The Kinds of Feminism

Last updated on: June 9, 2014 at 7:58 am By Scot McKnight

Forbes: The critique has to be made, but the aim of feminism must be recollected and used to refocus all energies. Christina Hoff Sommers, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Freedom Feminism—Its Surprising History and Why it Matters Today, explains why as my guest on this week’s RealClear Radio Hour. In her book, Sommers meticulously describes the two rival camps of feminism, which are often in conflict, but drive progress when pulling in the same direction. The first,... Read more

Babel as Ideological Critique (RJS)

Last updated on: June 7, 2014 at 6:15 pm By RJS

The previous post on J. Richard Middleton’s book The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 looked at the way in which Middleton sees Genesis 1-10 as an ideological critique of the dominant and dominating Mesopotamian culture. The creation of humankind in the image of God takes on added theological and societal significance in this context. Middleton also considers Genesis 11 and the Tower of Babel story as ideological critique. I have chosen to consider it separately from Genesis... Read more

Sorting Out the Options

Last updated on: June 10, 2014 at 5:42 am By Scot McKnight

At the website, Rethinking Hell, you will discover a serious and nearly always very reasonable approach to the difficult and demanding topic of hell and how Christians are to understand the Bible and the history of interpretation. At the site there is this wonderful diagram of options: Notice the three variants in the Traditionalism corner: some see the wicked as being dehumanized, which approaches Conditionalism because it it is nearly destruction; the reconciliationist view emphasizes the wicked continuing to choose... Read more

Ecumenical or Unity? Michelle Van Loon

Last updated on: June 5, 2014 at 7:11 am By Scot McKnight

By Michelle Van Loon, one of our students at Northern Seminary: What is the most important thing you, or your local church, can do to encourage unity? I used to cringe at the word “ecumenical”. It smacked of engineered truces and kumbayah emotions. It conjured images for me of 1960′s World Council of Churches meetings and “So a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar” jokes – only the jokes never seemed to have a good punchline since everyone... Read more

NT Wright, Science and Religion

Last updated on: June 9, 2014 at 8:13 am By Scot McKnight

A collection of his public presentations, N.T. Wright’s new Surprised by Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues, brings Wright’s well-known narratival reading of Scripture/Israel’s history/Israel’s Story to bear on a number of topics, including science, the historical Adam, a “scientific approach” to the resurrection, ordaining women … and that’s just the first four chapters! Yes, plenty to dig into here and I suspect it could be a fantastic seasonal adult Bible study focus group. How does seeing Darwinism (naturalism) as a new version of... Read more

What are the Great Books?

Last updated on: June 8, 2014 at 3:17 pm By Scot McKnight

Lots of books are good, but few books are great, and a mark of great books is that they can be read over and over by the same person with every growing appreciation and learning. A friend of ours repeats the reading of a great book for every two new books she reads, and I can’t say I’m even close to her approach — but I do think it is wise. The truly great books for me include Homer’s Odyssey,... Read more

Graduation Day is a Great Day

Last updated on: June 8, 2014 at 3:32 pm By Scot McKnight

Our graduation at Northern Seminary, which we hold at the beautiful chapel on Elmhurst College’s campus, was yesterday. Graduation combines joy of accomplishment, sorrow of the departure of those whom we have learned to love as students (and sometimes colleagues), and hope and prayer for their future ministries. I have been going to graduations for 30+ years as a professor, and the graduations — get this — at Northern and far and away the best graduations. We had splendid music,... Read more

Pentecost Sunday!

Last updated on: June 8, 2014 at 6:02 am By Scot McKnight

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. or this O God, who on this day... Read more

Weekly Meanderings, 7 June 2014

Last updated on: June 6, 2014 at 8:13 pm By Scot McKnight

It’s Graduation Day at Northern Seminary! Congratulations to our many graduates and our prayers for your ministries to flourish at the hand of God. Michelle Van Loon’s nice post on regret (launching from President Obama’s deepest regret that he didn’t spend more time with his mother). Molly Worthen’s insightful commentary on the decline of baptism in the SBC, its response and the prospects of revival as the march of secularization continues: You’ve probably heard that the United States has been... Read more

Chicago’s Best Deep Dish Pizza

Last updated on: June 3, 2014 at 7:14 am By Scot McKnight

Nick Kindelsperger examined Chicago’s offerings for deep dish pizza (he likes Burt’s Place). What is the best deep dish pizza in Chicagoland? Easy: Bill’s Pub in Mundelein. The only problem with such an open definition of deep dish was that this left me with an incredible number of options. Plus, this isn’t the kind of pizza that you can casually graze upon over the course of an evening. This is truly filling food, which also takes a decent amount of... Read more