"Encountering God in Tyrannical Texts"

Spring 2015 Saturday Seminar

Saturday, May 2
1:00 p.m. until 4:00 p.m.

The Bible is full of embarrassing, offensive, problematic texts that present serious interpretive challenges for contemporary Christian faith and practice.  Should they be repudiated?  Discarded?  Silenced?  Or are there more effective and faithful ways of handling them? The seminar will tackle the importance of engaging difficult texts directly, with the expectation that we may encounter the living God in our conversation with them.  It will provide the opportunity to wrestle with such texts, to consider interpretive strategies for engaging them with integrity, and to reflect on the authority of Scripture.

Frances Taylor Gench is one of the preeminent Biblical scholars in the US today.  An ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), she served as a member of the PC(USA) General Assembly’s Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church. Her recent publications include Faithful Disagreement: Wrestling with Scripture in the Midst of Church Conflict, Back to the Well: Women’s Encounters with Jesus in the Gospels and Encounters with Jesus: Studies in the Gospel of John. 

Join us!