I am reader of sermons. Not that I read one a day or anything like that, but I’ve had many special moments reading sermons over the years. I’ve read them for spiritual formation, for sermon models and for suggestions to improve my own communication. Who are your favorites? What do you get from reading sermons? I’ve read sermons from all sorts, and these are those I’ve read from the most: R. Bultmann, This World and Beyond K. Barth, God in Action... Read more

The creation narratives in Scripture are many and varied – although certain themes are always present. God alone is the creator of the cosmos. His creation is good, playful, purposeful. Creation is grounded in God’s wisdom – in a manner often beyond human understanding. Tom McLeish, in Faith and Wisdom in Science surveys several of the creation themes found in Proverbs 8, Psalm 33, Psalm 104, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Hosea before turning to Genesis 1 and 2. Job 38-41 could... Read more

One element more preachers need to add to their sermons is stories about women. Churches need to tell stories of women for the sake of young girls and for the ake of young men for, in so telling stories of women, other models are formed for what constitutes Christian living. A rich source of stories about women comes from the patristic period and so Lynn Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes’ new book, Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority,... Read more

By James Taranto Motherhood used to be as American as apple pie. Nowadays it can be as antagonistic as American politics. Ask Erica Komisar. Ms. Komisar, 53, is a Jewish psychoanalyst who lives and practices on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. If that biographical thumbnail leads you to stereotype her as a political liberal, you’re right. But she tells me she has become “a bit of a pariah” on the left because of the book she published this year,... Read more

By Kelly Edmiston who is a minister at the First Colony Church of Christ in Houston Texas. This final post is one in a series on trauma and traumatic stress. I have talked about trauma as what does not go away “after the storm” is over. This could be living in the aftermath of literal natural disasters, violent crimes or any other personal circumstance that was experienced as traumatic. You can read the first two posts here. Part 1: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2017/10/18/after-the-houston-storm/ Part... Read more

Kenneth Stewart nails it with this opening to his new (and important) book called In Search of Ancient Roots: The Christian Past and the Evangelical Identity Crisis. My words: we need to bury the term “evangelical.” I represent his second group. Here are his words and my emphasis: Evangelical Christianity is now a surging global phenomenon. Such writers as Philip Jenkins, David Martin, and David Aikman have reported that Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia’s Christian future looks increasingly “evangelical” in... Read more

From BioLogos: The carry-over was suspicion of everything associated with Aristotle, including science. As replacements, this rejection of church authority stimulated a turn to new methods. In France, the Huguenot Peter Ramus promoted “invention,” a procedure that replaced Aristotelian logic with an effort to divide complicated phenomena into ever smaller pieces until each piece could be understood directly. In England, Francis Bacon championed empiricism and induction, instead of deduction, as the best approach to understanding the physical world. Throughout Europe, interpretation (or hermeneutics) in... Read more

A promotional video — an interview — with the good folks at Eerdmans on Philemon. Read more

In Richard Rex’s new book, The Making of Martin Luther, we are treated to an accessible opening study of the best scholarship on the claim (and myth) that Martin Luther nailed (or used wax, as a friend mentioned to me) his 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg to establish a public disputation about them. Rex says, “Hold on, folks, that story symbolizes Luther’s significance but it almost certainly didn’t happen.” You might well be asking, Does it... Read more

I led a discussion this last Sunday morning focused on Proverbs 8 and 9. These chapters (along with the preceding 1-7) are the key to understanding the focus of the book of Proverbs. The wisdom literature is a crucial, and often misunderstood, part of the Old Testament. Scot has been working through Tremper Longman’s new book The Fear of the Lord Is Wisdom. Chapter 1 of this book along with Longman’s commentary on Proverbs (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament)... Read more