After the 9/11 anniversary and teaching about the doctrine of sin, I’ve been thinking about God and evil. The truth is that much Christian theology is really an attempt at theodicy (i.e., explaining the compatibility of the co-existence of an all-good and all-powerful God with evil and suffering in our world). Romans to Revelation deal with this issue in the New Testament – Christians take evil very seriously. And constructing a theodicy is an odyssey in philosophical theology as well as an... Read more

By the end of chapter 8 in Scot McKnight’s new book The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited, unless you’re not paying attention, you have no doubt what is his argument: The gospel is the Story of Jesus as the completion of the Story of Israel. Each of these four witnesses [apostolic gospel tradition, the gospel in the four Gospels, the gospel of Jesus, and the sermons in Acts] tell us the same thing about the gospel. It... Read more

Christian Smith’s new book The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture is nothing short of a frontal assault on the way we as Evangelicals read the Bible. I’ve been reading it in the evenings before bed the last couple of nights (I’m to ch 3) and Smith’s thesis is haunting me. Biblicism is that approach to the Bible that posits theological assumptions about its nature, assumptions such as verbal and plenary inspiration, the... Read more

Over at Spiegel on-line is an interesting interview in two parts (part 1, part 2) with Hans Kung on the current and future state of the Catholic Church. On the need for the reformation of the church, Kung states: “After 500 years, we are surprised that the popes and bishops of the day did not realize that a reform was necessary. Luther didn’t want to divide the Church, but the pope and the bishops were blind. It seems that a similar situation... Read more

Scot McKnight’s central thesis in his new book The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited is that the gospel is “declaring the Story of Israel as resolved in the Story of Jesus”. In chapter 6, his thesis is the “the Gospels are the gospel” and the Gospels are neither shaped in the form of the Plan of Salvation nor do they offer a Method of Persuasion. The Gospels “the deeds of the Messiah Jesus” to use the words... Read more

J. Todd Billings The Word of God for the People of God: An Entryway to the Theological Interpretation of Scripture Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. Available at Amazon.com Theological interpretation is all the rage at the moment. One good port of entry into the discussion about what is theological interpretation is Todd Billing’s book The Word of God for the People of God. The objective of the book is to introduce readers to the practice of interpreting Scripture in the... Read more

Luke reports that during Paul’s time in Thessalonica, local Jews rounded up an unruly mob and seized Paul’s host, Jason and some other believers, and dragged them before a crowd on the grounds that: These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus. (Act 17:6-7 NIV). The actual charge looks a bit garbled... Read more

Last night I began teaching my diploma course on Christian Apologetics. We covered the normal prolegomena (what is apologetics, aims of apologetics, 1 Pet 3:15, types of apologetics, faith vs. reason, etc.), then we finished off with this you.tube clip from N.T Wright “Asking the Right Question” from when he was in western Canada not long ago. I was a bit surprised that N.T. Wright (NTW) took a swipe at William Lane Craig (WLC). I see NTW’s point about WLC... Read more

There’s some good Bible Software platforms out there, one I use regularly on my PC is Bible Works and I’ve just loaded up BW9. It is gucci to the max! See the introductory video at You.Tube. Among the new physical features, I especially like the “Fourth Window” which is effectively the old “Analysis Window” split into two.  It is now possible to have the notes from the NET Bible, or CNTTS Apparatus, or Metzger’s Textual Commentary come up through the... Read more

There’s a new book coming out on Evangelicalism that looks to be a must read, Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology). Roger Olson,  one of the contributors to the book, has said this about the book over at his blog: This book demonstrates quite conclusively that there are now at least two evangelicalisms (in terms of theology).  They are separated by 1) whether or not biblical inerrancy is necessary for authentic evangelical faith (which even... Read more