Featured Posts
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Sorrow Like My Sorrow – Lamentations 1:12
Can we really understand the suffering of another person or they ours?
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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…
Social Notes (see all)
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Two Notes on the Authorship of Hebrews
The first is an interview at Euangelion with Andrew Pitts regarding his forthcoming essay on Hebrews (in a collection). It discusses the authorship and proposes Paul as the author, but in a speech rather than a letter, and Luke as stenographer, which he differentiates from an amanuensis. I didn’t get a completely clear picture of…
Augustine on the Need to Know Hebrew and Greek
… a quote at The Sacred Page.
Glenn Beck is Right – He Should Run from Social Justice
Why? My pastor, Geoffrey Lentz, says it’s because following Jesus in social justice is hard and demanding and might mess up our lifestyes: What would happen if we “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everlasting stream” (Amos)? It wouldn’t work out very well for me. This one hits us right where…
On Academic Freedom and Denominational Colleges
No, I’m not talking about my former denomination, the Seventh-Day Adventists. In this case, it’s Erskine College and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Let me make clear that I believe a denomination has the right to do what it wants to do with its institutions, always assuming that they uphold existing contracts. For example, if…
St. John Chrysostom: The Law a Shadow
I thought this was one of the most beautiful ways I have heard this expressed: “For” (he says) “the Law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things”; i.e. not the very reality. For as in painting, so long as one [only] draws the outlines, it is…
Origen: Stumbling Blocks in Scripture
The following is from Origen, On First Principles, 4.1.15. All emphasis is mine. (Also from CCEL.) But since, if the usefulness of the legislation, and the sequence and beauty of the history, were universally evident of itself, we should not believe that any other thing could be understood in the Scriptures save what was obvious,…
Origen: Threefold Understanding of Scripture
My reading today in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, X, Hebrews was unusually rich, commenting on Hebrews 10:1-11. This is the first of three extracts. As usual, I’m taking these from CCEL and I urge you to support them as you can. The way, then, as it appears to us, in which we ought to deal…
The Swerve – Too Close to the Truth
… like right there! The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c <td style='padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;' colspan='2'Crumbums & Fatcats www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform (HT: Language Log)
Harvest of Souls International Ministries Web Site
Via Dave Black Online and Nick’s blog I found that biblioblogger Nick Norelli’s church, Harvest of Souls International Ministries, has a new web site. Now why do I link to this particular church web site at this moment? Is it merely to congratulate them? Well, I do congratulate them, but I had something more specific…
Contest and Possible Blogswarm
Well, it may not be as spontaneous as all that. And with that, commercial warning … My company, Energion Publications, is sponsoring a contest and inviting people to blog about Christianity during Consider Christianity Week, (March 21-27) which is the project of one of my authors, Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. You can get full details on…
Inerrancy – Romancing the Term
I’ve previously expressed my surprise about what some people can believe about the Bible and yet call their belief “inerrancy.” As an example, I responded to Earnest Lucas’s excellent commentary on Daniel in which he maintains that one can hold both inerrancy and a late dating of Daniel. I think a good one sentence summary…
Patriotism Redux
I’ve written before on what citizens owe their country, and blind support is not patriotism in my view. I think that a blind support, my country right or wrong, would be analogous to suicidal tendencies in a person. I wrote on this before, amongst others in my posts Patriotism: What Do I Owe My Country?…
Replacing Social Darwinism
Well, the label at least. I think we’d like to ditch the concept as well, but that’s probably harder. I suspect ditching the label won’t work either. But Michael Zimmerman would like to do it and I agree with his reasons, even though I suspect people will continue to use the label that best advances…
Judge Jim Gray on Drug Legalization
One of the things that annoys me in our national discourse is the way those on the left refuse to recognize the inefficiencies of government on their favorite projects while those on the right do the same thing with theirs. The phrase “legitimate function of government” is a license to all sorts of evils, most…
Finding and Protecting the Essentials
I’ve written several times before about looking for the essentials of the Christian faith, most recently in my discussion of what a successful United Methodist Church would look like. I maintain that it is important to identify what are essentials, and to have a well-selected set that will provide identity for an organization. Of course,…
Book Notes: Roetzel on 2 Corinthians
I’ve given up the enterprise of reading this book through from cover to cover, so these notes are based on using it as reference while I’m reading 2 Corinthians itself. The fact is that I found the book impossible to read straight through. As I mentioned previously in using it as a comparison to Matera’s…
Respect for Other Prayers
According to the Christian Post: About a dozen delegates did not attend the prayer of Johari Abdul-Malik. “I’m going to be somewhere else saying the Lord’s Prayer,” Delegate John Cox (R-Ashland) told CBN News. “It’s just not something that I feel like I can condone as an individual.” Yet when I get into conversations on…
Christian Carnival CCCXVIII Posted
… at RodneyOlsen.net. Check it out!
Special Prices on Resources for Students at Bibles.com
I’m not a student (at least in the traditional sense), but looks good. Check it out. (HT: New Testament Resources)
On the Old Testament and Vengeance
Peter Kirk linked to my post on “an eye for an eye” in responding to David Ker’s post What to do with the vengeance in the Old Testament? Skip it! As a result I’ve been able to follow a rather substantial number of posts discussing this issue. One of these comes from John Hobbins, who…
Divining the Voice of God
I spend a good deal of time talking in my book (When People Speak for God) about discerning God’s voice and also about the way that people use the phrase “God told me” and its like in a manipulative way. Today on the Spectrum blog, James Coffin has a post titled Divining the Voice in…
REB Module for e-Sword
I previously reviewed e-Sword and found it a pleasant surprise in the free Bible software category. Note that my review was written in 2006, within a few days of my starting this blog, and a great deal has happened since then. Hopefully I will manage to write an updated review soon. But there is more…
Hobbins on Leviticus 25
John Hobbins is starting a series on Leviticus 25. It looks interesting.
Church Sign: An Eye for an Eye
At first glance, this is a good sign for a Christian. After all, Jesus replaces “an eye for an eye” with “Do not resist the one who is evil” (Matthew 5:38-39). But I think it illustrates the way we fail to understand certain phrases as they were intended. “An eye for an eye” or lex…