NTW伝記的断片 2014/10/14

かなり時が経ってしまいましたが、ライト教授（英語だとプロフ・ライトですね。最近いろいろ呼び名を試していますが今回はこれで。）を伝記的に綴ったり、ライト教授の横顔が知れる文章に触れるとメモしています。

以下のリンクにある文章はエルスペス・バーネットさんの「信仰と神学的研鑽」についての回顧になっています。

現在は表示されていないようですが、小嶋がメモした時点（記事がアップされた数日後以内）にあった読者のコメントの一つに「ケンブリッジ時代のライト教授」が登場します。

そう言うわけで、現在表示されていないものを引用するのは技術的に多少問題あるかと思いますが、（架空ではないであろう）一つのエピソードとして読んでいただければ、と思います。

Will Studying Theology Undermine My Faith?

『神学を勉強すると私の信仰は弱まるのか?』
by Elspeth Barnett | Tuesday 14 October 2014

http://thinktheology.co.uk/blog/article/will_studying_theology_undermine_my_faith

Because God is gracious, I BECAME evangelical by studying Theology at Cambridge 1978-81! Tutors included "Honest to God" JAT Robinson & "Taking Leave of God" Don Cupitt. In my first year, I did a paper on the history of biblical criticism as it related to the life of Jesus. This taught me the simple truth that the results you get at the end tend to depend on the presuppositions you put in at the beginning, e.g. assume that the miraculous doesn't happen, discount or explain away all texts in which miracles happen, then conclude that, surprise, surprise, miracles don't happen!

The radically critical mindset that Elspeth describes certainly did cause damage and I'm still on the journey of dealing with it. However, I also had the privilege of having Tom Wright as New Testament tutor for 2 years: it was so helpful to be taught by someone much cleverer than I am who had a high view of Scripture and who continues to demonstrate that you don't need to leave your brains outside when you're an evangelical. In fact, most of the liberal views I struggled with as a student, he has subsequently demolished by better arguments.

I studied later at All Nations Christian College, where we were given tools for working in a cross-cultural situation, exactly what one needs for handling Scripture accurately and not something that seemed to be a priority for many in the Divinity Faculty at Cambridge. There, I perhaps harshly concluded, people were out to show how clever they were, rather than concerned to submit their undoubtedly gifted minds to God's revelation in its original context. Clearly this is a broad generalisation, but contains at least a grain of truth.

One final comment: we are so fortunate now to have a depth and breadth of evangelical scholarship that simply was not available when I was a student. We can be extremely grateful to our gracious God for it!