Audio lecture: early trinitarian theology

Here's an audio snippet from this week's class on the Trinity. It's a 20-minute summary of the past few weeks of the course, which have focused on trinitarian theology in the second and third centuries. This summary is pretty sketchy, but I try to identify four general themes in early trinitarian theology:

1. Historical theme (Irenaeus)
2. Psychological theme (Tertullian)
3. Educational theme (Clement)
4. Participatory theme (Origen)

At the end of the clip I try to explain how the two most important themes (1 and 4) can go together, as I think they do in Athanasius.



Incidentally, I also wonder if these four themes might be helpful for explaining Augustine's theology of the Trinity. The significance of Augustine isn't that he represents a monolithic western approach, nor that he is simply a speculative innovator. Instead I think Augustine takes the least significant pre-Nicene theme, the psychological, and synthesises all the other themes around it. Thus Augustine still has a strong salvation-historical emphasis (De Trin. books 2-4) as well as a large preoccupation with the educational and participatory themes (De Trin. books 13-15); but these major pre-Nicene themes are subsumed within the vast architecture of what had until then been only a minor experimental theme, the psychological.

Audio: Reading George Herbert

Drawing of Herbert's church by Guy Ottewell

I'm writing on George Herbert at the moment, and I've spent this week near Herbert's former church in Bemerton. If you've ever tried getting through life without reading George Herbert, I don't know how you do it. Anyway, after breakfast this morning I made some audio recordings for you of a few Herbert poems:

Holy Scriptures I (text)

The Call (text)

Heaven (text)

Audio sermon: Today this scripture is fulfilled..

On Sunday morning I preached at St Alban's Anglican Church on Luke 4:21, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing". It's available in audio.

Audio lecture: the aesthetics of Christian mission

Last night I had a wonderful time giving a lecture to the Uniting Church's Queensland Synod on "The Aesthetics of Christian Mission". There's an audio recording here (the lecture starts at about 7 minutes – it goes for about 45 minutes, followed by a brief response and some Q&A). The video clip halfway through the lecture is this one:



And here are some suitably deranged snaps from the Synod website:

Audio sermon: Why I believe in God

As part of a cluster of events this year responding to the New Atheism, our college faculty is doing a sermon series on the question, "Why I believe in God". I gave my sermon on Sunday at a church up in the Blue Mountains. If you'd like to know why I believe in God, here's an audio recording in three mp3 files (each about 6 or 7 minutes):

Why I believe in God (1)
Why I believe in God (2)
Why I believe in God (3)

My text is Matthew 5:14-16: "You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven."

Audio lecture: lessons from Augustine's De Trinitate

Over the past several weeks, my class on the trinity has been working through Augustine's De Trinitate – an immense challenge! Today we reached the great finale of Book 15. So I tried to sum up Augustine's theology of the trinity in a final lecture, outlining a series of brief "lessons from Augustine". I had to record the lecture for some of the students, so I thought I'd also post it here. If you're interested, you can listen below – there are six short parts, each about 10 minutes:

Augustine part 1
Augustine part 2
Augustine part 3
Augustine part 4
Augustine part 5
Augustine part 6

Off the Shelf: six types of reading

Last time, there were various comments about reading habits. So in this video I provide a typology of six types of reading.



Books mentioned in this video:

• Steven Millhauser, The Knife Thrower: And Other Stories (Vintage 1999)
• G. K. Chesterton, St Thomas Aquinas [1933], in The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Volume 2: The Everlasting Man, St. Francis of Assisi, St Thomas Aquinas (Ignatius Press 1987)
• Michael Jensen, Martyrdom and Identity: The Self on Trial (T&T Clark 2010)
• Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford UP 1992)
• Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (Oxford UP 1933)
• G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar, eds., Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (Belknap 1999)
• Augustine Day by Day: Minute Meditations for Every Day Taken from the Writings of Saint Augustine (Catholic Book Publishing 1999)
• James Alison, Knowing Jesus (2nd ed; SPCK 1998)

--
And since I've mentioned Chesterton's book on Aquinas, here's a delightful account of how the book was written – this is an excerpt from Dale Ahlquist, G. K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense (Ignatius Press 2000), chapter 9:

When G. K. Chesterton was commissioned to write a book about St. Thomas Aquinas, even his strongest supporters and greatest admirers were a little worried. But they would have been a lot more worried if they had known how he actually wrote the book.

Chesterton had already written acclaimed studies of Robert Browning, William Blake, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Chaucer, and St. Francis of Assisi. Nonetheless, there was a great deal of anxiety even among Chesterton's admirers when in 1933 he agreed to take on the Angelic Doctor of the Church, the author of the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas.

Without consulting any texts whatsoever, Chesterton rapidly dictated about half the book to his secretary, Dorothy Collons. Then he suddenly said to her, “I want you to go to London and get me some books.”

“What books?” asked Dorothy.

“I don't know”, said G. K.

So Dorothy did some research and brought back a stack of books on St. Thomas. G. K. flipped through a couple of books in the stack, took a walk in his garden, and then, without ever referring to the books again, proceeded to dictate the rest of his book to Dorothy.

Many years later, when Evelyn Waugh heard this story, he quipped that Chesterton never even read the Summa Theologica, but merely ran his fingers across the binding and absorbed everything in it.

