Once upon a text…

Last updated on: November 6, 2013 at 4:32 pm By Scot McKnight

This week’s From the Shepherd’s Nook is by John Frye. Once Upon a Time in a Text Far, Far Away I was raised and trained in a social network that prized doctrinal intelligence. A person’s ability to learn and repeat precise “biblical” ideas was rewarded with praise, affirmation and advancement. The particular lives of some of the people and a few of the communities who valued doctrinal intelligence were factious, argumentative, judgmental, petty, gossipy and blinkered. The world of these... Read more

A Theology: What do we need?

Last updated on: November 8, 2013 at 10:24 am By Scot McKnight

What is needed to write an adequate and responsible and biblical “theology,” a systematics if one wants to use that term? Because so many shifts have occurred in the last 50 years or so many of us are dissatisfied with theologies as they now operate. What do you think we need in a theology? Some readers of this blog are old enough to have grown up with some “classics” in systematics. In college I learned that there were two standard... Read more

A Church Kind of Theology

Last updated on: November 7, 2013 at 11:54 am By Scot McKnight

We are very excited about the interest and applicants to our new DMin at Northern that I will be directing. This program will focus on this: 1. Study of the New Testament 2. Examination of the NT in its Jewish Context 3. All to help local church ministries. So, it’s a DMin that examines the NT in its Jewish context in order to help you and your church in its various ministries. Here’s our announcement: Northern is excited to announce... Read more

Ashton Kutcher’s Advice for Youth

Last updated on: November 6, 2013 at 7:33 pm By Scot McKnight

Source: But Kutcher said the system has changed because now “you have people who are famous for the sake of being famous or famous for the sake of being second-generation wealthy families. I think it shifts a dynamic in society and I also think there’s an entitlement that’s starting to emerge that I think is unhealthy for people and unhealthy for our country. And its funny, I talk to some of my friends and they don’t want to get a... Read more

Comments, Trolls, and Teaching (RJS)

Last updated on: November 7, 2013 at 5:29 am By RJS

A month ago or a little more Popular Science discontinued comments their web site. BioLogos has been considering the idea, although deciding to retain comments for the time being. The reason is the effect that comments and commenters can have on readers – whether they themselves comment or not. And, of course, only a small percentage, something less than 5%, of the readers actually comment. The influence isn’t always positive or inline with the aim and purpose of the site.... Read more

Jesus as Israel’s Story of God Freshly Revealed

Last updated on: November 6, 2013 at 8:18 pm By Scot McKnight

The essence of Tom Wright’s project is to show that Paul’s theology is both thoroughly Jewish and at the same time a reframing of the central elements of that Judaism around God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. Wright sees three main elements in Judaism that Paul “reworked”: monotheism, election, and eschatology. All this in his magisterial new two-volume study, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. (As an aside, Doug Moo’s review at TGC’s blog is balanced, which is good for TGC when... Read more

On (some) Philosophers

Last updated on: November 6, 2013 at 8:44 pm By Scot McKnight

The inimitable, and always deadly clear, Joseph Epstein has this to say about (some) philosophers: What is it about the study of philosophy that tends to make brilliant minds stupid when it comes down to what are known as actual cases? Consider Martin Heidegger, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the four great names in twentieth-century philosophy: the first was a Nazi, the second died certain that America was responsible for all the world’s evil, the third was a... Read more

Chair Sitters: An Infographic

Last updated on: January 8, 2014 at 11:26 am By Scot McKnight

Chair Office by JessicaDraws. Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually. Read more

Methodist, Jewish, Elder

Last updated on: November 3, 2013 at 2:05 pm By Scot McKnight

Rebekah Simon-Peter, her new name, tells her story of moving from Reformed (liberal) Judaism into Orthodox Judaism into the Christian faith as a result of experiencing an appearance from Jesus in her book A Jew Named Jesus: Discover the Man and His Message. She’s now a Methodist elder/minister and working to reconcile communities in a ministry called BridgeWorks. She addresses classic questions from her own angle, an angle I’d call universalist and probably religiously pluralist. She doesn’t feel at home in... Read more

Bible in Motion

Last updated on: November 6, 2013 at 7:26 am By Scot McKnight

William Webb, in his Women, Slaves and Homosexuals, proposed what he calls the redemptive movement hermeneutic, the need to see the Bible in motion and to see where it is headed to see what a passage means. Here are two charts, his and then a reduced form I used in class. (Thanks to PEP.) If you click on each graph you can see the whole of the graph. Since the first comment took us in a direction that will be for... Read more