Volume 4 Issue 2

September 11, 2001, will forever remain etched in our memories as a day of horrific evil. The images of two passenger planes crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon continue to affect us all. The number of lives harmed by this tragedy, even beyond the over 6,000 deaths, is inestimable. As a nation that for the most part attempts to do good at home and around the world and as individuals who try to be good to our neighbors, we sometimes think God is supposed to insulate us from the destructive power of evil. Yet this is not a biblical view. In the world God created, which allows people free choice to do what God wants or not, harm falls indiscriminately upon the undeserving as well as the deserving as do the benefits of the sun. This is a mystery of life as God created it that we cannot fully fathom as articulated so well in Ecclesiastes. As we struggle to recover from this evil, we see that hope and good in the end trump evil, even as God and his people will eternally triumph over all evil.

As our heads swirl with integrating the World Trade Center tragedy into our worldview, it is more critical than ever that we come to grips with the problem of evil from a biblical perspective. In this light, I am please to announce that the theme for the first ever Stone-Campbell Journal National Conference, to be held March 1-2, 2002, at First Christian Church, Florissant, MO, is “The Problem of Evil.” Our featured guest speaker is Greg Boyd. He is Senior Minister, Woodland Hills Church, St. Paul, MN and Professor of Theology, Bethel College, who just a few months ago published Satan and the Problem of Evil with InterVarsity, having recently also published The God of the Possible with Baker, the latter reviewed in this issue of SCJ. Greg is one of the leading thinkers in the Free-Will Theism, or Openness of God theological explorations, and will approach the topic from this perspective. The two other featured speakers will be John Mark Hicks, Professor of Theology, Lipscomb University, who will explore the problem of evil from an early Stone-Campbell perspective, and Mark Krause, Academic Dean, Puget Sound Christian College, who will explore how postmodern theological thinking deals with evil.

The Stone-Campbell Journal National Conference invites SCJ subscribers plus academics, ministers, and students to gather together for stimulating presentations and warm fellowship. Those who would like to present papers in parallel sessions are invited to provide a topic and brief abstract to me by February 1. The conference will last all day on Friday, March 1, and will end at noon on Saturday, March 2. Primary housing will be at Baymont Inn, Hazelwood, MO (314-731-4200) for $48 per night (double). Cost for the conference will be $18 to SCJ subscribers and $28 to nonsubscribers. A Friday night dinner will be $12. As an SCJ subscriber, you will receive or may already have received an invitation and registration information in the mail. If you need further information, please contact me at bakerslcc@aol.com or at 314-837-6777, ext. 1507, or consult our Web site at Stone-CampbellJournal.com.

If you are a Leaven subscriber who is receiving this complimentary issue of SCJ, I welcome you to our pages. You will see that although both Leaven and SCJ are joint operations of Church of Christ (a cappella) and Christian Churches (independent), what we do is complementary. SCJ is more in the mold of a traditional, academic journal with articles on a variety of topics in historical, theological, and biblical areas, plus a wealth of current book reviews, while Leaven focuses each issue on a unifying topic. Stuart Love, editor of Leaven, and I encourage our readers to subscribe to both publications, and we are thankful to Leonard Wymore who garnered the financial support from Cornerstone Christian Foundation to send these samples to each of our subscribers. We encourage you to fill out the subscription card and send it in to keep abreast of the best and the latest Restoration scholarship.

Five articles are included in the issue. Tim Sensing’s critique of the Stone-Campbell Movement’s early dependence on the Baconian Method is a good followup to an article by David Little which broached this topic in SCJ 3.1 (Spring, 2000). Barry Blackburn’s careful analysis of the four Gospels for their perceptions of the humanity and divinity of Jesus comes out of the 2000 Restoration Theological Research Fellowship, an important venue which meets during the Society of Biblical Literature national meeting every year. Loren Stuckenbruck’s thorough analysis brings significant new background research to bear on the issue of angels and their role in 1 Cor 11:10. Tom Thatcher’s careful look at 1 John 5:6 offers stimulating suggestions on the meaning of “water and blood” with regard to the “AntiChrist.” Finally, Paul Kissling, one of our SCJ editors, presents an intriguing analysis on the meaning of “bow” which will cause readers never to look upon a rainbow the same way again.
Enjoy!

William R. Baker, Editor