Featured Posts
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What Is Biblical Literacy?
We complain about it, write about it, claim it’s important or even critical, design programs to create it, but what is it? I don’t mean that none of us know what we mean when we say “biblically literate” or “biblically illiterate,” but do we all mean the same thing? I don’t think we do, and…
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Fences: Mending or Rending
The following is a sermon I presented at the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Pensacola on September 11,2005 and originally posted here on September 13, 2005. I’m reposting it because when I went to look for it, I found that the original post had somehow been truncated, and also because there is a one word at a…
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Experiencing the (Baptism of the) Holy Spirit
This is a topic where I tend to make just about everyone uncomfortable. Long time readers may recall a previous discussion of speaking in tongues, and my own experience of it. Those who expect me to be intellectually oriented and rational are uncomfortable with mystical experiences, and many who are comfortable with the mystical experiences…
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Barack Obama’s Income Redistribution Plan
In a recent ad we hear the following: “A windfall profits tax on big oil to give families a thousand-dollar rebate,” an announcer in the ad says. (Source: MSNBC.com.) The entire energy debate seems to have become a pandering game, with each candidate dulling any responsible suggestions he might make with various bribes to the…
Fallible Bible
I also Thank God for Blessing us with a Fallible Bible.
Quick Note on The Golden Compass
I ended up with a copy of this almost by accident, and have written some notes. While I’m not overly impressed by it, I see no reason for the controversy. Notes are here.
New Creation-Evolution Site
Laura links to a new site on creation and evolution written by someone she knows, and I wanted to promote the link to an actual post. I must say that I have substantial areas of disagreement with the post she directly links on thermodynamics, but I’m so involved on the theological side right now, which…
An Answer for Mark: Death as a Divine Tool
Mark responded to my post Dealing with the Theological Implications of Evolution, and in turn poses a question to me, well summarized in the last sentence of his last paragraph: What is the particular problem that is raised that Stegosaurus had a million or so years in the sun but now is no longer? Which…
Great Way to Call Someone a Liar
I’m not following the controversy in question very closely, as it’s largely a UK thing (or so it appears to me), but there is a great dust-up about the management of the former SPCK bookshops in the UK by the Saint Stephen the Great Trust (I’ve seen a few variations on this). If you want…
Quick Note on Applying Matthew 7:1
(This is an exegetical and application note on Matthew 7:1 to accompany a devotional on my wife’s devotional list.) There are two directions that people have taken on Matthew 7:1, both of which I think are mistaken. Even Jesus cannot create a one liner that someone else can’t apply foolishly. The first approach to Matthew…
Of Double Standards and Cesspools
Steve Matheson at Quintessence of Dust notes regarding Dembski’s Uncommon Descent blog: Uncommon Descent is a moral cesspool, a festering intellectual ghetto that intoxicates and degrades its inhabitants. . . . C’mon Steve! Don’t hold back! Tell us how you really feel! While I lead with the controversial (and I agree with him about UcD),…
NRSV Study Bible
Westminster/John Knox Press is publishing a study Bible including the apocrypha, The Discipleship Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version Including Apocrypha. There are some notes on this at New Epistles. It looks like an interesting one.
Dealing with the Theological Implications of Evolution
There are two extremes in how Christians respond to the possible theological implications of evolutionary theory once they are convinced that the theory of evolution is valid. The first is to claim that there are no implications whatsoever. This is represented by the statement: “The Bible tells us that God created; science tells us how…
Series on Reading the Text(s) of Scripture
This series, done jointly on Everyday Liturgy and Through a Glass Darkly should be well worth your time to follow. I will certainly be following it.
Jim Getz on Peter Enns and WTS
He has some good, balanced (in my view) thoughts here.
Fundamentally Altered Viewpoint
Alan Lenzi, of Bible and Ancient Near East, asks a simple question: Does awareness of the ANE archaeological, linguistic, cultural, and textual materials discovered in the last 150 years or so fundamentally alter our understanding of the Hebrew Bible? As soon as I’ve finished writing this short post I’m going to go to his blog…
TVUUC Shooting
On Sunday, July 27, there was a shooting at Tennessee Value Unitarian-Universalist Church in which two people were killed. Moderate Christian Blogroll member Shuck and Jive is following this tragedy. I will be following it via his blog and the news stories he links to. I join my prayers with those already offered for the…
One Reason Theology Students Lose their Faith
There are many different faith journeys, and I would not presume to speak for all of them. One reason, however, for theology students to lose their faith as they become more educated is that they are given no room to explore questions that they have and are greeted with judgmental attitudes. This specifically applies to…
Newbigin: Proper Confidence
With it’s subtitle, “Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship” this little big sets sail into a rather intense area of debate, and one which is very relevant to recent discussions on this blog. I’m not really going to try to summarize it. It is only 105 pages and those aren’t too terribly intense if…
Ad for New OT Professor at WTS
While I acknowledge that a seminary has a right to choose their people and support their confession, this suggested ad gets closer to the way I feel about it. Peter Enns was pretty conservative from where I sit.
Discernment and Revelation
Yesterday I wrote a post regarding judging revelation by means of reason, and in particular pointed out that one of the problems I see with Biblical inerrancy is that it cannot be demonstrated in this fashion. In a failed attempt at being brief I failed to underline that this is only one of my many…
Peter Enns Leaving WTS
I wanted to report on this mutually agreed separation, because I have previously reported on the problems. (HT: Through a Glass Darkly.)
What Would we Do Without PZ Myers?
Some of us like to be angry, and if we’re Christians and angry, then PZ Myers is a very useful person. After all, how can one be properly angry without someone at whom one can direct one’s rage? Enter PZ Myers, who has now performed his act of desecration on the communion wafer. At first…
Using Reason to Judge Revelation
One of my objections to inerrancy is that it is impossible to demonstrate. Lacking a perfect standard external to the Bible and also lacking perfect understanding, we are unable to actually demonstrate that the Bible is, in fact, without error. Some apologists seem to believe that if we just apply the right set of standards…
Christian Carnival CCXXXIV Posted
. . . at A True Believer’s Blog, a first time host. Go over and check it out!
Genesis Links
I started collecting links through clips on my bloglines account (yes, the blogroll is public), and one thing I’ve found is that I collect a remarkable number of links and I comment on only a few of them. There have been a number of good posts on Genesis recently, and I want to provide links…
Who Speaks for Religion?
If I went around my neighborhood asking friends and neighbors just what evolutionary biology was all about, then went and found an evolutionary biologist and asked him to defend the comments of all the “evolutionists” in my neighborhood, I think he would be justly annoyed. He would probably tell me that these people didn’t understand…