From “Five Questions with Oliver O’Donovan,” on EerdWord:
Using ten words (or fewer) per book, can you describe each of the three volumes in the [Ethics as Theology] series?
Certainly:
Self, World and Time: “And now these three remain …”
Finding and Seeking: “… faith, hope and love.”
Entering into Rest: “But the greatest of these is love.”
What’s the best advice you can give to aspiring theologians?
It is the idiom of Christian thought that it proceeds in respectful dialogue with a canonical text. The theologian must be able to handle that text intelligently. “Exegesis, exegesis, exegesis!” Barth told his students, when he was driven out of Germany in the thirties. One has to learn enough from the professional exegetes to be able to make some crucial judgments for oneself. Yet theology needs more than exegesis; it needs questions formed and re-formed by constant reading of the Bible.
