I am quite interested to see your review article on Billings et. al. I have read these, and am I considering the possibility that part of my chapter on TIS would profile a couple of these “introductory” texts, together with one or two theological commentaries, and a few scattered efforts on the homiletical front (Pasquarello being one). These focus on the church’s readingand proclamation of the Scriptures and not only the development of theory about the church’s reading and proclamation(not to say that the later is unimportant). I was reading something by R.R. Reno the other day and he footnoted a telling quote by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik: “We live in an age of treatise, not commentary.”

On my own work: you note that I did not make any appeals to premodern interpretive strategies. This was fully conscious and intentional on my part. I am not without ambivalence about locating TIS neatly with retrieval movements for the very reasons you note, that they sometimes look like naive repristinations, like present day conservative cultural pundits longing for good old days which only exist in fictional black and white television series. And I felt there were more important and simple goals in the book that did not require me to signal anything on that score. Having said that, you are right to suggest that if one is sympathetic to the implications of what I was trying to do it necessarily brings one into a more sympathetic orbit with the premodern understanding of hermeneutics and the necessary and positive role of the rule of faith. I myself lean pretty hard that way but I can envision others taking the main point of the book without converting to a retrievalist mindset.

Likewise I am perfectly happy with disagreements about the location or narrative of development of contemporary thinkers in my typology. The point of the book was not to tell a history or to finally locate individuals, or to argue for one approach over against others. This is a point which was completely missed by one or two other reviewers of the book. (I leave it to others to decide whether the fault for that lay with my writing or their reading or lack thereof.) No, the point was (and is) to encourage a more self-conscious conversation among those from theological, philosophical and biblical studies about the nature of the questions. And if we disagree about how to locate ourselves or others on the typology it means we are having just the kind of discussion which the book was intended to produce and foster.

In addition to the new book and a few other things I am presently also writing a review article for SBET in which I discuss the implications of the maturing of TIS signaled in the appearance of three student geared textbooks: Joel Green’s “Seized by Truth” (Abingdon), Stephen Fowl’s “Theological Interpretation of Scripture” (Wipf and Stock) and J. Todd Billings’s “The Word of God for the People of God.” (Eerdmans) These three share certain features which indicate a kind of tipping or convergence point for the so-called TIS movement. This settling has, to my mind, broad and profound implications for the church and the academy, and also may present particular challenges for Evangelicalism.

I will watch the blog and welcome further comments or questions.

Cheers, Mark Bowald