In his new book, N.T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began, is offering a total reworking of how to understand the cross. One might think such a rethinking is hubristic (as some did last week on my blog) or one might take a more charitable approach and see it as a relocating the older categories into a more biblically nuanced storyline. One thing is clear about most atonement theory books — and I have two of them myself (Jesus and... Read more

I got this question from a reader the other day: I’ve been studying a lot lately. Also concerning topics like Calvinism etc. Last week I spoke to a Calvinist and he said something like this: “God doesn’t have to save anybody, and if He does save anyone, and elects people to be saved, that should fill our hearts with amazement and wonder. We don’t deserve it and still He saves some by election. This in itself makes Him loving, gracious... Read more

Cubs win, Cubs win, Cubs win! If you add up all the season and postseason logs at baseball-reference.com, you come up with this: Since the moment Kling caught that foul out, the Cubs played 152,627⅓ innings of baseball before Wednesday, and their pitchers retired 457,882 batters. Not one of those outs added a third World Series banner to the Cubs’ collection. Now, after 10 more innings and one magical final out, all those numbers reset to zero. The third banner... Read more

Chapter 2 of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion: Illusions, Delusions, and Realities about Human Nature by  Malcolm Jeeves and Warren S. Brown digs into the warfare model of science as it pertains to neuroscience and psychology. Does science disprove God? Whether a person believes it does or not depends more on the narrative constructed around the science than it does on the science itself. Humans are story-telling creatures. Sigmund Freud was widely viewed as having “‘explained away’ religious beliefs as ‘nothing... Read more

After the Elections: Imagining Heaven? By Leslie Leyland Fields I imagine John Lennon would be happy with the way our nation is going, as more and more people leave church and check the “none” box, many to be “spiritual” rather than “religious.” Lennon, in his famous song dreamily urged us to ditch religion and any notion of an other-worldly heaven, but a recent study led by Harvard Professor of Epidemiology Tyler J. VanderWeele underscores yet again, after other similar studies,... Read more

By Michael Thompson Walter Brueggemann. God, Neighbor, Empire: The Excess of Divine Fidelity and the Command of Common Good. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016. Chapter Two: Justice: From Zion Back to Sinai (39–70) There is a key in the subtitle of this chapter, for Brueggemann will demonstrate an important distinction between worship as it became at the temple, and what was initially given to Israel as they camped at the base of Sinai. He begins with Zion, and the established... Read more

I often tell a story about Norcia and its prayer routines — a story involving Kris and I wandering into the San Benedetto Basilica in Norcia on a morning to be swollen into worship by the Benedictine monks praying and chanting Psalm 119 in Latin. Sad to hear that an earthquake destroyed the basilica and our prayers go out to the wonderful people of Norcia. That crypt is no doubt not being used after the latest earthquake, though I’m certain... Read more

From Lee Camp, a wonderful, multi-talented prof at Lipscomb University (make sure you go to the link to read the whole piece): The root of the problem, it seems to me, is that we think America is the problem, and that the most important public work we can do is fight for our vision of America. So we fall prey, in vast, outrageous numbers to stupid rhetoric like “Make America Great Again.” Here’s an alternative: “Make the Church Great Again.”... Read more

By Jonathan Storment Over the past few months, I have done reviews of a couple of different books that I’ve found helpful in ministry. One was Jamie Smith’s latest book “You Are What You Love” where, as a virtue ethicist, Smith convincingly makes the case that human beings are not brains on a stick and we can’t change by thinking our ways into better kinds of life. Instead, Smith argues, we are primarily formed by our practices and habits. The... Read more

One of the most — if not the most — important words in the New Testament for the church is the word fellowship (Greek: koinonia). What is a fellowship? What is happening when you hear someone use the term “fellowship” for what goes on in your church? Why do we call one room in some churches “fellowship hall” and the other a “sanctuary”? Is the sanctuary not fellowship? What is fellowship? At what size of a church does it cease being... Read more