Intelligent Design and Thomas Nagel

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm By Scot McKnight

From the CS Lewis Society, where you can read the full article: Prof. Thomas Nagel has published an important essay entitled, “Public Education and Intelligent Design”, in the Wiley InterScience Journal Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 36, issue 2, on-line at < http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118493933/home> His paper is a significant because it encourages all intelligent, educated, informed individuals to consider that intelligent design may be a valid scientific approach to understanding how DNA and the complex chemical systems of life came to attain their present... Read more

4th Sunday after the Epiphany

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm By Scot McKnight

Almighty and everlasting God, You govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God. For ever and ever. Amen. BCP Image Read more

Pastoral Care When Difficult

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm By Scot McKnight

From Allan Bevere: Offering Pastoral Care When Things are Out of Control Many years ago when I was a young associate pastor, there was a parishioner who was all of 4 foot 3 inches tall. She was Italian (like me) and she was a pistol. A couple of her fellow parishioners referred to her as a “test,” She often challenged them in their discipleship as she accused them of stealing things and committing other unsavory deeds. “Maria” (as I will... Read more

Weekly Meanderings, 31 January 2015

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm By Scot McKnight

Education is more than for the brain, by Aleta Margolis As an educator for the past 25 years, I’m delighted that our national conversations about teaching and learning are beginning to recognize that excellent instruction engages students intellectually, emotionally, and physically. We’ve come a long way in our understanding of the development of young minds. Yet despite research proving the lasting benefits of serious play, too many of our classrooms remain still, silent places, lacking any element of physical movement. It’s critical to maintain time for... Read more

Brewers Evangelizing

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm By Scot McKnight

R. Jared Staudt: What is it about monks and beer? The two just go together. And as craft beer continues to rise in popularity in the United States, the ones responsible for creating western brewing practices are reclaiming their own. This renewal is important for monastic life in providing another opportunity for monks to produce their own goods and to sustain their monasteries (in an age when many of their traditional farming practices are in decline; see an odd example... Read more

Paul’s Big Gospel (by John Frye)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm By Scot McKnight

I have not seen Romans 2:16 quoted in any of the popular soterian gospels that populate the landscape of American evangelicalism. The Apostle Paul wrote, “This will take place on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.” With the anemic reductions in the Gospel of the kingdom of God promoted as simple “plans of salvation,” all the robust nutrients of the biblical gospel are boiled away. We are given an unsavory gospel... Read more

Walk Away Renee (by Michelle Van Loon)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm By Scot McKnight

Michelle is not new to the Jesus Creed blog (or @nseminary, where she is one of our students), but for those of you who don’t know… she writes a wonderful blog and I hope you put her on your favorites list. And if you are keen on this topic, check out Finding Faith, Losing Faith (in the books section to your right) — I have a chp on apostasy and leaving the faith. The latest “I once was ‘found’, then I... Read more

New Kippa

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm By Scot McKnight

Sharona Schwartz: With a major increase in anti-Semitic incidents reported all over Europe, prompting some Jews to try to hide their faith in public, a new accessory was developed to allow Jewish men to wear their yarmulkes but look like they’re not. It’s a yarmulke made of human hair, called the “Magic Kippa,” referring to the Jewish skullcap’s name in Hebrew. Israeli hairdresser Shalom Koresh said he designed the head covering, which marries the yarmulke with the toupee, after hearing... Read more

Human Experience and Our Hope for the Future (RJS)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm By RJS

A couple of weeks ago we began a series of posts looking at John Polkinghorne’s book The God of Hope and the End of the World. After looking at insights into hope and the end of the world from the realm of science (see the previous post: The End of the World), Polkinghorne turns to human sciences and human hope for the future. How do humans hang onto hope in the face of certain death? We all know, on one... Read more

Rethinking Heaven (NT Wright)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm By Scot McKnight

What ideas were presented to you about heaven when you grew up? [Please drop a comment because I’d like to know how many of us grew up with the notions of a new heaven and new earth — let’s call it a renewed earth heaven — or a heaven up there and out there — let’s call it a spiritual heaven.] N.T. Wright, in Simply Good News, makes his standard and oft-repeated idea that heaven for a Jew and for Jesus and... Read more