My review of a fantastic new book: Matthew Croasmun, The Emergence of Sin: The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). Sin in the Pauline letters seems to be more than the violation of a command and seems to take on systemic force. Christian theology’s doctrines of original sin and guilt are but one example of theological attempts to come to terms with lower case sins and upper case Sin as a tyrant. In Matthew Croasmun’s recently... Read more
By Tim Krueger Tim Krueger is the editor of Mutuality magazine and is publications coordinator at CBE International. He was raised in the Philippines and studied history and Bible at Bethel University (MN). He and his wife, Naomi, have a son and live in Saint Paul, MN. In April of 2017, the hashtag #ThingsOnlyChristianWomenHear went viral on Twitter. Thousands of women took to social media to share painful things they’d been told by other Christians. One woman shared this: “Sure, women... Read more
O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. Read more
It’s Graduation Day at Northern Seminary, and I have 15 DMin students graduating and I will miss each one of them. Good students, good pastors and leaders, good thesis projects. Tonight Kris and I go with our MANT students to visit the sites of Paul along the Mediterranean! But it’s also Weekly Meanderings Day! An excerpt from Blue Parakeet David Swartz: Some years ago, a town in Iceland stopped the construction of a road. Not because it was an archaeological... Read more
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The Myth of a Blessed Life, by Mike Glenn If you hang around church long enough, you’ll hear some version of the popular church myth that goes something like this: if you’re in the will of God nothing bad will ever happen to you. You’ll hear it said in different ways, but the gist of it is always the same. If you’re doing what God wants you to do, then you’ll always find a parking place near the front door,... Read more
Today’s post about the patristics is about 1 Clement 46-53. Our series uses for its text Michael Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers. 1 Clement is from Rome to Corinth and in chps 46-53 he addresses the issues surrounding schisms in the church, something known in Corinth since the days of the apostle Paul. Emulation was education in the ancient world, and emulation remains education — but emulation for good education must be emulation of the good, which is where Clement begins:... Read more
The next chapter of The Lost World of Scripture by John Walton and Brent Sandy summarizes their main points thus far. The Bible as we have it emerged out of an oral culture and reflects the values and expectations of that culture. God revealed himself to his people in that culture and the stories and events were passed along through generations (Old Testament) or decades (New Testament) before being written down. There are some exceptions. The letters of Paul were... Read more
In Andrew Root’s Faith Formation in a Secular Age, he sketches three kinds of Secular: Secular 1: Sacred versus Secular Planes Secular 2: Religious versus A-religious Spaces Secular 3: The Negating of Transcendence What happens to justification by faith in Secular 3? If Secular 2 is more negotiated space, what about Secular 3? Bigger one: if justification tends to be expressed at times as a legal fiction (only a standing, only a declaration, only judicial), can justification be valued in Secular... Read more
One of my favorite study topics was a reading of the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to answer a simple question: Was Bonhoeffer a pacifist? You may know he did not like that kind of question or the “principle” type answer, but instead sought how to be a follower of Christ in a specific situation. Recently Greg Boyd wrote up a massive study called The Crucifixion of the Warrior God and a one-volume shortened version called Cross Vision. Bonhoeffer’s thought is... Read more
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