How's the PhD going?

:)

Looking for a bed

I'm seeking a bed in Cambridge from Mon 19th Oct - Thurs 22nd Oct inc. when d.v. I'll be working on the Magnum Opus at Tyndale House and maybe the UL. All offers gratefully received.

Calvin Conference

I've just filled out the booking form for The John Owen Centre's Calvin Conference Examining Calvin's life and theology and its relevance for Christian living today (Mon 14th - Tues 15th Sept).

It only costs £50 including meals, with discounted day bookings available.

I'm especially interested in it as I'm about to write a chapter for the PhD on Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper.

Anyone else going?

Anyone want to offer me a bed in London - the more accessible it is to London Theological Seminary in Finchley the better!

Oooo!

My notes for the great thesis just reached 666 pages. Maybe I should delete the lot?

Sacramental Words and World

I'm frequently coming across things that might just be relevant to the great thesis. Today someone kindly suggested the work of David Brown (Professor at St Andrews) that is up for the Archbishop's book prize.

If I had a great theological library on my doorstep, I'd be having a good look in:

God and Mystery in Words: Experience through Metaphor and Drama (Oxford University Press, 2008)

First Sentence: “ONE way of characterizing what I am trying to achieve in this part of the book is as an exploration of how language can sometimes be said to function sacramentally, in conveying experiences of divine presence.”

God and Grace of Body: Sacrament in Ordinary (Oxford University Press, 2007)

Zachman on Image and Word in Calvin

Randall C. Zachman is obviously a very eminent scholar but his reading of Calvin somewhat goes against the consensus.

Does anyone know what Calvin scholars have generally made of his positive account of the revelation of God in nature and the sacraments and not just Jesus and the written word?

Does anyone know if its been reviewed in WTJ or similar and what they said about it, for example?

Oh, for a decent theological library. Or a research assistant in London! :)

On the making of many books

Alisdair Heron says that:

“Contrary to what might be imagined, there is nothing easier, with access to a decent library and mastery of the elementary techniques of note-taking, than the production of impressive-looking studies running into many hundreds of pages, most of them footnotes, and concluding with a select bibliography of, say, five hundred titles. The difficulty with such artefacts is not writing them, but reading them. (Paying for them is also becoming an increasing problem.)” (pviii)

Heron, Alasdair, Table and Tradition: Towards an Eccumenical Understanding of the Eucharist (Edinburgh, The Hansdel Press, 1983)

I'm not sure its quite so easy, but there you go!

Calvin on Supper in LCC Theological Treatises

I haven't been entirely wasting my Thursdays. I've been spending them typing out large chuncks of Calvin!

Here are some notes on Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper from the Library of Christian Classics Theological Treatises (Word document, 19pp, 8300wds).

Now its the turn of The Institutes to be typed out. Then the commentaries. Then whatever's left, and myabe even some other people's books.

I love Calvin

Just in case it hasn't come accross, I'd like to say how wonderful I’m finding reading big blocks of Calvin again. Its years since I spent lots of time with the Institutes and I’d never read the theological treatises in much detail. All the time I keep finding good things well said about things I am interested in and much of it quite surprising. Calvin was not a modern English conservative evangelical of a certain sort, I am finding. Surprising.

Watch out for naughty Ford-Battles

Professor Tony Lane DD(Oxon) warns against “the indexes to the McNeill / Battles translation of the Institutes. These are indexes to the notes in this edition, not to Calvin’s text…. Also, no distinction is made between Calvin’s own biblical and patristic references and those of the editors. The biblical references in the text may or may not go back to Calvin and some of Calvin’s own references are dropped. Calvin’s marginal patristic references are usually (but not always) found in the footnotes, but these notes make no distinction between the references given by Calvin and those of the editors. In short, this edition is highly misleading as an indicator of which biblical and patristic references Calvin himself cited.” (John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1999), pxiii)

This seems a great shame in the standard scholarly edition of the English translation of Calvin’s Institutes.

I don’t think there is anything better available? I don’t know where we are supposed to go (except to Lane) to find out which is which? How did he tell? Are there Latin and French editions only where the distinctions are made clear? What of Beveridge’s older English version?

