faculty news notes
Professors Suzie Park and Carolyn Helsel co-write book about families–the ones in the Bible and the ones in your life
T
he Flawed Family of God: Stories about the Imperfect Families of Genesis (WJK, 2021) is a new book by Professors Carolyn B. Helsel, Associate Professor in the Blair R. Monie Distinguished Chair in Homiletics, and Song-Mi Suzie Park, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Austin Seminary. In 2020 while Park was a visiting scholar for the pastor cohort gathering The Moveable Feast, she heard pastors discussing the lack of resources for thematic preaching. The seed that conversation planted blossomed when she began talking to her faculty colleague and fellow Connections commentary series editor about co-writing a book on family stories in the Bible. They began with the questions, “What does the Bible say about what it means to be a family?” and “What does the Bible have to do with the current struggles of families today?” The answers revealed that the family dramas experienced in the Book of Genesis raise issues—about married vs. single life, sibling rivalry, infertility, family relocation, blended families—which are startlingly relevant to families of today. Throughout the book the writers invite the reader to consider these and many other connections as they reexamine the joys and complications of modern family life. Designed for personal or group study, the book strives
toward three goals: to allow the reader to see the relevance and connections between the biblical texts and the struggles of today’s families; to give voice to the silent characters in the text and remind the reader to listen for what isn’t spoken in their own families; and to enable the reader to form deeper connections with their own families and communities of faith. Thomas G. Long, The Bandy Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Candler School of Theology, says of the book, “In this most creative book, Carolyn B. Helsel and Song-Mi Suzie Park have taken an unorthodox stroll through the book of Genesis. Where others find the creation story, Noah’s Ark, and the Tower of Babel, Helsel and Park find families—wonderful, human, complicated families … The authors provide insight into the frayed edges of our family life, but because the authors also find God in the broken places, they bring us profound hope.” v
Professor Greenway posits agape as moral common ground in struggle for global justice
I
n his newest book, Reasonable Faith for a Post-Secular Age (Cascade, 2020), Professor of Philosophical Theology William Greenway argues there is an unrecognized, but real and potent, common core of global spiritual understanding shared by religious and secular communities. He claims that naming and affirming this core reality—the reality of agape—offers us our best chance as we face multiple global crises in the 21st century. “Across the world we face extreme and growing economic inequalities … conflict-driven mass migrations … [and] epoch-level species and habitat lost. … For the first time in history, these challenges are rising on a global scale,” writes Greenway. “Good people from diverse secular and religious institutions fight these challenges to creaturely flourishing in a multitude of concrete ways … The vast majority share a common understanding of what is reasonable and respond to essentially the same love. But the reality of this common spiritual ground is largely invisible. The transition to a global village sharing a common 16 | Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
language has been achieved in the natural and social sciences. … I believe that a common understanding of a spiritual dimension of reality is shared by multitudes across faith traditions and cultures … and I argue that naming this shared spiritual reality is vital for the flourishing of life on earth.” Greenway writes as a Christian, but he argues that virtually all faith traditions, from Buddhism to Humanism to Wiccan, are rooted in agape—the reality of finding oneself seized by love for others. He illustrates how the moral reality of agape also rests at the heart of the ethics of those who are secular. Greenway explains how the “philosophical distinctions between secular metaphysics and the metaphysics of the world’s great faith traditions have collapsed,” and urges us to see this as a promising development, because it opens up interfaith and intercultural moral common ground, unveiling a basis for united ethical struggle against life-threatening global challenges. In his endorsement of the book, Keith Ward, former Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University, says: “This set of essays is a penetrating philosophical critique of philosophical naturalism and a defense of a more open concept of rationality that is able to take religion seriously. A very important contribution to debates about philosophy, metaphysics, and faith.” v
