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Sundoulos: Moving to another topic, how do you understand your role as an evangelical New Testament scholar? How do you balance your sense of responsibility to the academy against your desire to serve the Kingdom of God? Is that a tension for you?
Hellerman: I think it will always be a tension living in two worlds, but I think it's a wonderfully healthy tension. I think that any evangelical biblical studies faculty needs to be firmly rooted in the church to keep it from becoming simply an ivory tower.
Arnold: I came on the faculty in 1987, and had finished my PhD and had the good fortune of having it published by Cambridge. My department chair, Mike Wilkins, strongly encouraged me, "Okay now, Clint, draw out the implications of this for the life of the church." And Mike and I had a lot of conversations about this, and it was so helpful to me in drawing out what we want to be at Talbot. I've tried to follow that pattern in my own odyssey through scholarship. I enjoy digging in and doing some in-depth scholarly work, but that's not enough. We have to think through the implications for the life of the church. I think with everyone in our department, there's a commitment to that kind of thing.
Wilkins: That's one of the good things about being in a department like this—we can learn from each other and encourage each other. I would say, do your top level scholarship, and then be strategic and intentional about finding ways of taking the core of that and communicating to the church. In a department of scholars who are all trying to do that, we can help each other find ways of publishing a popular book or a mid-level book that would come out of the highest level of scholarship we do.
Hultberg: Beyond that, we're in the classroom every day with people who will be leaders in the church. I want to make sure that they appreciate both the hard work of scholarship and exegesis, so that they have something to give the church, but that they also realize they are going to be serving the church. They're not just getting a degree, they're working hard for the kingdom of God. So we need to model that to our students.
Hubbard: I think the students help us in that regard too, because they'll say, "Okay, how does this relate to anything I'm going to do?" Some of them say it kindly and some of them just say it frankly. I think they help keep our feet rooted in the church. That's why I was intentional about wanting to try to teach at a place like Talbot. It allows us to bring exhortational elements into the classroom that should flow from what we're learning from the text, what we're studying.
Rhee: As a New Testament scholar I would like to be able to function as a pastor-teacher as described in Eph 4:11 for the purpose of equipping the saints both at Talbot and Biola and in different local churches. In the last two years I found myself putting more emphasis on the local church ministry and less emphasis on research. This happened because many churches asked me to come and speak in their churches. My difficulty has to do with the balance between research and the service for the local churches. Both are important for me.
Sundoulos: In your view, are evangelical New Testament scholars doing work at the same level of scholarship as non-evangelicals? Is their work well-received? Do you sense respect from your non-evangelical colleagues in the guild?
Hubbard: I think evangelical scholars have made an impact. Especially in Jesus studies, there have been a number of very vocal and prominent spokesmen. Sometimes I wonder, with certain scholars, how rooted they are in the church, and sometimes there's a question as to getting the balance right. I think at Talbot, we really have the balance right. That's one of the strongest points of our school and faculty.
Wilkins: I think that is an important part of what we do for each other. I have seen how evangelical scholars sometimes feel a need to be accepted by the larger community, and they try to find their significance in the larger community. On the other hand, I think that when we are affirmed by our own group of scholars within a community of faith, we can then make these forays out there and instead of just seeking acceptance, we can contribute to the larger community either in a corrective or in a positive way. I think it would be much more difficult to try to do it alone as opposed to doing it in a group where we can hold each other accountable and find a balance for what we are doing.
Arnold: Last year I did a paper, a presentation for IBR [Institute for Biblical Research]. That's an evangelical group, but it is well recognized in the guild, I suppose, for good scholarship. The work will be published in a journal that is respected in the guild, called New Testament Studies. I might say that 1982, I believe, was the first time I ever went to a Society of Biblical Literature meeting, and as a real young guy then, fresh out of junior high [laughter], the sense that I got was that a lot of evangelicals felt like outsiders and felt like, "Here's this big scholarly guild, and we're just little people, and we need to gain acceptance, and we need to get out there and get our evangelical scholars out there." I look at where we are now in 2004, 22 years later, and it's amazing how evangelical scholarship has just mushroomed. There are a lot of evangelicals involved in doing a lot of significant things in the broader guild, including many on our faculty.
Sundoulos: All of you are currently involved in creative kinds of research. Tell us a bit about what you're currently working on.
Hellerman: I just finished a big project on Philippians, looking at the inscriptional base at Roman Philippi, trying to understand the social world of Philippi. That has shed tremendous light on, for example, the beautiful picture of Jesus in Philippians 2, existing in the form of God, then stepping down what I call a ladder of shame, to becoming human—which is tantamount to slavery for deity—then dying a horrifically shameful death on the cross. I argue that that is basically an inversion of the Roman path to glory, which was to take step after step up various honors and offices, a path that was replicated in smaller settings and little religious groups as well, and so Paul portrays Jesus as inverting a whole social value system. And then for God in verse nine of that chapter to exalt the person who uses his power in that way is to make a very profound statement. The inscriptions just toot the horns of person after person and all their offices and honors. People in Roman Philippi, maybe more than anywhere else in the East, couldn't walk to the Forum in the city without being inundated with the pictures and images of people climbing the corporate ladder in that world, so to speak, and then we see Jesus, what he has done for us, as just so diametrically the opposite of that. And we are blessed, and we are challenged to live life similarly in this alternative citizenship, as Paul puts it in Philippians.
Sundoulos: Where will we see this in print?
Hellerman: Cambridge is going to publish it in their Society for New Testament Studies Monograph series. It's supposed to come out in March or April next year.
Hubbard: I'm working on a project right now which is dealing with historical Bible backgrounds. The provisional title is "Christianity in the Roman World: a Narrative Introduction." I'm trying to package the data being pulled from a variety of sources in a way that will be a little more engaging for the typical student and teacher and pastor. Each chapter is going to have a narrative component...
Sundoulos: Fiction?
Hubbard: Fiction, that's right, a good yarn. So each chapter will begin with a story. Each story is set in Corinth, with different people representing different social strata, different genders, to illustrate the hurdles and opportunities that the gospel had trying to penetrate a complex society like Roman Corinth. Then following each story there will be a commentary to unpack the narrative, dealing with different aspects of Greco-Roman society, religion and superstition, society, households, the church, things like this. The most important section will be the final section which takes specific passages and issues in the New Testament and shows how this really vitally elucidates this particular passage. It's very rich in historical, primary sources, and it's just been a joy to work on.
Sundoulos: Sounds like a fun book to read. Do you have a publisher?
Hubbard: Yes, it will be with Hendrickson. I've got to write it first. [laughter]
Hultberg: I teach a course on Daniel and Revelation, and I've never found a satisfactory commentary on Revelation, one that I agree with [laughter], and in fact oddly enough, just about every commentary takes a totally different perspective on things. My students constantly ask me, "Do you have anything written from your perspective on things?" Which I don't, so now I've been mulling over the idea of writing a commentary on Revelation.