Professor of Christian Scripture Rob Wall defines and defends "the canonical approach" to biblical interpretation in the new book Biblical Hermeneutics: Five Views, S. Porter and B. Stovell, eds. (InterVarsity Press, 2012), recently published in InterVarsity's widely used "Spectrum Multiview" series. In this new book, five scholars, each a practitioner of a particular hermeneutical strategy, set out the key features of their method and underlying epistemology before gathering together around Matthew 2 to illustrate how their interpretive methods produce different although often complementary readings of a single sacred text. Each then engages the other's readings to evaluate the merit (or lack thereof) of their interpretive findings.
Another of Wall's articles, "Salvation's Bath by the Spirit: A Study of Titus 3:5b-6 in Its Canonical Setting," is now published in The Spirit and Christ in the New Testament & Christian Theology, I.H. Marshall, V. Rabens, C. Bennema, eds., Eerdmans, 2012), pp. 198–212. This collection is a festschrift (acollection of essaysor learned papers contributed by a number of people tohonour an eminent scholar) for the British New Testament scholar Max Turner. In this study, Wall seeks to rehabilitate the neglected epiphany passage found in Titus 3 as the fullest expression of Pauline pneumatology in the New Testament. This is, in part, because here it is combined in a rich theological formula and the distinctive Pauline emphasis on the transformative work of the Spirit with other biblical traditions (Pentecostal, Johannine, and Matthean) to form an integrative whole.
Posted: Wednesday, May 23, 2012