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Dr TK Dunn on the Importance of the Old Testament
This is an extract from a longer interview, which I will also embed. I think Dr. Dunn has some valuable comments on the relationship of scripture and what it means for our study. And here’s the full interview from which that was extracted.
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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Comic Sues Jews for Jesus
Today CNN.com reports (an AP story) that Jackie Mason is suing Jews for Jesus over the use of his image and name in one of their pamphlets. (See the Jews for Jesus press release in response here.) I haven’t seen the pamphlet itself, but this action seems over the line to me. The only thing…
Uninformed Opinions
Duane Smith has an excellent post over on Abnormal Interests called Evidence, Who Needs Any Evidence. I think this relates closely to my earlier post, A Poll Too Far, in which I discussed people providing opinions on topics concerning which they simply cannot be well-informed. The further question is why does the media buy into…
New Appearance and Co.mments
I’ve changed to a three column appearance which I adapted from the existing default WordPress theme. Please let me know if you experience any problems looking at various parts of the blog. In addition, I’ve added my Co.mments tracking list to the left sidebar. I’m doing this as a test. One of the things I…
Unright Christian Blogs
Threads from Henry’s Web is now being aggregated in the Unright Christian Blogs aggregator. I appreciate this service. To quote its purpose: Sometimes you come across the assumption that “Christian”, by definition, means “conservative”. This blog aggregator is an attempt to show that this assumption is far from true. This will not draw away from…
More on Gender Accuracy
Suzanne has returned and is carrying on the debate about the approiate use of language for gender in Bible translation. Her response comes in three parts. I’m going to comment briefly on each, and then make some further comments on this controversy. (You can follow Suzanne’s links to Adrian’s posts.) First, in Response to Adrian:…
Server Change (Mostly) Complete
If you’re seeing this, the server change is complete at least from your point of view. The nameservers may play their games for a little while, but that shouldn’t make too much difference once you’re here. I’ll get to some more post soon.
Blog Downtime
Yesterday I changed physical servers for this blog. My plan included posting a message before it went down and then posting another when it returned, but somehow that slipped my mind in all the fun of transferring databases and correcting for a slightly different version of PHP in some of my scripts. (WordPress transferred completely…
An Incarnational View of Translation
In several previous posts I’ve talked about the incaration and how it is central to Christianity. This post is not a continuation of that series, but rather a very brief detour to look at one of my favorite topics: Bible translation. I had been thinking about this post for a few days, but I was…
More Gender Accuracy Fun
Adrian Warnock has continued his series with Cows, Dogs, and Political Correctness parts 2 and 3. I’m quite certain that the folks over at Better Bibles will answer some of the major points, and indeed they already have in some comments. I want to simply point out that it appears to me that those supporting…
Free Christian Apologetics Books to Selected Bloggers
Chris Eyre has started a series of comments (What Price Apologetics? and Christian Apologetics) on the Consider Christianity Series by Elgin L. Hushbeck, Jr.. Chris is somewhat critical of the series, and I thought he would provide a good starting point for discussion of it. Note that I own the publishing comany (Energion Publications) and…
Christian Apologetics
I think that after my start, I should say that I enjoyed reading Elgins first two Consider Christianity
An Individual in Unity with Himself
An individual identifying himself as yes2truth left a comment with reference to my new moderate Christian blogroll. I don’t usually do this, but the comment is so ironic that I just had to call attention to it. I must warn you that the irony level is off the scale. yes2truth said: My full question is…
Comparing Scripture with Scripture
One element of what I call the central loop (programming background comes out!) is “compare.” To review, the central loop involves: Meditate, Question, Research, Compare (Repeat as needed) This involves a very common principle, that scripture is its own best interpreter. It’s also called “comparing scripture with scripture.” But this process of comparison can be…
Skepticism and Scholarship
Ben Witherington comments on an attitude of skepticism on his blog in an entry titled Justification by Doubt. Dr. Witherington makes a number of good points, but I think the topic at a minimum needs more comment. I’d like to suggest you read his entire post before you read mine. I’m going to quote his…
Welcome Chris Eyre
Chris will be posting a series of entries here dealing with the Consider Christianity series. One of the purposes of my publishing company, Energion Publications is to publish materials that start conversations. As a small publisher, I think it’s useful for me to help start the conversations. Chris has been reading the books, and he…
What price apologetics?
I have to ask myself why we do apologetics. It seems to me that it just brings our religion into disrepute and at best makes us look at best a set of idiots and at worst a set of liars. It just isn’t possible to argue it as being rational without a set of unprovable…
Implementing a Doctrine
I’ve been discussing essentials of Christianity, as I see them, and emphasizing the doctrine of the incarnation. In the process I’ve mentioned implementing and expressing doctrines. What do I mean by those two terms? First, I do not regard the expression and the implementation of the doctrine to be part of the essentials. I believe…
Bible Study and Sharing
In the method of Bible study that I teach, the last element is sharing. Now sharing is last on the list because you have to dig into your Bible study in order to have something to share, but not because it is the least important. Recently I have been impressed again with how important sharing…
Consumer Reports Viruses for Testing
Bob Sullivan has a post on The Red Tape Chronicles about Consumer Reports creating viruses for the purpose of more accurately testing virus software. In particular, these viruses allowed CR to check how capable the programs were of catching new viruses and new variants. The antivirus community is up in arms, because they have made…
Gender Accuracy Fun
Adrian Warnock has responded to his perceptions of the approach taken by the folks over at Better Bibles. Since this is a topic that interests me, I thought I’d call attention to it. I don’t have anything to add at the moment, as I think Peter Kirk, both in comments on Adrian’s blog, and in…
Bible Puzzlers Anyone?
There’s a new wind over on Lingamish, and this one brings us The Bible Puzzler. I’m waiting with interest to see what this is going to be, and watching my schedule with interest to see how much time I’ll have to get involved. But this can’t help but be a good thing. If at all…
Change to Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator
This is only a minor change. I wanted some software that would aggregate the way I wanted to, and make it reasonable to include a couple of online forums as well. The result was that I wrote my own software, built on MagpieRSS and really very simple otherwise. At the moment it orders the blogs…
A Poll Too Far
OK, just yesterday I wrote about the mob mentality and how technology is just technology–it’s how we use it that matters. Then today I find This article on MSNBC.com about changing the definition of a planet. The article itself is interesting, though hardly earthshattering (planetshattering?). But right next to the headline we have a live…
Technology is Just Technology
Over and over I’ve heard the refrain, “The invention of the _________ is causing the deterioration of society because it _______.” The technology may be rapid transport, from the steam driven train to the airplane, or communications from radio to television to the internet, or any other form of technology. The internet is a favorite…