|
|||||
|
This is just a bit late, because I was out of town. Christian Carnival CLI is now up at A Penitent Blogger. I will try to take a look through and highlight some posts that attract my attention before the next one is posted. You can expect to find some impressions from the Charisma [...] I’ll be out of town at the Charisma Book Expo in Atlanta Georgia from today, September 26 through Monday October 2. I will be stopping by to check comments and so forth as I have time, but I don’t expect to make new entries. As the owner of a small and new business, Energion [...] I located a post on Bible translations through the Methodist Blogs Weekly Roundup (for which I thank John the Methodist for his usual good job). The post is Ideology in Translations, but while I certainly believe ideology is involved in translations, I don’t see a battle of liberal vs conservative ideology here, and I [...] My previous post, The Most Wasted Piece of Architecture, didn’t generate discussion here, but it was picked up by Locusts and Honey with a substantial quote, and some interesting discussion took place there. The discussion seemed to center a good deal around the specific issue of church sanctuaries. But what I would hope we [...] As I was driving with my wife yesterday, I made a comment that had been bugging me all day. “You know,” I said, “A church sanctuary is the most wasted piece of architecture you’ll see on the landscape.” Now my wife knows not to go wild when I say things like that. She didn’t [...] Christian Carnival CXL has been posted at Lux Venit. There’s a good deal of good stuff to check out. Without prejudice to the whole list, I’d like to call special attention to the following: Tight Theological HatbandsI’m not reformed in theology, but I have long thought one of the strengths of the reformed camp [...] And another exciting entry, more than a week old, from Ben Witherington, this time, ‘Just in Time’– ‘God Wants You Wealthy’, dealing with the “health and wealth gospel” or “prosperity gospel.” I’m very slow to condemn movements, but the prosperity gospel seems to be just about diametrically opposed to the spirit of Jesus Christ. [...] While I have reflected largely on the single item in the Pope’s speech and the Muslim reaction, Ben Witherington has posted an analysis of the larger content of the speech. He underlines some things that I would want to debate in the speech as well. A key item from my point of view here [...] As I approach the actual story of the flood in my series on Genesis 1-11 on the Participatory Bible Study blog, my attention is drawn to the problem of violence in the Bible generally, condoned by God, commanded by God, or even carried out by God. Recently on the web I’ve seen quite a number of comments on this issue. On Adrian Warnock’s blog, Andree posts about God’s absolute hatred of sin. After reading a number of incidents from the Israelite wilderness wanderings, and adding in the death of Jesus on the cross, she concludes,
1. God hates sin more than anyone. And certainly one cannot read those passages without hearing at least the message that God deplores sin. God is clearly portrayed here as acting violently against sinners, often in what we might call an arbitrary and capricious manner. The context of hatred for sin certainly intensifies the meaning of the atonement. But is it enough to state that God truly hates sin, and to point out that God provides atonement? Does this explain why God behaves as he does? In Genesis 6, on which I will be blogging shortly, we are told that God planned to wipe out all livingthings on the earth, though he made an exception for those who are saved in the ark. But I’d like you to ask yourself this question: If this story were told about a god from any religion other than Chrsitianity or Judaism would you think of the deity as good or evil? Lingamish discusses a similar problem. He’s wondering how one can read the book of Judges devotionally. He said: I just finished this book and I was amazed at the violence, idolatry, and misogyny it documents. One way of trying to not reject Judges is to see it at as a depiction of negative heroes. That is, Judges is not showing behavior to emulate, but rather behavior to avoid. But what do we do then about Hebrews 11 where many of the judges are held up as “heroes of the faith? Some time ago (September 5, 2005) Adrian Warnock wrote an excellent entry on the need for a Christian experience in the present (hat tip: Peter Kirk). As usual, whether I agree or disagree, Adrian does a fine job of presenting his position, and in this case, I do agree. He continued that entry with [...] |
|
||||
|
Copyright © 2012 Henry E. Neufeld - All Rights Reserved Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa 
|
|||||
Recent Comments