Lately you have been barraged with news about developments in literary theory, philosophy, biblical studies, and worldwide Christian faith. The mess I described at the beginning of the semester may be getting all too real to you. As you gain familiarity with it, it may seem bewildering, frustrating, irrelevant, disturbing, promising, or invigorating. (These words come to me autobiographically, if you know what I mean.) Moreover, it keeps involving greater and greater circles of competence from more and more fields than you might have imagined, especially if you originally thought 'theology' was a tidy field unto its own. You are arriving at a closer and closer approximation of the real environment of scholarship.
Don't worry; you'll be fine. As of April 2008, Jesus still isn't dead.
Though he may be feeling sick.
Anyway, learning to thrive in this environment means not just listening or absorbing, but learning to enter into the multilaterial conversation. And really entering into a conversation means more than just engaging with one voice at a time; it means learning to gain a sense of what the various parties have to say to one another. It means getting a sense not only of a particular voice or subset of voices but learning the shape of the web in which all of them interrelate. Otherwise you don't enter a conversation, you derail it.
I want you to develop your sense of the interrelationship by setting our sources (each of which reveals some signs of its interrelationships with the others) alongside one another in a direct, if artificial, conversation. So consider this scenario:
One day after Telford opens the class and the student begins presenting, Telford interrupts her — typical, you think to yourself — and erupts, "Oh! Sorry! But I forgot to tell you! This is totally cool! The campus pastor's office to bring three luminaries to a special panel discussion at a convocation on 'global evangelical collegiate identity in the twenty-first century'. It's sort of a late addition to the whole presidential inaugural thing. 'Cause I kind of dropped the ball on my end of organizing it. Anyway, it came together anyway. Monday chapel will be a convocation, with — get this! — Philip Jenkins and Amos Yong on a panel, with Kevin Vanhoozer and Markus Bockmuehl as respondents! They will have a conversation entitled, "What the Westmont Class of 2033 Will Need to Know." Here's the ad copy:
A quarter century from now, what will our college graduates need to know to understand and successfully navigate Christianity's contemporary intellectual landscape? How will currents in world Christianity, theology, biblical studies, and philosophy be shaping the gospel and its believers? Join us for a conversation between three scholars of the present scene as they help us look forward together.
You try to look excited, though of course not as excited as Telford. That would be ... you shudder and try not to think about it. And then you feel the thunk in the pit of your stomach as you realize he's gonna turn all this into a friggin' assignment; and then looking even moderately excited is out of the question.
He wants you to attend and report "journalistically" on the parts of the discussion that matter most to RS at Westmont and specifically to our course. At least he isn't asking you to come up with hypotheticals by referring to the readings!
Here is your assignment:
Report on the proceedings of such a panel discussion between Jenkins and Yong, responses by Vanhoozer and Bockmuehl, and concluding roundtable conversation. You may write a transcript, or represent their words narratively in your own words, or do some combination as a news reporter would.
Because writers don't simply repeat their written work word for word when they speak, it will not be appropriate simply to lift passages from the books; you need to approximate the natural interplay among these three writers as they engage one another over our common topic. Where you draw on a source to come up with those hypothetical comments, make sure you include a page reference. (You should assume that Vanhoozer appeals mainly to the voices in his edited volume, not just his own.)
If you like you may exercise the journalistic privilege of adding comments of Westmont RS faculty and staff who attend the event, and perhaps even cameos by the other authors in our course; but make sure most of this is your best guess at how these authors would interact with one another.
I am looking for signs that you (a) understand each book in its own right, and (b) appreciate their interplay and implications on one another.
Please keep your paper 4-6 pages, double-spaced, and follow the directions in my handout for writing papers.
Remember, I want to see proper style, clear writing, a thorough answer to the question, and explicit citations of course materials.