There is a wide variety of art in the N.C. Museum of Art, which was originally just located in downtown Raleigh, but now has a sprawling campus of several buildings on the west side of the capital city, not far from Chapel Hill. In the following posts I’ll be highlighting some of the things in the new building, like for instance the painting above of Vulcan and his forge, and Cyclops. This is one of two large, major paintings likely... Read more
The indestructible recycle wolf is on the prowl in Chapel Hill. The theory is it was sent over from Raleigh, and there is a miniature wolfpack cub inside. Read more
The Bible of course is a compendium– a book composed of originally separate books, letters etc. This book is also a compendium, curated by Tom Wright’s son Oliver. The book is set up according to the church year (excerpts for Advent, Christmas, Lent Easter etc.) but there are also subject sub-headings like Truth, Spirituality, Beauty etc. The excerpts come from 12 of Tom’s previous more lay and clergy friendly volumes, not his more scholarly or technical books. So, we have... Read more
“Scripture, tradition, and reason are not like three different bookshelves, each of which can be ransacked for answers to key questions. Rather Scripture is the bookshelf; tradition is the memory of what people in the house have read and understood (or perhaps misunderstood) from that shelf; and reason is the set of spectacles that people wear in order the maje sense of what they read–though worryingly, the spectacles have varied over time, and there are signs that some readers, using... Read more
“The reason Jesus wasn’t the sort of King people wanted in his own day is…that he was the true King, but they had become used to the ordinary, shabby, second rate sort. They were looking for a builder to construct the home they thought they wanted, but he was the architect, coming with a new plan that would give them everything they needed, but within quite a new framework. They were looking for a singer to sing the song they had been... Read more
What a combination. What could possibly go wrong? Let me think…. does the name Spiderman ring a bell??? Read more
The excavations at Pompeii have got to be one of the longest anywhere. They began in the 19th century, and are still going. And frankly, they are nowhere near done— only a bit over a third of the site has really been properly dug. Stay tuned. They may finish about the time Jesus returns. But seriously, they are doing an excellent job as the recent excavation of another insula shows. In particular the dining room with its wall paintings deserve... Read more
While there are many forms that over-realized eschatology can take, this post will be only about some the salient ones. One of the examples of this notion that does not correspond with what the NT teaches is the idea that in Christ’s first coming, the story of Israel comes to its proper climax and even, in some views, conclusion, and so from now on the church of Jew and Gentile united in Christ is Israel. This view in its most... Read more
“God wants us to be people, not puppets; real human beings who think things out and make actual decisions, not straws in the wind to be blown this way and that. You need to ‘figure out properly things that differ’, says Paul– and the word he uses for ‘figure out properly’ is our old friend dokimazein as in the dokimos root in Romans 5.4 and 12.2 Part of the problem in contemporary Christianity, I believe, is that talk about the freedom of... Read more
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