The most important modern work of theology deserves a near perfect edition. Who will make this their life’s work?

On study leave / retreat at Oak Hill

Its lovely to be back at Oak Hill for the week, though sadly without Mrs Lloyd.

My room is much better than our flats here!

Nice to see everyone again.

No real changes spotted so far - except there are lots of strange people. And more windows in the dining room. Most sadly the "Be Right and Persist" crest is gone somewhere, which is a scandal.

Very much looking forward to the Eucharist on Thurs AM with Revd Dr Principal Ovey presiding and Rt Revd Dr Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, preaching.

Obviously working hard. Wrote some excellent blog posts today on Calvin etc. but sadly they are stuck on my lap top at the moment.

Right, back to the books now. Overtime, eh?

Plagiarism

I've no idea if they're true, but as its exam and dissertation-handing-in season, some may be interested in these observations from Roland Barthes. He comments that the concept of plagarism was virtually unknown and hardly conceived of by the more collective medieval mind and is largely a product of modern, individualistic, monocular society.

Plagiarised from Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics p120 ish.

Of course, the good of medievals were much less concerned about consistency of spelling too: a way for them to express their individuality, perhaps?

Theoretically Speaking

Terry Eagleton comments that hostility to theory means an opposition to other people’s theories and an oblivion to one’s own.

Anthony Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1992) p472 citing Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p.viii

Yes, perhaps, but its easy to feel a sympathy for getting on with “it” rather than talking about “it”, or even talking about talking about “it”.

Speech Acts and Scripture

In the morning we're going to discuss Speech Act Theory & Scripture in the post-graduate seminar.

If you're really interested in this stuff, here are some Word documents:

My draft / work in progress (about 7000 words) on Speech Acts and Scripture.

And a bibliography on Speech Acts (Theology, Scripture etc.)

These are part of my research project on Scripture and the Lord Supper, which this old doucument introduces.

The stuff on speech acts and Scripture is intended to follow on from a statement of a standard Reformed Evangelical doctrine of Scripture as taught by Warfield. There's a section on semiotics underway and then I'm going to attempt a speech act and semiotic account of the Supper. d.v.

PhD "progress" report

Ros asked for a progress report on my research project.

I’ve written 6500 words on a Reformed Evangelical doctrine of Scripture as classically expounded by Warfield, which I think are hand-in-able.

And 4000 words on speech act theory and its application to the doctrine of Scripture, which probably need a bit of tweaking.

The next section is on semiotics (the study of signs) with a view to considering its application to scripture and the Lord’s Supper (as words / visible signs).

Then its the Reformed doctrine of the Supper (probably mainly in Calvin and his successors, maybe as mediated through Charles Hodge and Old Princeton?).

And I’ve got about another 20 000 words of prose which varies between quite spare outline sketchiness and rambling cancerous gone to seedness.

And I’ve 127 000 words of notes in alphabetical order by author.

I reckon if you locked me in a room for a couple of weeks and forbade me to look at any more books I could have a fair stab at some prose to work up into a very early draft of the overall thesis.

In the end I need 80 000 words including footnotes.

Theoretically I’ve been working on this project full time this academic year and 25% of my time in the previous two years, so I ought to be roughly half way through by the end of the summer.

I get ordained on 30^th June, d.v., and the deal is that I’ll spend a day a week on this in the parish till its done.

Just in case anyone’s forgotten, the overall working title is:

Edible Words & Legible Sacraments?
an examination of relationships between the doctrines of the Lord’s Supper and the Scriptures
with particular reference to the Reformed Evangelical tradition and to the Church of England

And the chapter headings might go like this:

Chapter 1: Opening Words
Introductory, preliminary and methodological considerations

Chapter 2: God’s Words on God’s Word Written
The scriptural doctrine of scripture

Chapter 3: God’s Words on the Supper
The scriptural doctrine of the Supper

Chapter 4: Edible Words
The Supper in the light of the scriptures

Chapter 5: Sacramental Words
The scriptures in the light of the Supper

Chapter 6: Special Words
The “sacramental” model in relation to the whole created order

Chapter 7: Closing Words
Summary of conclusions and suggested practical applications

Book deals, advance subscription payments, offers of proof reading, suggestions for examiners all most welcome. Suggestions for further reading may be greeted with a slight inner groan.

