(Below is the continuation of Dr. Kuruvilla’s case for non-resistance). What about men like David who served in war? The Old Testament is filled with men of faith who engaged in physical combat. David is but one example. Like practices of polygamy or animal sacrifice, physical war pertains to the Old Covenant but not to the New. Jesus often supersedes Old Testament practices in the Sermon on the Mount. A Christocentric, New Covenant perspective demands that Jesus’ followers obey His… Read more

The following is an excellent presentation of the case for non-resistance (not to be confused with certain forms of pacifism) from the pen of Dr. Finny Kuruvilla, a Harvard graduate. We will post the rest of this excerpt from his recent book King Jesus Claims his Church(-available on Amazon– reprinted by his kind permission) in a further post tomorrow. Chapter 17 Peacemaking and nonresistance Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Matthew 5:9) The nations… Read more

As it turns out, the real radical Reformation did not take place shortly after Luther (and in reaction to him). No, it happened in the first century when Paul revamped the whole symbol system of early Judaism. When someone reorients and reinterprets things like Temple, Territory, Torah, Prayer, Family, Battle etc. then they are messing with the vital parts of an ancient religion, not merely its thought world, but its praxis. So Wright correctly points out how different prayer looks… Read more

I’ve finally arrived at the Pauline portion of Tom’s opus, and something immediately struck me. I don’t know if you readers are film watchers, but you might enjoy Monuments Men, the story of the desperate attempt to rescue the art stolen by Hitler from the Louvre and elsewhere. There is a great line in the movie that goes something like this— “if you burn a person’s fields, or house, or steal their clothes, that’s one thing. They can recover from… Read more

There is a recent archaeological report about camels, or the lack thereof in the Holy Land. John Noble Wilford of the NY Times has a recent article about the findings which can be found here—-http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/science/camels-had-no-business-in-genesis.html?ref=science&_r=0″ title=”Camels”. The findings include the deduction that because evidence has not yet been found for camels in the Holy Land prior to 1,000 B.C. therefore they likely were not part of the economy in that Land before then, and also therefore, the reports in Genesis… Read more

https://wipfandstock.com/store/Ephesian_Miracle_The_Sixth_Art_West_Adventure Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more lively for Art West, he goes to Turkey to get married and all kinds of mayhem breaks loose. What is the difference between miracle and magic, and how does that difference make a difference in the life of Marissa, Art’s new bride? And did they really discover the bones of Mary in Ephesus? If so those bodily assumption traditions may turn out to be based on false assumptions. These and… Read more

It is an interesting phenomenon to have two very different presentations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his trusty sidekick John Watson on the telly at the same time. This is only possible really because one is a BBC production which gets farmed to the U.S. a season late by way of PBS, and one is the brainchild or the brain trust at CBS. When you throw in Robert Downey Jr’s. movie Sherlocks the visual arts are… Read more

Much of chapter five is spent demonstrating the evidence for and growth of the Imperial Cult during the first century A.D. Of this there is no lack of evidence. What we cannot directly tell from the archaeological remains is the effect this specific cult had on the mentality of Jews and Christians living in the Roman Empire. We know of course of the repugnance felt about what Jews and Christians called idolatry of any and all sorts. We also hear… Read more