Christian Reflection on Disability

The latest issue of Christian Reflection, published by the Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, is now available, this one devoted to ‘Disability’. The whole issue is available as a pdf here, and an accompanying Study Guide is available here. The main articles, with their abstracts, are as follows:

Robert B. Kruschwitz

Introduction

Disability is ‘tragically but redemptively fundamental’ to discipleship, Tom Reynolds notes, for it ‘opens up our vulnerability and dependence upon each other and God.’ How can we walk beside one another in friendship and learn from one another with our disabilities?

Amos Yong

Zacchaeus: Short and Un-Seen

Societal fears of disability often warp how we read the Bible. But the Zacchaeus story challenges the normate assumption that disability is a problem needing to be fixed or eliminated. All human beings can be accepted as children of Abraham regardless of their physical characteristics or capabilities.

John Swinton

Many Bodies, Many Worlds

Disability is a mode of human experience that challenges our norms and reshapes our most basic understanding of reality as we encounter the rich diversity of what it means to be a human being in God’s image.

Thomas E. Reynolds

The Cult of Normalcy

Against the cult of normalcy, disability foregrounds vulnerability as a fundamental condition of sharing life together. It reminds us that wholeness is not self-sufficiency, but is the genuine communion that results from sharing our vulnerable humanity with one another in light of God’s grace.

S. Kay Toombs

Jars of Clay: Disability in Intentional Christian Community

Living in an intentional Christian community offers a nurturing context in which it is possible to fully embrace the vulnerability that accompanies disability, to concretely enact our Christian beliefs with respect to the intrinsic worth of all human beings, and to affirm the value of all members of the community.

Terry W. York

The Twisted Form upon the Tree

Debra Dean Murphy

Worship Service

Heidi J. Hornik

Disability in Christian Art

Jason D. Whitt

Baptism and Profound Intellectual Disability

Is there room in the baptismal waters and at the Lord’s Supper table for persons with profound intellectual disability? For Christians who practice believers’ baptism, the question goes to the heart of what it means to be the Church and to welcome the giftedness of each person in our midst.

Brian Brock

The Lure of Eugenics

In contemporary society ‘prenatal care’ and ‘prenatal screening’ are taken to be synonyms, but they become antonyms in practice when the refusal to test is portrayed as unnecessarily risky and aborting a disabled child is portrayed as a relief.

Thomas H. Graves

Affirming God in the Midst of Disability

An encounter with personal disability brought Tom Graves to a perplexing impasse. As a philosopher of religion, how could he talk of God in words that were both true to his faith and honest with his disabled condition?

Heiki Peckruhn

Travelling in the Ark

With whom are we being human together? With whom are we living together into our potentialities? These questions of community and humanity, central to the L’Arche communities, are explored in four books reviewed here.

Jackie Mills-Fernald

Lowering Barriers for People with Disabilities

If the Church is a place where all are welcome regardless of ability, why is the disability population so poorly represented in our congregations? The resources reviewed here can help us lower the barriers that prevent people with disabilities from participating fully in the body of Christ.

Byron Borger on Books for Life-Long Learners 22.0

Here is the twenty-second in an ongoing of notes by Byron Borger on recent books, profiling Making All Things New: God’s Dream for Global Justice, by R. York Moore (Downers Grove: IVP, 2012), and Kingdoms Apart: Engaging the Two Kingdoms Perspective, edited by Ryan C. McIlhenny (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2012), which is in my pile of current reading.

David Helm on One-to-One Bible Reading

David Helm, One-to-One Bible Reading: A Simple Guide for Every Christian (Kingsford: Matthias Media, 2011), 103pp. ISBN 9781921441981.

Here is a short, helpful, practical book from David Helm, essentially encouraging Christians to read the Bible with others:

‘Reading one-to-one is a variation on that most central Christian activity – reading the Bible – but done in the context of reading with someone. It is something a Christian does with another person, on a regular basis, for a mutually agreed upon length of time, with the intention of reading through an discussing a book or part of a book of the Bible’ – although he also notes that ‘there is no reason it cannot be employed in one-to-two or one-to-three contexts as well’ (11).

Part 1 looks at the ‘what, why and how’ of one-to-one Bible reading (covering the nuts and bolts of getting started, running meetings, etc.), while part 2 explores some ‘frameworks and ideas’.

Two simple frameworks for Bible reading are offered:

• The Swedish method – where the passage is read aloud; each person then reads the passage on their own again, looking for three things – a light bulb (anything that shines out in the passage), a question mark (anything that is hard to understand), an arrow (anything that applies personally); followed by sharing and discussion of each category.

• The COMA method – an acronym for Context, Observation, Meaning, Application, with questions asked about a Bible passage in all four categories.

Helm also offers recommendations of particular Bible passages for different sorts of people (whether non-Christians, new Christians, or established Christians), and suggests appropriate COMA questions to ask about the different biblical genres.

