Prayer of the Week

Last updated on: September 6, 2009 at 12:07 am By Scot McKnight

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. Read more

Don’t Mess with Texas

Last updated on: September 5, 2009 at 12:38 pm By Scot McKnight

From NYTimes… What do you think? HOUSTON — President Obama‘s plan to deliver a speech to public school students on Tuesday has set off a revolt among conservative parents, who have accused the president of trying to indoctrinate their children with socialist ideas and are asking school officials to excuse the children from listening. The uproar over the speech, in which Mr. Obama intends to urge students to work hard and stay in school, has been particularly acute in Texas, where several... Read more

Weekly Meanderings

Last updated on: September 5, 2009 at 12:02 am By Guest Contributor

Pray for PeaceWork for Peace Kristie Berglund … beginning to blog … beginning all over again.Jordon Cooper‘s wise words about writing books. Dan Reid … ever the editor. Eugene on “what is a worshipper?” LL Barkat on serendipity ripples. John Frye on expectations and Jesus: Part one and two. Ed Gilbreath on President Obama’s upcoming speech to our kids. Tom Smith weighs in on serious issues in South Africa when it comes to churches. “Where We Stand” on gospel and... Read more

Weekly Meanderings

Last updated on: September 5, 2009 at 12:02 am By Guest Contributor

Translation Tribalism

Last updated on: September 4, 2009 at 12:21 pm By Scot McKnight

I am very confident about the prospects of the new NIV (2011). I know those translators and know they are devout and they are accurate translators. I hope you are praying for them, and I hope you listen carefully to what Doug Moo, the chair of the Committee on Bible Translation, has said about philosophy. But what depresses me about Bible translation debates today is tribalism. Some have raised the bar of this conversation to such heights that variation is... Read more

Genesis One 15

Last updated on: September 4, 2009 at 6:09 am By Guest Contributor

In John Walton’s (professor at Wheaton) new book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, we have yet another proposition to discuss: Current debate about Intelligent Design ultimately concerns purpose. Walton thinks Genesis 1 is about theology, about design, about purpose, and about function. Everything about creation is about God’s purposes and designs. Nothing, he says, “just happens.” ID is into “irreducible complexity,” that there are structures that require parts and those parts had to... Read more

Atheist Delusions 9

Last updated on: September 4, 2009 at 12:05 am By Guest Contributor

David Bentley Hart, a historian of ideas, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies , has been our guide into some of the philosophical and historical issues at work among the new atheists like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. One of the implicit and sometimes explicit claims is that we are enlightened and that the secular state is safer than a religious-shaped state. To which Hart makes this statement, and he expresses the growing body of literature that both... Read more

The Manse: by PW

Last updated on: September 3, 2009 at 2:44 pm By Guest Contributor

I have a friend, a pastor’s wife, who often reflects about what it is like to live as a pastor’s spouse, and she has been doing a series for us … today reflecting on the “manse.” Join along in this discussion with “PW.” There is a house for sale in our neighborhood and it is right next to the Presbyterian Church. I drove by as they were posting the “for sale” sign on the house and it occurred to me:... Read more

Acts and Mission 20

Last updated on: September 3, 2009 at 12:09 pm By Guest Contributor

Acts 4 is a witness to the missional beliefs of Peter and the earliest Christians, and to helps us in this reading, we are reading The Acts of the Apostles (Abingdon New Testament Commentaries). The missional work of God establishes the missional community of God. Notice what happens as a result of witness to resurrection and filling with the Spirit: All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own,... Read more

Evolution’s Place? 4 (RJS)

Last updated on: November 21, 2012 at 4:40 pm By RJS

I will return to consider the next chapters of Conway Morris’s book Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe next week. Today I would like to take a brief detour and consider another question. Many authors – Dawkins and others – have made popular the idea that religion, belief in God, and morality, among other things are either natural consequences or by-products of survival of the fittest and the preservation of the Selfish Gene. Religion has a purely natural... Read more