Volume 3 Issue 1

Weekly observance of the Lord's Supper is one of the most stable heritages of churches in the Stone-Campbell Movement. As we partake of the cup and the loaf, we commonly are urged to remember the Lord's death, his sacrifice for our sins, his spilled blood. Often overlooked in our observance is the promise of Christ's return, which is based on Christ's predicted bodily resurrection. When we partake, we "proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." We stake our eternal future and our daily present on the fact that Christ rose again. We worship each week on Sunday morning and not Sabbath evening because of the apostolic witness recorded in the Gospels that after being crucified, Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the morning of the first day of the week. The truth of this jolts us as we arise early on Easter Sunday morning for the annual Sunrise Service. However, the reality of the resurrection should mark our celebrations every Sunday morning.

To help stir your imagination and strengthen your conviction about the apostolic witness of the resurrection, in this issue Russ Dudrey offers a stirring case for the truthfulness of the Gospel reports of the resurrection. With great illumination, he digs into early pagan critiques of the resurrection as well as the bogus account of the Gospel of Peter in light of which the Gospels stand tall.

Welcoming in the new millennium, Victor Hunter, provides SCJ readers with his Dean E. Walker Lecture, presented at the 1999 North American Christian Convention. Hunter examines the past and peers into the future of ministry in North America. With a healthy critique of churches which reshape the gospel message into a watered down cultural icon, he challenges those with a narrow vision of the church to reignite the Stone-Campbell call to minister in the context of the whole church, the "catholic" church, and to operate on the basis of our common "confession" that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Two articles in this issue add to the growing forum we are having in SCJ on postmodernism, begun by John Castelein in the inaugural issue (Spring, 1998), "Can the Restoration Movement Plea Survive If Belief in Objective Truth is Abandoned?" and following up by Philip Kenneson (Spring, 1999) with his "Reply to John Castelein." David E. Little (sending in our first article from Australia) offers a very helpful article on the roots of the inductive method in the early Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement and how we might meet the challenge of postmodernism. Christopher Simpson provides fresh observations on nineteenth-century Danish philosopher and minister, Søren Kierkegaard. The incredible relevance of Kierkegaard to the current postmodern discussion is helpfully sized up in light of Alexander Campbell.

Following up on Walter Zorn's article in our Fall, 1998 issue, which argued for the subjective genitive function of "the faith of Christ" in Romans, Dennis Lindsay, of Springdale College, Birmingham, England, presents a case for an objective genitive function of "the faith of Christ" in Galatians 2:16-3:5.

Finally, Terry Briley, of Lipscomb University, presents a much warranted correction of the tendency for those of us in the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement to overlook study of the OT since we claim to be a "New Testament Church." Quite rightly, he shows that full understanding of vital NT concepts is inseparably dependent on learning from the OT.

This is the first time we have published three papers from graduate students in SCJ. Russ Dudrey, David Little, and Chris Simpson give us hope that scholarship in the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement has a bright future. We at SCJ believe encouraging enterprising and articulate young scholars such as these is a big part of our purpose. We congratulate these three for the future they represent. Further, we solicit the scholarship of others like them. Send us your manuscripts. Scholarship should not be kept in an ivory tower. May others of you be challenged and stimulated to write in your area of growing expertise.

On another positive note, we are pleased that Stone-Campbell Journal has been accepted by the most exhaustive index of religious journals. Sponsored by the American Theological Library Association (ATLA), indexing of SCJ articles in Religion Index One: Periodicals and SCJ book reviews in Index to Book Reviews in Religion will help inquirers in many fields of religious research find relevant items that appear in SCJ. These indices are also benchmarks of quality many religious and theological libraries apply toward their journal acquisition decisions. This is a much-welcomed step in establishing the long-term horizon of SCJ.

William R. Baker, Editor