I only just now heard that Princeton Seminary is hosting a 2018 Markus Barth Symposium on 27-28 Sept 2018 (so like, in a week!). So so wish I was going! Markus Barth was the son of the famous Swiss theologian Karl Barth. Markus Barth (b. October 6, 1915 – d. July 1, 1994) studied Protestant theology in Bern, Basel, Berlin, and Edinburgh. From 1940 to 1953, he was pastor in Bubendorf near Basel. In 1947 he received a doctorate in New... Read more
I just came across this quote by NZ theologian Ian Waddington: As a father, I love all my boys equally, and appreciate their different gifts and abilities, their different characters and natures. I love them all equally, but paradoxically, I love James just that little bit more, just because for him life is harder. I think that God has a similar care for the poor and the powerless, and for a similar reason. Consider god’s compassion in the Old Testament... Read more
Intersex Statistic Fiction by Tim Foster An article in The Sunday Age “Inquiry into human rights of intersex people” (16 Sept) states that “about 1.7 percent of the population, which equates to 425,000 Australians, are estimated born with some biological sex characteristics that are not typical for males or females. (This is comparable to the proportion of people with red hair.)” This figure, which is not referenced in the article, may have been cited from All of Us, the teaching... Read more
Drew Hunter Made for Friendship: The relationship that halves our sorrows and doubles our joys Wheaton, IL: Crossway By Kara Martin It would seem that the idea of friendship is enjoying its best days. Never have we enjoyed so much connection and communication with so many people via social media, email and texting. According to Drew Hunter, the idea of true friendship has sunk to an all-time low. Not just outside the church, where research reveals that the number of... Read more
Brisbane School of Theology invites expressions of interest and applications for the position of a full-time lecturer in Christian Thought and History, and Director of Postgraduate Studies, to begin Semester 1, 2019. BST is a gospel-centred, evangelical and interdenominational Bible college, which has been training men and women for ministry and mission for 75 years. It is committed to providing a formative experience in preparation for a lifetime of Christian service, congregational leadership and cross-cultural mission. Awards for studies undertaken... Read more
It is imperative that anyone training for Christian ministry seriously starts wrestling with a theology of disability. If you are going into pastoral ministry, you will be in a church where there will be many people who are either born with a disability, acquire a disability by illness or accident, or else age into disability. As shepherds of the flock you need to know how the word of grace speaks the disabled and their carers, and how the churches can... Read more
The internet is buzzing with responses to the (supposedly-)Evangelical statement on Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel by John Macarthur’s circle in California. Not everything in the statement is bad, it does affirm justice as a social good, it rejects racism in principle, it urges people to walk justly, it reckons that justice is rooted in God’s character rather than the flux of cultural fads, it makes some affirmations and denials that are sensible and biblical even if they... Read more
When it comes to the divine inspiration of Scripture, 2 Tim 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:19-20 are the go-to text that people normally discuss. However, I think Amos Yong makes a good point when he identifies John’s Apocalypse as arch-typical of divine revelation since “God reveals himself in Christ and the Spirit in multisensory ways, through a range of signs, sounds, images, and genres … providing information surely, but also assuring, emboldening, and inspiring. Divine revelation lodges itself not only in... Read more
Given the clergy sexual abuse scandal that is currently rocking the Catholic Church about what Pope Francis knew about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, I thought I’d post this quote from St. Basil. A cleric or monk who seduces youths or young boys or is found kissing or in any other impure situations is to be publicly flogged and lose his tonsure. When his hair has been shorn, his face is to be foully besmeated with spit and he is to be bound... Read more
A new ecclesial phenomenon we have to deal with in the twenty-first century is that of multisite churches. According to research I’ve seen, as many as 10% of all American Protestants now worship in a multisite church and 10% of all Americans rely exclusively on the internet for their religious experiences. Like it not, it is true that “the multi-site phenomenon is growing dramatically among churches of all sizes, bringing it soon to every city, every denomination, and every style... Read more
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