“Pastor”? (Sean Palmer)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:59 pm By Scot McKnight

From Sean Palmer: With one simple click of the mouse, Christians can be pastored by their favorite pastor. Regardless of the miles between them, open your web browser and in just a few keystrokes, your preferred preacher is pastoring your soul…except, not really. Here’s one unwitting example: Last week the Internet announced the resurgence of Mr. Resurgence. Mark Driscoll, the embattled former pastor of the now defunct Mars Hill Church in Seattle, who rejected his board’s restoration process, attended a Christian conference... Read more

An Exciting Opportunity! (RJS)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:59 pm By RJS

Are you interested in questions of science and Christian faith? Perhaps not quite sure what to think? Want to enter into a conversation and learn some more? On this blog we’ve been carrying on a conversation about the relationship between science and Christian faith for many years. The conversation has wandered over a wide range of topics and I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to interact with others holding a variety of views. Now the conversation can move from the... Read more

A Threshold Issue in Evolutionary Theory

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:59 pm By Scot McKnight

Perhaps you were taught what I was taught. There is such a process called microevolution but there is no such process called macroevolution. That is, within a species there is variation and change but there is no evolution of one species to another. I learned this — or something like it. A threshold issue in evolutionary theory is speciation. That is, that one species can evolve into a new species. What then is a species? Denis Alexander, in his wonderful book Creation or Evolution: Do We... Read more

That Was a Reception!

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:59 pm By Scot McKnight

I was cheering more for the Packers than the Cowboys, but that was a catch by Dez Bryant. He got control of that ball before he extended his arms to the end zone. Image Read more

Atrocity!

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:59 pm By Scot McKnight

Lewis Smith and others: One of Africa’s most senior church leaders has accused the West of ignoring the threat of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram, days after the reported slaughter of up to 2,000 people by the group. Ignatius Kaigama, the Catholic Archbishop of Jos and president of the Nigerian Bishops Conference, spoke as bodies lay strewn on the ground in Baga, in north-east Nigeria, after a surge by Boko Haram fighters who took over the border town earlier... Read more

Biblical and Diversity: Richard Beck

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:59 pm By Scot McKnight

From Richard Beck: Sola scriptura produces pluralism. The “bible alone” creates doctrinal diversity. Biblical literalism proliferates churches.And five-hundred years of Protestantism is Exhibit A.The only way to get a single, unified church, as the Catholics will tell you, isn’t the bible. What you need, rather, is a magisterium, a teaching authority that says, for everyone, “this is what the bible says.” And that’s why there is one Catholic church and tens, thousands or tens-of-thousands of Protestant churches (depending upon how you count... Read more

Simply Good News: NT Wright’s New Book

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:59 pm By Scot McKnight

C.S. Lewis sketched “mere” Christianity in those famous radio talks after World War 2 and the literary deposit, Mere Christianity, has shaped the mind of many of us. Then along came John Stott who “evangelicalized” Lewis’ book in his book Basic Christianity. Then along came England’s third contributor to this basics discussion with Simply Christian, followed by Simply Jesus (filled out in his How God Became King) and now by Simply Good News. Of the three, I like the word “mere” best but Wright’s books have... Read more

The Hope of Holy War

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:59 pm By Scot McKnight

That expression — hope of holy war — may jar most of us, but it is the expression Joshua Ryan Butler uses in the 3d main section of his book The Skeletons in God’s Closet. So let’s get it out there. We are looking today at the God of holy war, at the morality of holy war, of passages in the Old Testament and in the Book of Revelation where God commands and sanctions war and apparently the ending of... Read more

SPU’s Tent City: Doing Good

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:59 pm By Scot McKnight

Jack Levison: It is January 8th, 2015, a Thursday night, 7 PM, exactly 217 days — 5208 hours — after my daughter and I walked to the front of the auditorium, I walk again onto campus, this time with my wife Priscilla. The reception room is packed, so we nudge our way in, peering out toward a crowd of students. But not just students. We are at a reception for residents of Tent City 3, which Seattle Pacific University is... Read more

First Sunday after Epiphany

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 9:59 pm By Scot McKnight

Father in heaven, Who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen. BCP Read more