Most of these houses are at least two stories high, some are three. If you can’t go wide, go tall. Here’s a view from an upstairs window. There were five houses on the Springfest tour this year, two more traditional the other three quite modern. Here are some shots from the Bonnecarre house which is decorated more traditionally. This wallpaper was brought over from England. The Bonnecarre house belongs now to the French Quarter Trust, and is used for weddings... Read more

There are all manner of houses in the French Quarter from the squalid to the splendid, and some dating back to the Napoleonic era when America did not own the Louisiana Purchase. The house above is one of my favorites, and it comes with a nice vintage car as well! One of the tell tale signs is the typical French ornate railings on balconies and elsewhere. During the earlier eras of New Orleans people were taxed on the basis of... Read more

Spring is of course also Lent, and the Easter season, and so various houses in the French Quarter were all decorated for occasion with the appropriate Easter colors. Quite naturally you expect to see some Southern belles in their finery in Nola at this season, and when we did the house tour of the French Quarter we were not disappointed. Nola is predominantly a Catholic city, no surprise what with the French heritage, and here is a sad reminder of... Read more

Ah Nola (which is short for New Orleans La.). It is a city of many faces and flavors. It is one of the birth places of classic jazz, and the place where Cajun meets Creole meets ole Southern cooking and creates an amazing gumbo. Me personally, I’m partial to the charbroiled oysters and the red snapper lightly breaded, not to mention the crawfish poboys etc. I was in Nola for the next to the last Greer-Heard forums, for a friendly... Read more

Q.  In the wake of this book, where would you hope the conversation goes from here in the Evangelical world? A. I hope more and more will plumb the depth of the theology of Genesis and ponder how Jewish traditions about Adam can help us comprehend both Jesus and Paul on Adam and Eve. And I hope more will give Eve more attention! She’s nearly always ignored in this discussion. Dat’s All Folks. Hope you enjoyed this series. Read more

Q. I suspect that some folk in our Evangelical world will suggest that you have attempted to conform what the Bible says about origins, to what genetics says about origins, rather than some sort of symbiotic back and forth, or mutual critique, and that the net outcome is that traditional views of Adam and the historical substance of human origins are called into question.   How would you respond? A. Yes, I know they will. So here’s what happened to... Read more

Q.  How do you view the relationship between history and theology when it comes to Adam’s existence, his sin, the Fall etc.?  A. I am purposefully ambiguous if not agnostic because I can’t make up my mind on the basis of the Bible. There are elements in the Bible –the genealogies for instance — that suggest a real man and historical person. There are other elements in Gen 1-3, like a talking snake, a man named “Dusty” and a woman... Read more

Q.  At one point you lay out 6-7 things you take the phrase ‘the historical Adam’ to mean, and the proceed to suggest that at least most of them were not in the mind of Paul or other early Jewish writers when they refer to Adam.  Why this kind of approach?  Are you simply trying to deconstruct some of the fundamentalist views of Adam and creation? A. Yes, Ben, I am trying to show that what many believe is so... Read more

Q.  What promoted you to do this co-authored book? A. While I never made the sciences anything central to my own intellectual interests over the years science pops up as important to some biblical discussion I am engaged in, not least when I was teaching undergraduates at North Park. Many of them were science majors and many of them had some solid commitments to science and it made them wonder how solid their faith could be. Over the years I... Read more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBklQN2vjGc Read more