Deepest Differences: A Christian-Atheist Dialogue is a transcript (edited and organized to aid readers of the book but otherwise left as it was) of an e-mail exchange between James Sire and Carl Peraino. The book provides an opportunity to eavesdrop on a conversation between two educated individuals with many shared views and assumptions as well as a great many differences. Rather than offering an opportunity to settle disagreements between Christians and atheists, the book rather provides an opportunity to reflect... Read more

I thought I’d share a sermon I preached recently in a church in Romania. Any resemblance to another sermon I preached recently in English is entirely uncoincidental… Noi am privit slava Lui Când am început să mă gândesc la pasajul acesta, Ioan 1:1-18, prologul Evangheliei după Ioan, şi la ceea ce înseamnă când autorul se referă la slava Lui pe care el şi primii creştini au privit-o, mi-am adus aminte despre un eveniment din viaţa unui profesor din secolul al... Read more

I lived in Romania for three years, have been married to a Romanian for seventeen, and have had a lot of contact with Romania and Romanians. I love the surprised look on people’s faces when I tell them that I didn’t really understand the New Testament until I lived in Romania. Romania was part of the Roman Empire at one point, but even had this not been the case, it still would be part of that region stretching along the... Read more

This is just a quick post to say that I’m back from the conference about the Mandaeans in Oxford. It was really excellent. Even though the papers reflected many different angles on the Mandaeans – from anthropological perspectives on their current refugee plight to philological considerations about Mandaic magical bowls to mentions of the Mandaeans by Medieval authors writing in Arabic – I assume others felt as I did, that they all were interesting. It was a wonderful opportunity to... Read more

Although I am a Protestant, I must confess that the idea of ‘sola Scriptura’, of ‘Scripture alone’, doesn’t work. It could perhaps theoretically work in Islam, where one can (assuming one doesn’t take a critical approach to the text) assume the unity of the book as a given. In the case of the Bible, such assumptions are impossible. In order to speak of ‘Scripture’, one has to accept the authority not only of those Jews and Christians who made the... Read more

In their book on Rumor Psychology Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia mention the concept of “Matthew Accuracy”. Deriving its name from the principle in the Gospel of Matthew that “to the one who has more will be given, but from the one who does not have even the little he has will be taken away”, Matthew Accuracy denotes the tendency of truthful rumors to become more truthful, while false rumors tend to become more false (pp.152-4). If it could be... Read more

The world we live in is full of mysteries. When we envisage the self-replicating molecules that drive life on this planet, we wonder how they could have arisen, and we seek explanations. Likewise with the very fact than anything exists at all, we wonder why there is something rather than nothing. To say “God did it” is not an explanation. To suggest that an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient being is somehow self explanatory and a way to eliminate mystery is misguided.... Read more

For many fans of Doctor Who, among our favorite episodes are the ones where the Doctor encounters his earlier selves – which inevitably leads to arguments! Although intended primarily for comic value, I presume, there is an important insight in these episodes. If I were to meet an earlier me, I would encounter a person very different from the one I am today, and I can easily imagine arguments ensuing, as I who I am today tried to share what... Read more

Pat McCullough has posted Biblical Studies Carnival 43, in the form of a ‘recently discovered text’ called “The Apocalypse of Eve”. Take a look! Read more