Good for You!

Last updated on: May 19, 2015 at 9:17 am By Scot McKnight

Emma Brown: Canadian student Raymond Wang, 17, won the world’s largest high school science competition on Friday, taking home the top prize of $75,000 for inventing a new way to keep germs from spreading in airplane cabins. “It’s very exciting. I absolutely did not expect it,” Wang said by telephone from Pittsburgh, host city for the finals of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. “It’s literally the happiest day of my life.”… Wang said he decided to tackle the problem when he... Read more

It is a Puzzle … Ḥērem Never Practiced? (RJS)

Last updated on: May 21, 2015 at 6:07 am By RJS

Chapter 2 of Walter Moberly’s book Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture concludes with a section asking the question “What kind of law is the law of ḥērem?” The question arises for a variety of reasons. Many people read the passages in Deuteronomy and Joshua and wonder about the kind of God who would condemn children to death without mercy. It just doesn’t seem right. Scholars see another problem as well. Quite simply, there is no... Read more

Woman of God: A Stereotype?

Last updated on: August 1, 2017 at 3:17 pm By Guest Contributor

Source: Arise, by Khristi L. Adams is the author of The Misinterpreted Gospel of Singleness. She is currently a chaplain in residence at Georgetown University and a communications and social media consultant with the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. Khristi is a graduate of Temple University and Princeton Theological Seminary. Image I was recently asked to lead a discussion with a group of young ladies (mostly college-age students) on what it means to be a woman of God. I started the conversation by asking... Read more

Christian Zionism: On the Rise in Unlikely Places?

Last updated on: May 19, 2015 at 8:43 pm By Scot McKnight

Gerald McDermott reports: Scholars at the conference also suggested that while they think the emergence of Israel in 1948 was a partial fulfillment of biblical prophecy, they have to be more reticent about the eschatological status of the current nation-state. As one scholar introducing the conference put it, “We do not mean that [Israel today] is a perfect polity. Or that it should not be criticized for its failures. Or that it is necessarily the last Jewish polity we will... Read more

Comments on the Blog: Our Policies

Last updated on: May 20, 2015 at 10:04 am By Scot McKnight

It’s time to review how this blog works. Kris and I and RJS monitor the comments on this blog, and RJS does only her own posts so I take the responsibility for most of it. Here’s a core value — to use the jargon of our day — of this blog: we want to have civil conversations. I once did a series on conversations on this blog and need not rehearse that all now — it was called The Art... Read more

The Church and Disappointment (Jonathan Storment)

Last updated on: May 18, 2015 at 10:44 am By Scot McKnight

The Church is an institution of disappointment; it is not a disappointing institution. I have been doing full time local-church work for almost 15 years now, and I have noticed that every Sunday the same two kinds of people come up to me. One of them is overflowing with joy and gratitude for the way that they experienced a small measure of the presence of God, and the other type of person is disappointed because they didn’t have that experience.... Read more

Freedom: Paul’s Magna Carta

Last updated on: May 19, 2015 at 9:15 am By Scot McKnight

From A Fellowship of Differents. In the first letter Paul wrote that survives in the Bible, Galatians, Paul went toe-to-toe with a group he calls the “circumcision party,” which ought to be self-explanatory (#ouch). The circumcision party claimed connec- tion to the Lord’s brother, James, and to the Jerusalem church, and they no doubt represented the pro-Torah group of Christians (#intimidating). After attempting to demolish the circumcision party’s arguments for four chapters, Paul finally lands on his feet with something altogether... Read more

Attention Span of a What?!

Last updated on: May 14, 2015 at 10:59 am By Scot McKnight

USAToday: NEWSER) – Your attention span is, uh… well… whatever, but it probably can’t beat that of your average goldfish, a new study says. Microsoft reached this conclusion after surveying more than 2,000 Canadians and monitoring the brain activity of 112 people, Yahoo! Canada reports. In our age of buzzing phones and 140-character news items, they say, the Canadian attention span has dropped from an average of 12 seconds in 2000 to the jittery low of eight seconds today. The average goldfish, it’s believed,... Read more

Christian Seders: To do or not to do?

Last updated on: May 6, 2015 at 6:14 pm By Scot McKnight

By Michelle Van Loon: Should Christians participate in church-run Seders? After all, this command to retell and relive via ritual meal celebrating God’s deliverance of his people from slavery in Egypt was given to the Jewish people (clickhere, here, and here). Yet it has become popular in both liturgical and low-church circles to incorporate a Christian version of the Seder meal into Holy Week observance. Many other congregations will invite ministries involved in doing Jewish outreach to come and do a “seder demo” at... Read more

Of Gardens, Trees, and Serpents (RJS)

Last updated on: May 19, 2015 at 6:32 am By RJS

The next three propositions in John Walton’s new book The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate deal with the imagery of Genesis 2-3 in its ancient Near Eastern context. The garden, the trees, and the serpent all conveyed a meaning in the ancient Near East that is lost on the modern reader. In fact scholars are only now uncovering some of the depth of this meaning. First, The Garden. “[T]he image of fertile... Read more