John Frye’s review of A Man Attested by God, part one. Like many pastors I am intrigued by ongoing scholarship in Jesus studies. Authors like the late Ben F. Meyer, N. T. Wright, Scot McKnight, Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckman (and many others) keep the Jesus conversation vibrant and fascinating. A new Eerdmans Publishing release is J. R. Daniel Kirk’s A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels. I am grateful to James D. Ernest at Eerdmans and... Read more

What was called almsgiving in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, what was throughout church history often called charity is now called compassion or social justice. A theology of charity divided with the Reformation — Catholics and Protestants understanding charity remarkably different — but it is worth our efforts to get behind the Reformation debates to a Bible-in-context understanding of charity. It might be worth asking Who gets it most biblically? The Catholics or the Protestants? To ask this question I will... Read more

I had the privilege of attending a Celebration of Life (i.e. memorial service) earlier this summer for my uncle, ’54 MDiv Northern Seminary, for 35 years a bivocational pastor in rural Illinois. Growing up I knew him as my uncle the pastor, this is what shaped his identity.  His work as a teacher and school counselor was secondary to his Christian vocation and calling. Retirement took him out of the pulpit and out of that small town, but not out... Read more

From Roger Olson: Review of New Book about Calvinism and Arminianism: Jerry Walls’s Does God Love Everyone: The Heart of What Is Wrong with Calvinism Yesterday I was asked by bright, eager, young Christian student of theology to identify “the one major difference between Calvinism and Arminianism.” Without hesitation I identified it the way evangelical Arminian philosopher Jerry Walls does in this book (published this year by Cascade Books, in imprint of Wipf and Stock): the character of God. On... Read more

By Jonathan Storment I want to start a series on Spiritual Warfare for the next few weeks. The series is part review of a great new book I read, and part autobiographical on how helpful I find spiritual warfare terminology as a pastor in a local church. Full Disclosure: I go to church with Richard Beck, the author of the book I am reviewing. He is a good friend and I am anything but unbiased in this book review. But... Read more

John Nugent, in his book Endangered Gospel: How Fixing the World is Killing the Church, comes now to a decisive point in  his proposal: how does the church related to God’s vision of the “better place”? Recall that Nugent sketches three views, none of which is as robustly biblical as the proposal he offers (and I agree with Nugent in many ways): 1. The Heaven-Centered View For almost two millennia, most Christians have hoped to leave behind all the pain of... Read more

I've been reading a new book that uses the geology of the Grand Canyon region to outline the evidence for an ancient earth, The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth: Can Noah's Flood Explain the Grand Canyon? This book contains abundant pictures and diagrams to educate the reader about geology and the shortcomings of flood geology. If you have little or no scientific training, and have wondered how geology works and why the overwhelming majority of Christian geologists have little patience with Flood Geology this section is for you. It is informative and easy to read accompanied by great illustrations and pictures. Read more

This post introduces to Jesus Creed readers one of my favorite authors, Leslie Leyland Fields. Author of numerous books, including Forgiving our Fathers and Mothers as well as Crossing the Waters. She and her family live in Kodiak Alaska and are commercial fishers — on an island off an island! She has taught at Seattle Pacific and speaks all over the USA on a variety of topics, including parenting. She blogs here. The Olympics are nearly over. I’m relieved. How... Read more

We live 2-4,000 years removed from what can be called Bible times. Think just for a minute of all that has changed: Life expectancies, relationships of husbands and wives and children and parents and “citizens” and leaders; food and drink; cultures and religious festivals and worship centers; the relationship of individual and state and of religion and state; divine right of kings and rulers and attitudes toward other countries and leaders; languages … and think about education and reading and... Read more