Pious Assertions About the Bible
There is a whole category of assertions about the Bible that I call “pious,” that reflect people’s desire to respect the Bible and uphold its authority, but that are often inaccurate and poorly considered. I would ask whether a statement can be truly pious and respectful if it is also not true. My suggestion is…
Social Darwinism and the Theory of Evolution
Science Avenger has an excellent article on the connection, or rather lack of a logical connection, between the theory of evolution and social Darwinism (for the third time today, HT: Dispatches). Evolution is a scientific theory. It explains why many facts are what they are. It can never tell us what we should do about…
WP on Blair Legacy
The Washington Post has an interesting article on Tony Blair, titled For Blair, a Legacy Overshadowed. The article is quite interesting, looking at the thing Blair accomplished, and what has brought his popularity from a peak of 75% down to 28%. It reflects on human nature that any number of accomplishments can be completely obscured…
There ARE Moderate Muslims
. . . and some of them speak up, too! Daniel Pipes writes about protests by moderate Muslims in Pakistan and Turkey (HT: Dispatches from the Culture Wars). It’s worth reading. My first thought was that the fewer and weaker moderate Muslims are, the more we ought to support them. I have always maintained that…
Being a Passionate Moderate
I frequently am asked what I mean by “passionate moderate” or how I can be a committed moderate Christian. These questions come even more frequently than ones that ask how I can be a “liberal charismatic,” probably because “passionate moderate” is my self-label, whereas “liberal charismatic” was assigned to me by someone else. The term…
MSNBC Article on Condaleeza Rice
I’ve always though that Rice was a tremendously intelligent person but at the same time I intensely disliked the policies she has been advocating. There’s an interesting opinion piece in Newsweek/MSNBC.com by Marcus Mabry that may give more insight into who she is. She built the image the public has of her as an ice…
Miracles and Community
I’ve been reading Mark through as part of preparation to resume my series on the Gospel of Mark for the Bible Pacesetter Podcast. Right now I’m listening to and then podcasting recordings of the radio program from which this developed just before we closed that program down three years ago. It’s an interesting process getting…
Walking To New Orleans
Well, not quite. I’ll be driving. My stepson John Webb is a pitcher for the Iowa Cubs (Chicago Cubs AAA team in the Pacific Coast League) who are in New Orleans for a series against the New Orleans Zephyrs. Last night the Cubs beat the Zephyrs and John put in two good innings in relief….
The Gospel of Masculinity
Over the last few years we have seen a number of movements in Christianity to involve more men in the church and in spiritual activities. I welcome this trend, because spirituality has too long been the province of only a small percentage of men. This is not because I think that women need men to…
Moderate Christian Blogroll Requirements
I’m assuming that very few people subscribe to or read the main Moderate Christian Blogroll blog yet, so I’m going to link to my latest post there from here as a reminder. I started posting blogroll related items there because I like to keep this blog focused on opinion on religion and society type issues….
H. R. 1592
I’ve posted on this one before, but over the last few days my e-mail inbox has been bombarded by notices telling me that my freedom of speech is about to be destroyed. Amanda at Imago Dei has an excellent post responding to this as well, and that reminded me to say a few more words….
Christian Carnival CLXX
. . . has been posted at Brain Cramps for God. It has a nice theme, lots of good information and many interesting posts.
Christian Carnival CLXX
. . . has been posted at Brain Cramps for God. It has a nice theme, lots of good information and many interesting posts, including my very own post from this blog, Look at New Perspectives on Paul.
Information on FV (Federal Vision)
I found the this post on the Federal Vision (FV) because the author tracked back to a post on my Threads blog that is related to my Look at New Perspectives on Paul entry. It’s not my intent to discuss the FV and the relationship of the Westminster Confession to the new perspectives on Paul,…
Praying, Being Heard, and Not Getting It
7Who, in the days of his flesh, offered entreaties and petitions to the one who was able to save him from death with loud cries and tears, and he was heard because of his piety. 8Even though he was a son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered, 9and being made whole he became…
Penscola AUSCS and ACLU Reps on Kenneth Lamb’s Show
This is of local interest along the Florida-Alabama gulf coast. Kennneth E. Lamb is hosting of “Your Turn” program from 4 til 6PM on Thursday 3 May 2007. Bill Caplinger of AU and Susan Watson of ACLU local chapters will be guesting. I know both of these folks, and they should be worth hearing. I…
Doctrine and Reality – The Need for Balance
In a recent post Dave Warnock looks through the preface by John Piper to Pierced for Our Trangressions, and quotes the following: This is how I feel today about teachers of Christs people who deny and even belittle precious, life-saving, biblical truth.When a person says that Gods punishing his Son for an offence he has…
Natural Production of New Information
One of the key arguments for Intelligent Design (ID) is that new information cannot be produced by natural processes, and thus there must be intervention by an intelligent designer for this new information to appear. That’s a crude statement, but it covers the ground pretty well. One problem I saw with the argument when I…
Even Better Update on Driscoll Video
Check this post on In Defense of the Faith for further information. One can’t be absolutely certain with blog comments, but this is beginning to make sense to me, I think. 🙂 In textual criticism, we consider a reading that could give rise to all the others as more probable. This report–that the videos were…
Christian Reconciliation Blog Carnival #4
. . . has been posted at Pseudo-Polymath. Despite my delinquency in sending in posts, this is a carnival I want to support. It’s small now, but has some excellent material but I think it’s only going to get better. Besides, where can you find a better goal?
Update on Driscoll Video
A couple of updates on this controversy. I may have spoken too soon on the matter of the duties of the conference hosts. It appears that people may have gotten the videos there. I’m still not sure precisely what happened, so I will still maintain that handing out the video would be the right thing…
Look at New Perspectives on Paul
This will be a slightly different post than my usual for this blog. Normally I grab a Bible passage or a principle of interpretation and comment on it. In this post, I want to tie together several threads of my blogging and teaching and point the direction toward some new questions that I’d like to…
Centrist Third Party?
I thought I’d blogged on this before, but I can’t find it. Eleanor Swift of Newsweek is writing about Unity 2008, a group that’s trying to create a third party movement and get on the ballot in all 50 states. The idea is to nominate a presidential candidate of one party and a vice-presidential candidate…
Lingamish on Iconography of the Gospels
Lingamish is presenting a series on his blog, Iconography of the Gospels, in which he explores ways of looking at the gospels. I commend this series to those who are interested in reading the gospels with more breadth and depth. Entries thus far: Iconography of the Gospels Iconography of the Gospels 2 The Doctor’s Strange…