Here is our retreat group – standing at the dock to board our sea planes out to Harvester Island — ready to go. An amazing time with great people pondering friendship around Paul’s own friends. A huge thanks to Leslie Leyland Fields, author, speaker, editor and salmon fisher for the event. (This is a reflection by Leslie on one event.) And to Duncan Fields, her husband, for running the fishing business as we retreated. To Suzanne Jensen for cooking for... Read more

In the final essay in Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy, John Franke reframes inerrancy through the theological grids of Trinitarian mission and epistemic pluralism. He begins where many have begun, and when I say “many” I mean many people who have said things to me and who have said so in writing (including John himself), that inerrancy’s ideal is good but its use has become problematic. Namely, it is too often (1) assumed in meaning and (2) used as a theological... Read more

By Katelyn Guichelaar and Kristin Du Mez: You can read more analysis at the link above, but what do you see in what we have excerpted? To begin with, an initial keyword search turned up a significant list of words that were statistically more likely to appear in one candidate’s corpus over the other. Keywords more likely to appear in Clinton’s corpus include women, families, economy, together, work, American (and America), future, rights, create, men, growth, equal, fair, deserve, global, challenges,... Read more

There are two common ways of looking for authority and certainty in the Christian faith. We can turn to the church. In this view authority is vested in the institutional church and our faith is founded on the inerrancy of church tradition and church hierarchy. This is the rock upon which we stand. The search for authority drives many converts from evangelicalism to Roman Catholicism (See Scot’s book Finding Faith, Losing Faith: Stories of Conversion and Apostasy). But when the... Read more

In a book where the biggest terms are the last two, Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy, the problem is the word “biblical.” If this adjective means “inerrancy of the Bible” we haven’t much of a problem. But even this raises a problem I have with the book: a biblical view of inerrancy ought to be about the Bible’s view of inerrancy but this book — all five views — are much more theological and philosophical and historical studies of inerrancy instead... Read more

America exports its goods giving it a worldwide influence, including its sports — basketball and (American) football and baseball. Of course baseball is played elsewhere, and baseball in the Dominican is special, but these are American-shaped sports. But would a Dominican say baseball is an American sport? (Not on your life.) Is inerrancy a game American evangelicals play? Mike Bird, in his essay “Inerrancy is not necessary for evangelicalism outside the USA” in the book Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy, thinks... Read more

Pete Enns: Every Christian who wants to become a political leader should be forced to study the book of Revelation for a year and then pass a test of one simple question: “True or False: The Christian hope will be realized through political means.” Whoever says “true” should be forced to watch N. T. Wright videos about the kingdom nonstop for a year (starting with this one) and then take the test again every year until they get it right.... Read more

Genesis 1 is a marvelous passage – highly stylized literature if not technically poetry. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,”... Read more

I was at Tyndale House in the early 80s when a well-known evangelical theologian came by to speak about the importance of inerrancy. It was a good and encouraging address, but after the paper a veteran NT scholar leaned over to me and said something like this: “It is easy for systematicians to claim inerrancy because they don’t have to live with critical scholarship on the Bible.” The veteran scholar here was not an Old Testament scholar but a NT... Read more