An excerpt of the book is available here, and Helm’s COMA questions on biblical genres are available here.

I read the book a while back, but have just caught sight of a short course connected with the book, available online – One-to-One Bible Reading.

According to the website:

‘This course is a way to share the idea of One-to-One Bible Reading with a group, to encourage others to get started with it. The course consists of four lessons that may be enjoyed by groups of any age or size. It’s for adult Sunday school classes, home groups, youth groups, or just a few friends who want to give themselves to reading the Bible.’

Each of the four lessons consists of a video of David Helm sharing a couple of insights from the book, some suggested discussion questions, and an activity.

All the material is available for convenient download from this page.

Tim Keller on Calvin’s Institutes

There’s a nice piece here by Tim Keller on ‘The Counterintuitive Calvin’, reflecting on his read through John Calvin’s Institutes, discovering it to be ‘a true work of literature... biblical... the greatest, deepest, and most extensive treatment of the grace of God... and doxological’.

Andreas J. Köstenberger on the Hermeneutical Triad

The ‘hermeneutical triad’ at stake here is history, literature, and theology, which provides the structure for the large textbook written by Andreas J. Köstenberger and Richard D. Patterson: Invitation to Biblical Interpretation: Exploring the Hermeneutical Triad of History, Literature, and Theology (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2011).

Köstenberger introduces and overviews the triad in a paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (14 November 2012), available here.

He rightly notes that the three categories themselves – history, literature, theology – have been widely use together in treatments of biblical interpretation, though he thinks the term ‘hermeneutical triad’ is new to him.

According to Köstenberger, the hermeneutical triad is ‘the proposal that history, literature, and theology form the proper grid or lens for biblical interpretation’, and ‘this trifocal lens... is critical if we want to maintain balance in our hermeneutical endeavors’ (5).

Dan Kimball, Cheryl Saunders, and Winfield Bevins on the Future of Evangelical Seminaries

Dan Kimball, Cheryl Saunders, and Winfield Bevins, ‘What is the Biggest Change Evangelical Seminaries Need to Make Right Now? Three Visions of the Future’, Christianity Today (14 November 2012).

Christianity Today have asked three leaders for their vision for theological education in the future. Here are their responses (with their eyes on the US) along with a few highlights:

Dan Kimball – Live Missionally

‘[T]here is a great need for the majority of faculty and decision-makers to accept more fully their crucial role as missionaries and trainers of missionaries.’

‘[A]ll seminary instruction is best viewed in light of and evaluated by how it fuels the hearts and minds of students to serve as missionaries in their world... I believe this will happen naturally when faculty are themselves living missional lives and are not isolated in an academic bubble.’

‘If seminary leaders are not desperate to transform their schools into missionary-training centers for students who are themselves making new disciples, I wonder whether seminaries as we know them now will survive, because not enough Christians will want to be part of them.’

Cheryl Sanders – Amp Up Innovation

‘Evangelical seminaries can maximize the impact of theological education on the future of evangelical congregations by making education more practical, diverse, and accessible.’

‘[M]uch of what seminaries teach is not always comprehensible to the average churchgoer. Some students of mine have become so excited about something they learned in the classroom that they immediately share it in a sermon or Bible study at their church, then experience great disappointment that the people didn’t “get it.” The trick, of course, is for professors to challenge their students to think about what these truths mean in specific and changing ministry contexts.’

‘New hybrid degree programs are another part of the answer.’

‘By emphasizing diversity and making curricula more flexible and available to a broader range of students, seminaries will be well situated to deal with the diverse churches of America’s future.’

Winfield Bevins – Think Like St. Patrick

‘[W]hat good is it if you know everything about theology and the Bible yet don’t know about the one thing the resurrected Jesus called us to do: make disciples?’

‘Seminaries could learn a few lessons from the past by looking to the ancient Celtic monastic communities that trained missionaries to reach the radically unchurched throughout the British Isles and beyond... These monastic communities were not solely places for cloistered monks but discipleship training hubs that sent out hundreds of missionaries who helped convert the people of the British Isles.’

‘A future model for seminaries would include a balanced faculty, comprising theologians, biblical scholars, and resident church planters who are actively partnering with key churches and ministry networks.’

Stuttgart Theological Topics

Thanks to Tim Davy over at Bible & Mission for the heads up on Stuttgart Theological Topics, the publication of the Eusebia conference for Bible, Theology and Mission, Stuttgart.

Volumes 2 to 5 are available online here, and contain essays devoted to the following topics:

• Volume 2 (2007) – The Impact of Christian History and Theology on Judaism and Islam and its Significance for Missions Today

• Volume 3 (2008) – Currents in New Testament Interpretation on their Effects on Theology and Missions

• Volume 4 (2009) – The Interchange of Christianization and Islamic Expansion in Historical and Missionary Perspective

• Volume 5 (2010) – Bible Interpretation in the Horizon of Old Testament Theology and in Interaction with the Islamic View of Scripture