Alden was my undergraduate advisor at Walla Walla University (then college), I publish two of his books (Inspiration: Hard Questions, Honest Answers and Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?), and he is a friend. Many of my friends have heard him speak in person. Here he is presenting a paper at a conference, so…
I will definitely be reading Rachel Held Evans’ new book A Year of Biblical Womanhood, but I haven’t done so yet, so I’m not commenting on that book. It’s always interesting to me, however, to see reviews of reviews before I’ve gotten my hands on a book. In this case the review getting reviewed is…
When it came time for third year Greek at Walla Walla College (now University), I had Dr. Sakae Kubo, who had just become dean of the School of Theology. Taking a Greek class with Dr. Kubo was an experience. I credit him with bringing my Greek to the level that allowed it to stick with…
From C. Michael Patton. This approach is a bit different from my own, but will provide a valuable basis to examine the way you approach the Bible. I am somewhat skeptical of the “timeless theology” phase, even though it’s necessary.
A couple of days ago I linked to a post by J. K. Gayle which is in response to John Hobbins on the question of listing things one needs to read in order to understand the Bible. I mentioned that I might sound more like J. K. Gayle than John Hobbins when I got around…
This is a continuation of my series on interpreting the Bible. The first post in the series is Interpreting the Bible I: Obvious Exegesis, while the most recent one was Interpreting the Bible VII: Christians Contribute to Confusion. As a reminder, my starting point was a number of comments that suggested that those who take…
This isn’t a summary of previous posts, but rather an attempt to focus on the issue I’m trying to address with this series before I continue. The problem with a series like this is that the examples begin to take over the topic. Since I have used complementarianism and theistic evolution as examples, and brought…
I want to tie up a few loose ends in my first post on this series as well as point out some things on which I will need to comment further. In particular, I read this post by John Hobbins that references a post by Wayne Leman regarding complementarianism and the “plain sense” of scripture….
I think those of us who are not all that conservative, as in moderates and liberals, do everyone a disservice with the admonition, “Don’t take it so literally.” Unless, of course, we break down “not literally” a bit further. The word “literal” has gotten muddied in the public understanding, and is often taken to mean…
I’m constantly on the lookout for books on evolutionary theory aimed at the general public rather than specialized audiences, so when I saw this little book on the shelf of the local university library, I took it home to check out. My response to it is a bit mixed. There are a number of good…
