Duke Theology Series - Verhey on Niebuhr
Intro – Dr. Verhey
Feb 26 @ 7:00-8:30 PM
Dr. Randy Maddox & Dr. David Hogg (SEBTS)
www.socraticclubtwoviews.blogspot.com
Welcome to the third lecture/discussion in our Duke Theology series co-sponsored by the Duke Socratic Club and the Women’s Center. If you haven’t been here before and this is your first time, I’d like to direct you to our Duke Socratic Club Blog: dukesocraticclub.blogspot.com. There are at least two reasons that all of you will want to take a look at this:
First, it explains what this series is about and how it is organized. You’ll find opening comments from earlier lectures that describe the assumptions of the planners.
Second, many of you have asked me if these are being recorded. Well, I am recording them, and I don’t know how great the recording is, but the links to those recordings are posted on our blog. A big thanks to Tim Otto, an MTS student who graduated last year and moved back to his community in
I’d like to answer publically a question that was asked me recently. One of you who have been attending this series pointed out to me that the integration of each theologian lectured on with Duke theology has come more in the Q&A time than in the lecture time. This is true, but it will, I think, begin to be more integrated the closer we get to today and living theologians (or recently living). Also, the professors we have asked to do these lectures may not necessarily buy into our conversation assumptions about a convergence of voices here at Duke that we are describing as a Duke Theology. In fact, none of them have even been in the conversation until this point. So one further assumption that the planners of this series hold is that the speakers may or may not agree with our assumptions. And that is fine. Socratic Club exists to bring together different views in various forms of dialogue for the sake of the gospel.
The lectures are intended to give a basic vocabulary and language to help carry the conversation. Many of us third years experienced this phenomena: in our classes we heard Barth mentioned, we heard Schleiermacher mentioned, we heard Niebuhr, Frei, Linbeck, Childs, and so on mentioned but we hadn’t actually read or discussed any of them. Another way to think of this series is as Church History 15. What happened between Schleiermacher, the last lecture given us by Dr. Steinmetz, and Systematic Theology with Dr. Wainwright or Dr. Carter?
That the integration of a particular lecture’s topic with Duke doesn’t happen until the Q&A is just fine at this point in the game. We hope the series as a whole will be more helpful than any one lecture specifically. Stick it out with us.
So enough about that…On to Dr. Verhey and the “good Niebuhr” as he referred to him last time. Dr. Verhey…
posted by Tom Arthur at 1:45 PM
3 Comments:
It struck me recently that you might have more luck getting professors to connect the figures under discussion with the Duke experience if you asked them to talk about how those figures have influenced the Duke MDiv curriculum, both in its form and content. That would give everyone something fairly concrete to talk about without forcing them to make judgments about what their colleagues are saying or thinking and calling it "Duke theology."
Nice call Tom. Actually, this event with Verhey was the best to date as far as him connecting what he as talking about with Duke. He made some very helpful explicit connections between Niebuhr and Duke. I should say as well that I hope you noticed a nod to yourself in my comments!
I did, thank you. :)
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