Ah, real libraries. They appear to be endangered species the way people are reading less and less real books, as in the kinds that sit on shelves in libraries. The kind where you have actual knowledgeable librarians, and don’t assume you know everything because you can browse it on the internet. Well the picture above is the Louis Round Wilson library on the campus of UNC, and I am proud to say, he was a relative of mine— we called... Read more
[The following is an excellent post by my friend James Howell, senior minster at Myers Park UMC in Charlotte. I think it’s a needed word in this contentious season. See what you think.] Thursday, September 15 ‘Tis the Season #15: separation of church and state With much wisdom and foresight, the founders of America built a “wall of separation” between Church and state. Thomas Jefferson was adamant that the state has no business forcing religion on anybody, and that state-sponsored... Read more
The death of Jesus was no accident, it was the working out of, the complete and adequate fulfillment of God’s purpose. To finish the quotation of Paul I had just begun—‘Christ died for our sins, according to the Scripture.’ This does not mean that Jesus went about working out odd coincidences to fulfill strange words of prophets who lived hundreds of years before. That would be to turn the Bible into a railway time table—a process not calculated to bring... Read more
Wesleyan Studies Summer Seminar June, 2017 Asbury Theological Seminary and Asbury University are pleased to announce their fifth Wesleyan Studies Summer Seminar (WSSS) in June 2017. This seminar has been established to develop and support research, writing and publication in the broad field of Wesleyan studies. Benefits include free lodging and daily breakfast as well as an evening meal on the days (Monday and Thursday) that the seminar meets. In addition, scholarships are available to help cover the cost of... Read more
BEN: Another good text, which as you say is a crux, is worth some discussion— Gal. 3.19. You suggest that Gal. 3.19, suggests that the intermediary is God in human form. This explanation doesn’t work. An intermediary, whoever he is, is a go between between two parties, in this case between God and his people. The very contrast in the sentence ‘now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one’ makes clear Paul is ruling out God as... Read more
BEN: Let’s talk about the baptism scene of Jesus in Mark 1 for a moment and about Israel in the NT. I was surprised that you simply followed R. Watts take that what was going on there as the new Exodus and you say nothing about the use of apocalyptic language to describe the scene. For instance, it’s the sky which cracks, not the water, and not even while Jesus is under the water, but when he’s coming out of... Read more
BEN: Here’s one of my favorite quotes from the book—– —“If God foreknows some event that happens then he may have predestined that event. But the fact that he foreknew an event does not require its predestination if it happens…. Since foreknowledge doesn’t require predestination, foreknown events that happen may or may not have been predestined.” (p. 65). So which events do you think are predestined by God? Presumably not sin and evil. MIKE: Agreed. I don’t think God causatively... Read more
BEN: One of my favorite ideas from this book is the notion of the mosaic when it comes to how the OT images the future in prophecy and other sorts of literature. I think you are absolutely right that the OT prophecy and the psalms etc. are opaque when it comes to speaking about the future— the prophets are deliberately general or cryptic when talking especially about the more distant future, or they choose highly poetic and hyperbolic language that... Read more
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