[...] And what kind of book did he write? Étienne Gilson, probably the most highly respected scholar of St. Thomas in the twentieth century, a man who devoted his whole life to studying St. Thomas, had this to say about Chesterton's book: “I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas.”

Off the shelf: video podcast

Lately I've found it hard to keep up posting about new books I'm reading – even though I'm always reading books. So this is an experimental new "Off the Shelf" segment: I've recorded a short video talking about some of the things I've been reading lately, new books and old.

I dislike talking into a camera like this – but if you find this sort of thing enjoyable, let me know and I might do some more video-posts from time to time.



Books mentioned in this video:

• Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill (New City Press 1991)
• Garry Wills, Augustine's Confessions: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books; Princeton UP 2011)
• Brian Stock, Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation (Harvard UP 1996)
• Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge UP 2010)
• Mark A. Noll and Carolyn Nystrom, Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia (IVP 2011)
• Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, ed. Harriet Elinor Smith, Volume 1 (University of California Press 2010)
• David Crystal, Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language (Oxford UP 2010)
• Gordon Campbell, ed., King James Bible: 400th Anniversary Edition (Oxford UP 2010)

Bob Dylan: Nettie Moore (live)

I recently talked about Bob Dylan’s excellent concert here in Brisbane. Here’s a sample from that concert – a live recording of his performance of “Nettie Moore.” This is my favourite song from Dylan’s latest album:

“Today I’ll stand in faith and raise
The voice of praise
The sun is strong, I’m standin’ in the light
I wish to God that it were night.”

Podcast: John Webster on mercy

John Webster recently gave a lecture on “mercy” at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. Jordan Barrett made a recording, and (with Webster’s permission) he has now made it available as a podcast. The sound-quality isn’t perfect, but the lecture is well worth listening to.

The God Delusion: podcast

The main talks from our Brisbane seminar on Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion are now available as podcasts.

Tom Wright, folk singer

Who would have guessed that Tom Wright was not only an accomplished writer, speaker and bishop, but also (and most importantly) a folk singer?

At the opening of a recent lecture, the Bishop of Durham strapped on an acoustic guitar, and delivered a very nice rendition of Bob Dylan’s 1963 song, “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Brian Brown has the details, and you can listen to both the song and the lecture here.

Audio lectures by T. F. Torrance

Here is a series of mp3 files (4.2 hours in total) of some lectures which Thomas F. Torrance gave at Union Theological College in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the early 1980s:

• Part 1 (32 minutes)
• Part 2 (49 minutes)
• Part 3 (12 minutes)
• Part 4 (1:01 hours)
• Part 5 (24 minutes)
• Part 6 (31 minutes)
• Part 7 (43 minutes)

(Alternatively, you can click here to get the podcast feed.)

T. F. Torrance audio lectures (5)

You can hear the final part of T. F. Torrance’s lecture-series here (43 minutes), or you can get the podcast feed.

T. F. Torrance audio lectures (4)

You can hear the next two parts of T. F. Torrance’s lecture-series here (24 minutes) and here (31 minutes), or you can get the podcast feed.

T. F. Torrance audio lectures (3)

You can hear the next part of T. F. Torrance’s lecture-series here (1:01 hours), or you can get the podcast feed.

T. F. Torrance audio lectures (2)

You can hear the next two parts of Torrance’s lectures here and here (or you can get the podcast feed).

T. F. Torrance audio lectures (1)

Recently, a reader from the UK got in touch with me about some T. F. Torrance audio lectures. He had old cassette copies of a lecture series that Torrance gave at Union Theological College in Belfast, Northern Ireland, some time in the early 1980s. This reader was kind enough to convert the audio cassettes to mp3, and he has sent me the series of lectures as eight mp3 files (4.2 hours in total). This is a great resource – as far as I know, there are no other lectures by Torrance available online.

So I’ll be posting these lectures as podcasts over the next couple of weeks. The quality varies – unfortunately, the quality is poorer in the first lecture, and the start of the first lecture seems to be missing. (If you happen to know how to edit mp3 files, I’m sure you could improve the sound-quality; please send me an email if you’d like to volunteer for this job.)

Anyway, here’s the first 32-minute instalment: you can listen to it here, or you can get the podcast feed here.

Podcast: Advent Sunday with Bob Dylan

In celebration of Advent Sunday, I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan’s extraordinary gospel song, “When He Returns” (1979):

“Of every earthly plan that be known to man,
He is unconcerned.
He’s got plans of His own, to set up His throne
When He returns.”

So why don’t you join me? Kick back and listen to this moving live performance – an unofficial recording from 16 November 1979. To listen, click here; or to get the podcast feed, click here.

Podcast: Bob Dylan, "Rock of Ages"

Since hundreds of people listened to the last Bob Dylan podcast, I thought I’d do another one here.

Dylan has often opened his concerts with old hymns and gospel songs. In 1997 – the same year that he released the darkly brooding album Time out of Mind – his concerts were featuring songs like “Hallelujah, I’m Ready to Go,” “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour,” “Somebody Touched Me,” “I Am the Man, Thomas,” and “Wait for the Light to Shine.”

In particular, many of his concerts that year were opening with a beautiful rendition of Augustus Toplady’s great hymn, “Rock of Ages.” So here’s an unofficial live recording of “Rock of Ages” from 1997. You can listen to it here, or you can get the podcast feed here.