By Steve Cuss: Just a brief historical reminder from your friendly local pastor…. The war on Christmas is real. Here’s what happened: In the days of Caesar Augustus, when Herod was King of the Jews, a baby was born to the most unlikely parents you could imagine: a teenage single mother and her confused, but incredibly honorable fiancé. No one knew about it and no one cared. Except. A few regional shepherds got wind of it by means of an angel... Read more
This post is by my friend, Allan Bevere. The God of the Second Chance “Don’t you just love New Year’s? You can start all over.” In the movie, Forrest Gump, after Forrest returns home from Vietnam, he travels to New York to visit his former commander, Lt. Dan. Dan is in a wheelchair from having lost both his legs in a firefight during the war. He is angry and bitter and drinking heavily. Forrest, the dutiful friend that he is, stays... Read more
I’ve been reading and posting on Kyle Greenwood’s book Scripture and Cosmology: Reading the Bible Between the Ancient World and Modern Science. Brad Kramer is beginning a series on this book as well over on his blog The Evolving Evangelical at BioLogos. Brad has an excellent and thought provoking post this week to set the stage for his series: No, Modern Science is Not “Catching Up” to the Bible. Brad has been the managing editor at BioLogos for the last... Read more
It may simplify but this formula may explain a major difference between at least the most widely-read version of the “new” perspective and the standard “old” perspective: Old Perspective scholars are soteriologians while the NT Wright version of the New Perspective makes him an eschatologian. I am re-reading NT Wright’s Paul and His Recent Interpreters and the chapter called “The Old is Better” (a phrase captured from the Bible by RH Gundry in his very early critique of the new perspective theory of... Read more
The Christmas most people associate Christmas with is no more Christian than the Starbucks red cup or the formerly more supposedly Christmas-y image on their cups. A Dickens Christmas is about joy and singing and big family dinners and dashing to and fro giving and receiving, and caring for the poor and turkeys and frosty windows. It’s now about Christmas trees and open mouths singing carols in the snow with stars in the sky. And now we hear that Starbucks... Read more
Peter Holley: When news of a massive illicit photo ring run by a high school football team in Canon City, Colo., broke this week, parents around the country were left scratching their heads. How could a scandal involving at least 100 students and hundreds more nude photos go undetected for so long? The answer: photo vaults. Disguised to look and function like an innocent smartphone app, photo vaults — also known as “ghost apps” — allow people to conceal photos, video and information... Read more
Dr. Joshua Graves is a minister and writer. He is the author of How Not to Kill a Muslim, The Feast, and Heaven on Earth (with ChrisSeidman). You can follow him on twitter @joshgraves. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong are famous for a definitive moment in American history –the giant leap in human creativity, engineering, and science. We simply know their moment as the first human landing on the moon. My generation (I was born in 1979) is virtually incapable of appreciating (even with the help of Wiki and Google and... Read more
In a previous post I clipped some paragraphs from this steady, growing debate between Douthat and the Roman Catholic professors, and this makes part 4: Source: As I see it, Mr. Douthat makes three theological mistakes. First, he insists that the church cannot change any of its doctrines (“teachings”) or dogmas (“opinions”) without calling papal infallibility into question. That’s a misreading of papal infallibility. Here’s the backstory: in declaring the pope infallible in 1870, the First Vatican Council did not... Read more
A while ago I was taken to task in a (late) comment on a post I put up discussing the Bible’s plot line. I find the short hand creation – fall – redemption – new creation or consummation (CFRC) to be an over simplification that under emphasizes the Old Testament and leaves the impression that the incarnation was an after thought response to humans. This commenter noted with some passion that more sophisticated framings exist. It is these that should... Read more
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