The insight that the Church is not just the movement from the creeds up into Europe and into England and then across to the USA and then, through missions, to Africa and the Far East and South America, is on old one. Getting Church history textbooks to catch up on this insight has not been easy. Until Martin Marty’s new book The Christian World. On the plane flight home from S. Africa I decided to work my way through Marty’s... Read more
Hebrews uses the term “wrath” twice and both times it is a quotation from Psalm 95:11: |inline Read more
Every summer, or almost every summer, I read Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea. Whether it is his prose or the subject of the chase or the struggle that blends the human and the natural world, I don’t know, but I read it again and again. Sometimes I think I’ll jot down my favorite line, but I don’t think I can find it. It’s the story. It’s the way he tells the story. It’s the character, Santiago, and... Read more
Roger Omanson’s excellent A Textual Guide to the GNT does something that many of us have known we need. For years those who are curious about the apparatus — the footnotes to the Greek NT — have had only two options: either know it all or use Bruce Metzger’s Textual Guide. There was a problem with Metzger: |inline Read more
A text that reveals how important “historical” wrath is for the earliest Christians, and this use is characteristic of the OT and Judaism, is found in 1 Thessalonians 1:10: |inline Read more
Christian realism steers a course between the Anabaptist vision of the kingdom being achieved, more rather than less, in the church and the Constantinian vision of the kingdom joining hips with the State. Now, of course, there is a spectrum from one end to the other, but Realism is flat-out in the middle. And this view has now been ably articulated by John Stackhouse in his book Making the Best of It. We have sketched his preliminaries — the Niebuhrs,... Read more
OK, who will you vote for? Here are our rules: You can say anything you want about the person you want to win or the person you think will win or the person you will vote for, but you can’t say one negative comment about the other person. Again, that is no negative comments. Who do you think will win and why? Read more
Two texts today, one from Ephesians 5:6 and the other from Colossians 3:6, are considered: |inline Read more
What do you think? Should the two terms be used for two different and differing segments of the larger emerging movement? Dan Kimball says so; and now Dave Dunbar, who is the President at Biblical Seminary and one completely on board with for shaping seminary education missionally, has a fine post on the distinction. What do you think? Of course, some will say “who cares?” Others, however, who watch with a more analytical bent, are lining up in agreement on... Read more
Some of you may know that I’ve written a book on fasting in a series from Thomas Nelson. The first volume in the series was by Brian McLaren, Finding Our Way Again, and now the second volume is out. It is by Robert Benson and it is called In Constant Prayer. It’s about fixed hour prayer. I opened it up to read the other day … and … well … |inline Read more
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