Oliver O'Donovan for Mere Mortals 1: Why O'Donovan?

Some of you may be wondering why I would choose to write a series of posts about Oliver O'Donovan. Many of you probably have never heard of him. Those of you who have may be questioning my sanity. Oliver O'Donovan is not an easy man to understand--at least the works of his that I've read are not easy to understand. In fact, I'm making my way through Resurrection and Moral Order again, and it's only now starting to click. I'm thinking that this may be a book I read once a year so that I can hope to grasp more of it (I'd like to do the same thing to Thomas Torrance's The Christian Doctrine of God and Colin Gunton's The One, the Three, and the Many).

I was introduced to O'Donovan the first semester of my Ph.D. work, and it opened my mind to a new way of thinking about … well ... everything. I was so impacted by his work that I believed for a while that O'Donovan would figure heavily into my dissertation. Well, that didn't happen, and so I had to put his works on the back burner for a while.

During my coursework, I had never really thought about O'Donovan's work outside of purely theoretical ethics. While I knew that there were some great applications to take away, it had never occurred to me how far-reaching O'Donovan's system of thoght really was. I remember David Nelson mentioning how O'Donovan's work helped shape how he understood the Christian's relation to culture (coincidentally, he also introduced me to The One, the Three, and the Many). Doug Baker mentioned O'Donovan's thought in connection with the Christian and government. While I had reviewed The Ways of Judgment (another O'Donovan book), I did not grasp that it was built upon the framework O'Donovan had set up in Resurrection and Moral Order.

I work in public policy, and one of the big questions I keep thinking about is how the Christian should approach the public square. How should the Christian relate to government in terms of involvement in government or in government related groups like the one I work in. I would eventually like to design a college or masters (or both) course on the subject. Toward that end, I submitted a paper proposal to ETS (the Evangelical Theological Society) to present at their annual meeting. The tentative title is "God, the Christian, and Government: Toward of Theology of Christian Involvement in the Public Square." Praise God, my proposal was accepted, and I'll present that paper later this year. All I have to do now is write it.

So, unlike my dissertation, O'Donovan will play heavily in this (as will Christopher Wright's big books, I think). This series is my hope to really dig into O'Donovan's work and understand it well enough to explain it and apply it to the subject matter of my paper. It is also my hope that this work will introduce some of you to O'Donovan's work or, if you already have read it, to engage in discussion. I in no way have the market cornered on his thought, but it intrigues me. Hopefully, it will intrigue you, too.

New Blog Series Coming

In preparation for a paper that I have to present at a conference later this year, I'm going to start a new series of posts fleshing out some of my thoughts and research for that paper.

This means a blog series. I'm tentatively calling it "Oliver O'Donovan For Mere Mortals," of which I am most certainly one. I don't have any special claim to O'Donovan, nor am I especially bright. I am, however, currently on my third time in Resurrection and Moral Order, and am finally starting to get some of it. If I can explain the book, then it's a good bet that I am finally grasping its concepts. That's the thought, anyway.

The book has been and is being increasingly (especially now that I'm starting to grasp it) foundational to my thoughts about Christian ethics and involvement in the public square. There are two "sequels," if you will to Resurrection: The Desire of the Nations and The Ways of Judgment, which I reviewed for Faith & Mission. Hopefully, I can make it through all three books. I'm excited and scared at the same time.

There will almost certainly be posts on other topics as well, so count on a few interruptions here and there.

The Call of the Normal

Karen (my wife) and I spent a lot of time trying to come up with the right title for this blog. We brainstormed for quite a while before coming up with "The Call of the Normal." While there is a wordplay of sorts with "The Call of the Wild," that was not the primary intention of us choosing that title.

Several years ago, while I was worship pastor at WellSpring Community Church in Clayton, NC, we had a man from India give his testimony. He was beaten severely and often for the sake of the gospel, but never recanted. Once he finished speaking, the pastor got up and said, "Thank you for showing us the normal Christian life." That really struck me. The pastor was, of course, absolutely right. I had never considered it that way before. Missionaries and martyrs were doing nothing more than living the "normal Christian life."

Fast-forward to the last few months. Through our times with God, Karen and I have really been convicted about the need for radical obedience to Christ. At the present time, much of that involves our finances and our possessions. As I was reading through the Petrine, Pastoral, and Johannine epistles, it occurred to me that this radical obedience was required of everyone in the body of Christ. In other words, what we (and others) call "radical obedience," the writers of Scripture called "the normal Christian life" (in not as few words). Karen and I are trying to reclaim the "Christian normalcy" to which all the elect have been called.

With that in mind, I'm going to try to make sure that my theology-driven posts (or series of posts) will have some application--some bearing on the Christian life. I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes of this and how my life (and my family's lives) will be transformed. Perhaps you will be transformed, too.

Hello World

In many ways, I have tried to keep up with the times in terms of technology. While I have fully embraced Facebook and Twitter, I have yet to blog. Frankly, with school, family, and learning a new job, I just didn't have time to blog, and I didn't know what I would write about.

Now, my wife and I are waiting on another child (we're adopting, and terribly excited about it), and would then have four children under three years of age. Now that my life has finally settled down, I felt it was time to start writing. Actually, I feel strongly that I should be writing right now (since my life is about to get hectic again).

So, what kind of stuff will I write about? Well, chances are, it will be a veritable smorgasbord of different material. Most of it will be theological and ethical in nature, since that is my training. There will probably also be some stuff about public policy, since that's where what my job is. I'm sure there will be some stuff about adoption as well. I've got several writing projects coming up, so a good many posts will be in preparation about that. If any of you are conversant with the material, then I welcome comments and constructive criticism. More to come.