Reading

Do you ever have the experience when reading of understanding every single word but not quite getting what the sentances mean and coming away from the paragraph after the second slow reading none the wise?

That was my experience with Ladriere, Jean ‘The Performativity of Liturgical Language’, trans. John Griffiths Concillium volume 2 number 9, February 1973, pp50-62 yesterday.

Admitedly it was an English translation, but nevertheless.

I resorted to typing out most of the article and I'm far from seeing how my notes are usable for anything more enlighteningl than a faux learned footnote.

The problem is: how do I know if this is profound and important theological reflection which I am too dim to get but should persevere with, or complete gobbledygook nonsense I can safely ignore?

Doubts in the British Library - a poem

Why are they all here?

Row on row of intellectual battery hens;

Each alone in his own square meter,

The cages invisible.

Each alone with his own fixation.

Why are they all here, under their lamps,

with their piles of books

and sharpened pencils,

their regulation carrier bags

and their little pass-cards to prove that they are Readers?

Reading for Truth? or truths?

Turning pages

To prove a point?

To score in some Great Debate?

Seeking? Searching? Scribbling in the shush.

And tap, tap, tapping as they stare at their screens.

Coughing and spluttering, fidgeting.

Shuffling papers.

From curiosity?

For advancement? Preferment?

For glory? Immortality?

Because they couldn’t get a proper job?

From habit?

Driven?

No where else to go.

Safe in here, with the barricades of books,

Away from the world

And the wind and the rain out there.

Who will read what they write?

And who will know if they’re right?

And why am I here?

Am I a chicken?

What I read today

Today I left for the library before 10am and left for home after 7pm and all I managed to read was:

The back of Stanley Fish, Is There A Meaning In This Text? and about 5pp of it, on the tube

The contents page of 3 books (Derrida, Saussure and Ricoeur)

Preface, Introduction and 24pp of Paul Ricouer, Interpretation Theory

That’s about 4 proper pages an hour. At that rate…

Not very good, eh?

Ruddy note taking. And ruddy blogging and email and café and day dreaming and even texting and …

Taking Note of Note Taking

I often find myself typing in most of a chapter or article that I’m reading or cutting and pasting like mad with very little commenting, highlighting or the like.

Maybe I would be a better student if notes were a bit harder to take, say with a pencil rather than a laptop. I might be driven to be more salient and concise, more judicious and active in my reading, summarising and evaluating rather than reguretatting: more scholar than typewriter.

When I was at university first time round I did everything with pen and paper and would get through a stack of books tolerably (i.e. intro, conclusion, contents page & index) each week and end up with some notes in a file and an essay. I’m not sure my work rate has increased or my essays got much better for all the rearranging blocks of text and the footnote fuss. “Driver argued that” or “As Westermann comment” seemed perfectly good citations then. There is certainly a law of diminishing returns here.

I dread to think what voice recognition software might do to my notes. Sections might often begin: “And d’y know, in a funny sort a’ way, maybe…”. It is likely, however, that a naturally speaking Dragon would have better spelling than me.

Library Thing (updated)

Now this looks really good. (HT: John Barach)

You can automatically import and export bibliographical details. Click on a book in Amazon and Library thing downloads all the details. It can check Library of Congress for you. Quite amazing.

You can even use your mobile when in a bookshop to check if you already own a book.

The wonders of modern technology.

Update:

Mrs Lloyd and I have very much enjoyed adding over 200 of our books (by typing in their ISBN numbers) today.

Its amazing what can be fun when its not PhD work!

If you live in the States they'll send you a bar code scanner for $20, I think, which would make the whole thing much easier and more fun.

We've done all the books in our tiny flat and all of the books on one of my small black book shelvs in the study. One more book shelf, 2 more walls of books and the remaining stash in Wales to be done.

I look forward to working out what the benifits are and reaping them.

In the mean time, you can look at some of my books (6 random ones on the right) or all of the entered so far ones on Library Thing. We can discuss the books and see who else owns them or has a library like mine, I believe.

If you'd like to borrow anying and vaguely know me, do ask. I think I can record that you've got it on-line so the world will know if you default - not that you would, of course.