The Real Cost of Health Care
Hmm! I don’t really know what that is! But Robert J. Samuelson has an excellent column on Newsweek (via MSNBC) that discusses the issue. He makes a number of excellent points, including pointing out that we’ve hidden the actual cost of health care, though I suspect not nearly so successfully in this country as in…
Genesis 9: A New World
Genesis 9 looks at the beginnings of life and society after the flood. It can be of interest in a number of ways, because along with parts of chapter 8 it supports the Noahide laws, and is the foundation for blood being forbidden to eat blood (Acts 15:20, which does not quote this, but must…
Iran and the Iraq War
And now the third in a series of short posts–an unprecedented attack of brevity for me! I’ve been saying “Iran” over and over again as the war in Iraq was first contemplated and then executed. An article today in the Washington Post talks about the influence of Iran and the fears, entirely justified in my…
Codex on Mesopotamian Creation Stories
Tyler Williams is beginning a series on this topic. After reading just the first entry I strongly recommend that any of my readers interested in the creation stories take a look at this material. For those who have not been following my material you can look at the Genesis category on my Participatory Bible Study…
The Difficulty of Scientific Conspiracies
. . . is illustrated here, in a nice post by Carl Zimmer. I’m extremely interested in the debate about these fossils, so I read what I can find, but I lack the scientific expertise to have a relevant comment on the science. What I would like to point out is the way in which…
N.T. Wright on Just War
Support for the Iraq war has been largely characterized as a liberal-conservative debate, with lots of negative adjectives attached to each political stream. Supporters are supposedly patriots who support using our military to defend our innocent citizens while opponents are portrayed as weak folks whose only desire is to surrender. There are, however, quite a…
Decisive Verse, Decisive Choice
I was having a conversation with a friend who is a United Methodist pastor a few years back. He was a well educated man with a doctoral degree and Arminian to the core. We got onto the subject of predestination vs free will, and he quoted the following to me (though not in my own…
Conservative Political Deception
Ben Witherington has a good post today about political deception with a brief intro on parthenogenesis. On the latter, I would simply note that I see no particular benefit to Christianity in proving that a virgin birth is possible. The value of the doctrine stems at least in part from the fact that it is…
Value of the Historical-Critical Method
I’ve written a number of posts on the historical-critical method previously on this blog (category, listing 28 posts). It is one of the areas on which I can properly be described as unabashedly liberal. I fully embraced the critical approach to Bible study as the starting point, and as the best approach to ascertaining the…
New Carnival: Christian Reconciliation
Weekend Fisher at Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength as announced a new blog carnival, Christian Reconciliation Carnival: Call for Submissions, to be published monthly. This month’s topic: setting the record straight for strawman arguments made against your group. Submissions by midnight on 1/30/2007.
Great Post on Gifting
In preparing the Christian Carnival CLVIII, which I hosted this week on my Participatory Bible Study Blog, I found a real gem of a post on gifting. Dana, of Dana’s Avenue, wrote about Gifting, and the experience of discovering excitement in the gift of accounting. This really strikes a cord with me, because in my…
Christian Carnival CLVIII
Welcome to the January 24, 2007 edition of christian carnival, #CLVIII. I’m your cyber-librarian for the week, and I’d like to welcome you to our cyber-library, temporarily located right here! In case you’re wondering about the numbers in parentheses you can find out more here. I used some of them rather loosely! Biblical Studies (220)…
The Problem with WWJD
One of the primary objections that conservative Christians have to the work of historical Jesus scholars is that they often have a tendency to create Jesus in their own image, or at least in an image congenial to them. This is said particularly of the scholars of the third quest, and of the Jesus Seminar…
Doctrinal Statements and Bible Use
A friend e-mailed me about a post which caught my attention. It seems that a blogger wanted to use the feed of the ESV Bible from the official web site, but found that the terms of service required him to accept a doctrinal statement first (relevant links are in his entry). Personally, I think that…
A New Baptist Covenant
Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are both tied to the formation of a new umbrella group of Baptist denominations in an article in the Washington Post. I should point out what could easily be missed–Clinton described himself as a cheerleader and refused to be interviewed. Carter is apparently more involved. This is not…
Ben Witherington on the Pentecostal Movement
Ben Witherington has a very good piece on cessationism and the Pentecostal movement. He acknowledge both the good and the not so good. It’s worth taking a look.
A Welcome Alliance
MSNBC.com has a good story on scientists and evangelical Christians working together on the environment. This is a very welcome alliance. This isn’t a matter of anyone compromising on their principles, but rather an alliance for action on issues on which both sides can agree.
Losing a Battle, Losing a War
In all the debates about winning or losing the war in Iraq, what I find extremely frustrating is that the discussion so often occurs without adequate context. Today Joe Carter writes about How We Lost the War (And Will Lose the Next One Too). I agree with many of his comments about American public opinion,…
Only the President Can Stretch (Break) the Law
Attorney General Gonzales is apparently concerned that judges may make decisions about security issues that they are not qualified to understand. According to MSNBC: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says federal judges are unqualified to make rulings affecting national security policy, ramping up his criticism of how they handle terrorism cases. Of course, the administration that…
Christian Carnival CLVII
Working faster than a speeding bullet and showing more power than a locomotive, Amanda has posted the Christian Carnival CLVII. No, she didn’t use a superman theme; that was suggested to me when I found the carnival already completed early this morning, and I’m an early riser! So congratulations on a good first time hosting…
Isaiah 27: Accomplishing Redemption
I’ve been at this series on Isaiah 24-27 for some months now. It’s taken so long mostly because I’ve been working at it slowly as I have time, and not because my series is that in-depth. The thing that has struck me in studying the passages for this series is the richness of the material….
National Religious Freedom Day
I should have known about this, but hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Today is National Religious Freedom Day. I wonder why there is not more publicity surrounding this. Our freedom is a good thing to celebrate and defend.
Behind Every Peaceful Protester . . .
. . . is someone who is willing to fight for it. I don’t mean disrespect to peaceful protest. There is a great value in it, and in civil disobedience, though civil disobedience has been somewhat tamed since the days of Martin Luther King. When I was stationed at Offutt AFB, Nebraska, a protest leader…
Translation, Paraphrase, and Transformation
I’ve been using a term about Bible translation, or rather, about a form of presenting the message of the Biblical text without taking the time to rigorously define it. That term is “transformation.” I want to throw out this post for some comments, and explain why I started using that term. Has it been used…