I had lunch with Steve Long (my dissertation director) on Tuesday, the day before he posted his latest comment on the thread. He admitted to me what he admitted in that comment: he’s just not that good at the whole “blog thing,” which he considers to be a generation-specific development. He doesn’t disparage the venue at all; he’s just not as up on it as his students. So the question of venue is relevant, but I think his relative lack of familiarity is understandable. As to the heterodox charge, as he technically defined it in his latest comment, I don’t know that it’s inappropriate from his point of view, even if it seems too highly charged for the blog venue.

As to exile, I agree on its probable inappropriateness for the church, though with the caveat that Doug Harink provided in the comment after mine: exile and diaspora are not exactly the same thing. We can say the church is diasporic without saying it’s exilic (the former referring to sojourn, the latter with its punitive connotations). I think this might be a necessary move, and I look forward to reading up on Harink’s view in the next month or so.

Now, lest I allow the “blog thing” to further disrupt my own work…

Mike – I think you’re right that the pace is really quite fast. I think we could actually slow it down by taking more time to respond but that doesn’t produce the same kind of energy really. But it also prevents mutual anathema! Also, I mostly mean that it is “Protestant” in that it simply doesn’t seem to operate on an ecumenical level and the arguments are initiated and sustained almost exclusively by Protestants (though they do mention Nicholas Healy). Now this isn’t automatically bad but considering the emphasis on the necessity of ecumenism in the theses themselves it seems a bit shy of its goal.

Robb – I actually was able to read Dr. Long’s post before it was taken down. I thought it made some good points though I wonder about the appropriateness of an established scholar using “heterodox” in such a context especially considering that given the time lapse he couldn’t have reflected on the theses long enough to judge whether or not such a venue was appropriate for that kind of charge. Nonetheless it would make sense that I would bring up a couple points that he did given my own sympathies with RO.

As to Exile I suppose it gets complicated since I believe that Scripture’s primary referent is Christ, there is potentially no limit to perceiving the ‘form’ of Christ in Scripture; so there may be an appropriate sense in which Exile can be used of the Church but only if we want to say that the Church is now suffering judgement in a way, say for division or something, but “Exile” generally seems to be a negative thing. There are many other ‘forms’ that express more clearly the fulfillment of prophecy and the sending of the Church, say Exodus and Leviticus on the Temple as it was a ‘type’ of Church being as we are the Temple of the Holy Spirit; or take the prophecies concerning Jerusalem and how in the eschatological age the “nations” will stream to her to be judged – this also can refer to the Church and it’s position in the world as ‘judge’ and to ‘bind and loose’ so to speak.

The point is that the possibilities are endless and the ‘appropriateness’ of a reading is a matter of discerning the form of Christ in history with reference to Scripture. In this I am deeply indebted to the work of Ephraim Radner who would certainly be able to explain it better than me…I’m just an undergrad who reads theology in his free time.

Brad – I really appreciated your own comments and my critiques are additional to your own which were certainly better put than my own. Thanks for stopping by!

Thanks, also, for your emphasis on Trinity. I had overlooked that.