One of my favorite writers of recent years, J. Richard Middleton, has joined BioLogos as a one of three 2016 Theology Fellows. As a fellow he will contribute six posts over the year on issues relating to the theology of creation. The first of these, Why Christians Don’t Need to be Threatened by Evolution, was posted today. Regular readers here will recall our long series of posts on Middleton’s books The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1  and... Read more

How does God engage in a meaningful relationship with humans and not change? And if God changes, are we to think of God in what is now called an “open and relational” theology? In the last post on Thomas Jay Oord’s book  The Uncontrolling Love of God we sketched six or seven models of how God relates to the world, from God as omnicause or at least overpowering to God little more than impersonal force. And I quoted Tom as... Read more

By Jonathan Storment I go to church with a lot of people who have bad teeth. It is one of the reasons I love the church where I get to preach. That may sound odd, but if you don’t go to a church that is filled with cavities or dentures, I think something may be wrong with your church. A couple of years ago, there was an article in the New York Times written by Sarah Smarsh-Aeon called The shame... Read more

Identity enters us from a variety of angles: for some it is some kind of inner self, for others it is one’s vocational passion, for others it is successes — physical, financial, possessions, for others it is one’s social status, for others it is one’s friends, for others it is religious faith, for others one’s sports teams, and I could go on. One could say identity runs between individualism and collectivism: Who I am or Who we are. What is Christian identity? James... Read more

On our tour of Paul’s and John’s Footsteps through Turkey and Greece, we cruised from Kusadasai (near Ephesus) to Patmos, Crete and Santorini before we made a night cruise into the harbor at Athens. Some pictures from these segments of our tour. Somehow you have to get from Turkey to Greece, and it is common for the tour companies — and we are very happy with the tour guides, accommodations, and professionalism of Pilgrim Tours — to visit Patmos and... Read more

In his well-known book, To Change the World, James Davison Hunter argued that the way to change the world is (1) to gather elite people (2) who are close to the power, who (3) are part of large networks and (4) who have abundant resources (5) to press for a cause. John Nugent, in his exceptional new book, Endangered Gospel, contends the way of Jesus is the exact opposite: it is to gather the unlikely who are not part of the systems... Read more

OK, Cards fans listen up! Cubs fans, listen up! A student of mine is a friend of Whitey Herzog, famed coach of the St Louis Cardinals, and he autographed a baseball for me. Which being interpreted, means: To Scot, A Cubs fan is never a front runner. My very best. Whitey Herzog, Hall of Fame 2010 Read more

Emmanuel Felton: Vocational tracks may be as old as public schools themselves, but what’s new in Kentucky is an accountability system that puts college and career on the same footing. Schools get a point for getting a student ready for college or a point for getting them career-ready. There’s an extra half bonus point for getting kids ready for both college and career. “College- and career-ready” is now one of those say-it-10-times-fast terms in education that lots of people throw... Read more

Some pastors, preachers, professors, and parishioners will announce they have “no creed but the Bible.” One of America’s Reformed church historians, Carl Trueman, has a book challenging both the accuracy of this statement (we all have creeds and confessions he observes) and the wisdom of it — not to mention its seemingly inconsistency with the Bible itself, which both has creedal lines and teaches the importance of teaching the essence of the faith. Trueman’s book is called The Creedal Imperative. I... Read more