Just got back home from Monroe. Pretty exhausted. Don't even want to think about what I have to catch up on right now. The conference was terrific. The real take home for me was that Wright's Pauline theology is not considered, at least by Dr Gaffin, as substantially different than reformed theology as it's been developed by Ribberbos et al. The structure of the conference, for those who were not there. Was for each speaker to present five lectures on the basics of Pauline theology--these were alternated between the speakers--as well as having three Q&A sessions where Wright and Gaffin would ask each other questions then answer a few submitted by the attenders. The mood of the whole conference was quite friendly. I got the feeling that a few people wanted to see some sparks fly, and there were, of course, a few points of disagreement, but both men genuinely seemed to appreciate each other's work and felt that their perspectives were ratheer similar.

Daniel Kirk has pointed up the main point of contention that Wright raised about the way Gaffin portrays Paul. To put it as quickly as I can, Wright felt that not enough attention has been paid to the idea that Paul sees the work of Christ as the culmination of God's work/covenant/what have you with ISRAEL, rather than a general timeless sort of thing. That would need to be nuanced a lot more to be fair, but it gets to the heart of the matter.

I doubt I'll have much more to say about the conference, since I have a lot less of an emotional/political/vocational stake in it than many other attenders. It was great to see quite a few people whom I had only encountered online heretofore, such as Tim Gallant, Barb Harvey, Kevin Bush, Jim Jordan and many others.