Got back from the annual ETS meeting yesterday and finally have a chance to sit down and summarize the events of the last couple days. Thursday morning was highlighted by parallel sessions. I attended one on Melanchthon and his shifting view of free will, in addition to papers on economic imagery in the Scriptures and the prospects for natural law theory as a strategy for political discourse. The latter was part of a session that revolved around evangelicals and natural law, and began with a paper presented by Acton’s Stephen Grabill, author of Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics.
The plenary session on Thursday at the lunchtime hour featured a talk by prominent radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt, who gave an exciting overview of the power of new media. Hewitt also spoke about the views evangelicals have toward the participation of those from other religious and theological traditions in governing. Using the case of Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who is Mormon, in particular, Hewitt challenged those in the audience to respond to him via email in their answer to this question: “Would you vote for a Mormon president?”
The afternoon sessions I attended revolved around the relationship between liberal Protestant theology and the rise of National Socialism in Germany. These were very informative and valuable papers, and generally highlighted the possibility that existed for liberal theology to be co-opted by neo-pagan Nazis, while also underscoring the fact that there is no necessary logical connection between liberal theology and National Socialism. All this is contra, for instance, the view of Karl Barth, which I juxtapose with the view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in my recent article, “The Aryan clause, the Confessing Church, and the ecumenical movement: Barth and Bonhoeffer on natural theology, 1933–1935,” Scottish Journal of Theology 59, no. 3 (August 2006): 263-280.
I attended a lecture sponsored by Crossway Books given by John Piper, which focused on William Tyndale’s efforts to translate the Bible into English from the best contemporary Hebrew and Greek editions available at the time. Thursday night was a dinner and plenary address by outgoing ETS president Edwin Yamauchi, who has been at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio since 1969. This marked the end of the formal events I participated in, as I left to return to Grand Rapids early yesterday morning. Since Friday was pretty much a travel day for me, there’s not much of interest to tell.
All in all, my experience at ETS was excellent, having learned a great deal from the papers presented as well as meeting new folks or putting faces to names that I had only previously met via email or the Internet. I look forward to attending and participating in future ETS meetings.