This week: York, SST, and LFC

Tomorrow I'm off to York with a large contingent of Aberdonians for the three day annual conference of the UK's Society for the Study of Theology. Last year the conference was in Manchester and it was a great time, even though the plenary papers were rather disappointing and it was up to the seminar papers to pick up the slack. This year, however, the conference theme is the doctrine of Scripture and not only do the plenaries look highly interesting but the seminars are chalk full of desirable options as well. There are plenty of intriguing papers, but below you'll find a list of those which have most immediately caught my eye.

First of all, having heard dry runs of several of the papers already, I can say that all seven delivered by my colleagues from the University of Aberdeen will be brilliant. They include:

~ Joe McGarry - "Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Scripture, and Formation in Christ"
~ Leon Harris - "The Bible as Relational Indwelling Knowledge: Colin E. Gunton's Pneumatological Approach to Inspiration and Revelation"
~ Justin Stratis - "On the Not-Necessarily-Odious Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy"
~ Ben Rhodes - "Karl Barth on the Spirit of Scripture: The Miracle of the Circle of Inspiration"
~ James King - "The Meaning of Adiaphora"
~ Darren Sumner - "On the Dispensability (and Indispensability) of the Extra Calvinisticum"
~ Martin Westerholm - "Faith, Memory and Love: Augustine's Trinitarian Way of Knowing"

There are a few others going down to York University (pictured here) from Aberdeen University and I must say that, though I don't mention them much on the blog, being around these theologians week after week has had the double benefit of (a) making me realize how much I have to learn and (b) helping me hopefully learn some of it. Beside theirs, other intriguing papers include:

~ "The Offensiveness of Scripture" (Hugh S. Pyper)

~ "Reception History, HR Jauss, and the Formative Power of Scripture" (Anthony C. Thiselton)

~ "Scripture as the Voice of God" (Henk Van den Belt)

~ "The Role of Community in Scriptural Authority" (Josh Reeves)

~ "The Living Authority of Scripture" (Angus Paddison)

~ "Interpreting Psalms for the Church" (Ellen Charry)

~ "Words have become cheap" (Ian Clausen)

~ "Dragons, Darkness, Winds, and Spirits: How Bible Translators have dealt with Genesis 1:2" (Daniel King)

~ "The Nephesh Hayyah of Humans and Animals" (Kris Hiuser)

~ "Divine Animals: Imago Dei, human creatureliness, and the commonality of all creation" (Matthew Barton)

~ "Schleiermacher and the Doctrine of Scripture" (Paul Nimmo)

~ "Congregational Hermeneutics" (Andrew Rogers)

~ "Cormac McCarthy's The Road and the Book of Job" (Christopher Thornhill)

~ "Barth's Ethics of Responsibility" (Michael Leydon)

~ "Text of Submission or Text of Equality: Revisiting gender-biased scriptures and its impact on women's roles in churches in Hong Kong" (Jenny Wong)

And last, but certainly not least, seeing as I am in the area I will be skipping the Monday night session of SST, jetting west on the train, and fulfilling a (nearly) life-long dream: