Thursday, January 19, 2006

Harry Stout's Upon the Altar of the Nation

I was the first person to buy this book today at the Creve Couer, Mo., Borders; they had to go into the backroom to get it. I can't wait to read it and review it. Checking the Dabney references, I found a couple of footnoting and other mistakes, which is a little worrisome for the rest of the book. Still, this will be a major and important work by one of the most prominent evangelical historians.

8 comments:

Richard A. Bailey said...

Hey man, picked up my copy at AHA in Philly early this month. I too really look forward to spending some extended time with it.

Glad I found you. I look forward to seeing what all you got to share.

Sean Michael Lucas said...

I am extremely jealous that you got a copy before me!

Richard A. Bailey said...

Yeah, but I imagine you'll get to it way before me and get to tell me how quickly I should drop everything else and start turning pages.

Brandon Withrow said...

Sean, my name is Brandon Withrow. I'm familiar with your work and have been reading your blog. Instead of being just a "lurker" I'd thought I'd let you know that your blog is one of my reads.

I have yet to pick up a copy of Stout, but I hope to soon. Are you going to review it for print or for your blog?

Sean Michael Lucas said...

Hi, Brandon, and welcome. I've seen your blog before; you are finishing your Ph.D. at Westminister aren't you? What are you working on?

I'd like to write a review essay and include the Genevoses' new book, but we'll see. I'm about 60 pages in on the Stout book and have mixed feelings about it right now.

I think it is safe to say that it is not nearly as good as New England Soul--I think it points up how difficult it is to become a "specialist" in a particular area. Even though Skip spent 12 years working on this, there are a number of obvious mistakes and bibliographic lacuna.

Brandon Withrow said...

Review essays are always the best anyway. It's easier to get a real look into the book that way.

I'm a Ph.D. Candidate right now, looking to finish up maybe next year (it changes from day to day!). Actually, I think that might be the best time frame for me at this point. I'm working on Edwards, specifically his contributions to the history of biblical interpretation in light of his Anglo-American context.

Sean Michael Lucas said...

Brandon: Just out of curiousity: how will your work differ from Robert Brown's Jonathan Edwards and the Bible? sml

Brandon Withrow said...

Sorry for taking a while to get back to you. I'm a bit behind on my blog reading lately. I'm looking at his actual handling of the text in light of his interlocutors, like Poole, Henry, Doddridge, etc. I'm not focusing on the pre-critical issues that Brown does. And while Brown handled the sort of prolegomena, I'm looking to see him in the action of biblical interpretation from an historical perspective.

One of the things I'm attempting to do (given that this is an historical dissertation)is understand his choices of text, how he handles it, who he models, etc, in light of his surrounding context and how this affects his exegetical decisions, etc (the kind of work that Doug Sweeney has called for recently). I'm also trying less to "systematize" Edwards. Instead, I'm following his growth as a thinker chronologically.

My proposal stated that I would use his handling of texts related to justification as sort of a measuring stick of exegetical changes, but I'm finding that certain things are changing as I go.