. Bechtler, ASSOCIATE EDITOR CONTENTS Convocation Address Growing in the Knowledge of God Thomas W. Gillespie 1 Inaugural Address “Your Word Is Truth”: Some Reflections on a Hard Saying Donald H. jfuel 9 Inaugural Address Our Mother St. Paul: Toward the Recovery of a Neglected Theme Beverly Roberts Gaventa 29 Warfield Lecture The Way, the Truth, and the Life in the Religions of the World Shirley C. Guthrie 45 Sermons Fences and Neighbors Katharine Doob Sakenfeld 58 Serving Lessons Leonora Tubbs Tisdale 64 Mission in a Violent World Daniel L. Migliore 71 Princetoniana Schmucker at Princeton— 175 Years Ago E. Theodore Bachmann 78 Book Reviews Sexual Abuse by Clergy: A Crisis for the Church, by Marie M. Fortune and James N. Poling Donald Capps 82 ii THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN American Congregations, vol. i, Portraits of Twelve Religious Communities; vol. 2, New Perspectives in the Study of Congregations, ed. James P. Wind and James W. Lewis John IV. Stewart 85 The Lord’s Prayer and Other Prayer Texts from the Greco-Roman Era, ed. James H. Charlesworth Randall D. Chesnutt 88 Models for Scripture, by John Goldingay Donald K. McKim 90 The Lord Reigns: A Theological Handbook to the Psalms, by James Luther Mays Werner E. Lemke 9 1 When Brothers Dwell Together: The Preeminence of Younger Siblings in the Hebrew Bible, by Frederick E. Greenspahn Patrick D. Miller 93 Christians and the New Creation: Genesis Motifs in the New Testament, by Paul Sevier Minear Kathryn Greene-McCreight 95 A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 2, Mentor, Message, and Miracles, by John P. Meier Warren Carter 96 The Resurrection ofJesus: History, Experience, Theology, by Gerd Luedemann, trans. John Bowden Reginald H. Fuller 98 What Are They Saying about Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount? by Warren Carter A. K. M. Adam 100 A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity, by Daniel Boyarin Robin Scroggs 101 Paul’s Narrative Thought World: The Tapestry of Tragedy and Triumph, by Ben Witherington III John Reumann io 3 Systematic Theology, vol. 2, by Wolfhart Pannenberg, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley Ted Peters r°5 Winds of the Spirit: A Constructive Christian Theology, by Peter C. Hodgson Cyril O'Regan 106 Toward a Theology of Struggle, by Eleazar S. Fernandez William Greenway 108 Preaching Christ Today: The Gospel and Scientific Thinking, by Thomas F. Torrance Robert A. Cathey 1 10 68321 CONTENTS iii Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism, by Jaroslav Pelikan Edward E. Duffy 1 1 Armenian Church Patristic and Other Essays, by Mesrob Ashjian S'. Peter Cowe 1 1 Union with Christ: John Calvin and the Mysticism of St. Bernard, by Dennis E. Tamburello Luke Anderson 1 1 Bunyan the Christian, by Gordon Wakefield Conrad H. Massa 1 1 Presbyterian Missions and Cultural Interaction in the Far Southwest, 1850-1950, by Mark T. Banker Paul E. Pierson 119 Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and American Higher Education, by Douglas Sloan Daniel Sack 1 2 Beyond Theological Tourism: Mentoring as a Grassroots Approach to Theological Education, ed. Susan B. Thistlethwaite and George F. Cairns David L. Lindberg 122 Defecting in Place: Women Claiming Responsibility for Their Own Spiritual Lives, by Miriam Therese Winter, Adair Lummis, and Allison Stokes Janet R. Walton 124 Regarding Children: A New Respect for Childhood and Families, by Herbert Anderson and Susan B. W. Johnson Carol A. Wehrheim 126 Widowed Priest: A Crisis in Ministry, 127 by Joseph J. Allen Edward M. Huenemann The Princeton Seminary Bulletin is published three times annually by Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey. Each issue is mailed free of charge to all alumni/ae and, by agreement, to various institutions. Back issues are not available. All correspondence should be addressed to James F. Kay, Editor, The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, P.O. Box 821, Princeton, NJ 08542-0803. The Bulletin publishes lectures and sermons by Princeton Seminary faculty and administration, and presentations by guests on the Seminary campus. Therefore, we do not accept unsolicited material. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/princetonsemina1711prin_0 Growing in the Thomas W. Gillespie is President of Prin- ceton Theological Seminary and author of Knowledge of God The First Theologians: A Study in Early Christian Prophecy. He gave this by Thomas W. Gillespie Opening Convocation Address in Miller Chapel on September 12, 1995. ATHAN Pusey, when president of Harvard, allegedly commented that the Nreason why the university is such an enormous reservoir of knowledge is that the entering class brings so much of it in and the graduates take so little out. Humor aside, institutions of higher learning are rich resources of knowledge. Seminaries differ only in the sense that we claim theological knowledge — the knowledge of God. And, like a university, the seminary engages in an educational program that entails both academic incomes and outcomes. My topic this evening, derived from the Letter to the Colossians (1:10), concerns the seminary as a resource of the knowledge of God that makes possible growth between what students bring in and what they take out. I The truth is, as Pusey noted, entering students do bring a great deal of knowledge with them into a college classroom. This is no less true of those in a new class of seminarians. You bring with you a remarkable amount of theological knowledge. I am not thinking now only of the few who come with baccalaureate majors or minors in religious studies. I have in mind all who are here as believers in Jesus Christ and members of his church, who know God in faith because of a Christian home or a nurturing congregation or a parachurch ministry. I mean that knowledge of God learned through lessons taught in Sunday School, hymns sung and sermons heard in divine worship, as well as scriptures read and experiences shared at summer camps. What I am focusing on is that knowledge of God that informs your belief in God and motivates your desire to serve God. It may not have academic credentials (yet), but it enjoys a privileged place in your minds and hearts. It is why you are here, and I wish to affirm its importance. Many people in the churches suffer from the illusion that it is the seminary that determines what ministers believe about God and the things of God. After all, the logic runs, doctors go to medical school to learn medicine, and lawyers go to law school to learn the law. So also, ministers go to seminary to learn theology. What is overlooked in this logic is the fact that seminary 2 THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN students begin theological studies with a knowledge of their subject matter that is more personal and more passionate than is typical of their counterparts in medical and law schools. The knowledge of God concerns who we are and not merely what we hope to do. People in their right minds do not enroll in seminary without knowing God before they begin their course of studies. This existential knowledge of God that students bring with them into seminary is already ideologically shaped or doctrinally formed. You have already thought about the God to whom you pray and sing. Confessions of faith have been made. Convictions are molded. And this is both a blessing and 2 a bane. The upside is that it gives faith its vertebrate structure and provides a basis for theological development. The downside is that uncritical loyalty to what you now think can hinder the very growth in the knowledge of God that is essential to a theological education and a life in ministry.