Source: Ok, maybe your grandparents probably slept like you. And your great, great-grandparents. But once you go back before the 1800s, sleep starts to look a lot different. Your ancestors slept in a way that modern sleepers would find bizarre – they slept twice. And so can you. The existence of our sleeping twice per night was first uncovered by Roger Ekirch, professor of History at Virginia Tech. His research found that we didn’t always sleep in one eight hour chunk.... Read more
Flannery O’Connor, the inimitable Southern master of the grotesque image, retired early to bed — mostly because of her lupus. After her evening prayer, she read St Thomas Aquinas. Why? I read a lot of theology because it makes my writing bolder. Read more
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Jesus at the Margins: Epic Meals Jesus said, “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and “sinners’.” Jesus is contrasting his kingdom of God method with his cousin’s, John the Baptist’s way. We evangelicals do so wish that Jesus had said, “The Son of Man came expository preaching Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and correcting the doctrinal errors of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and... Read more
A standard reading of Bonhoeffer, one I have believed most of my academic life, is that Bonhoeffer shifted from a kind of traditional socially conservative, fairly nationalistic approach to church-state relations to a pacifist-Sermon-on-the-Mount stance but that, once he returned to Hitler’s Germany after a brief spell at Union Theological Seminary, he shifted to a kind of (Niebuhrian) realism and abandoned his former pacifist stance. But a new book is out, by Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel... Read more
From Aaron Crumbey: 1. Bullying: (Source: stageoflife.com) – Bullying is still prevalent as it has always been, but with social media it has increased. Now students can be bullied 24 hours around the clock. 91% admit to being a victim of bullying. 2. Texting and Social Media: (Source: stageoflife.com) – 57% of teens credit their mobile device with improving their life. They also see it as key to their social life. The average teen spent 31 hours a week online which is like 5... Read more
There was an interesting and often enlightening, occasionally frustrating, conversation on my post Tuesday Should Reading the Bible Make One an Atheist? A number of people agreed with Jillette, at least partially … especially with regard to the Old Testament. Jillette characterized it as tribal. One of the commenters noted that “it is tedious, tribal, occasionally uplifting, ludicrous, and so on” another mentioned the “the depictions of genocide, rape, etc.” I remember as a child being disturbed by the story... Read more
At the heart of Paul’s theology is classic Jewish monotheism (not so much later philosophical and theological monotheism), and NT Wright opens with a sketch of Jewish monotheism and then shows how Paul reframes Jewish monotheism. First Century Jewish Monotheism Wright begins with Akiba being martyred, and in the act of dying reciting Shema as his expression of loving God with his “life” (naphsheka). As we saw earlier, the most intimate and personal way of ‘taking on oneself the yoke... Read more
By Michelle van Loon: Have your ambitions “gentled” over time? How so? What have you learned about those old ambitions? I was in a room with a bunch of young pastors-in-training, and commented to a friend that I could feel the testosterone in the air even though there were a number of women present. “That’s not testosterone you’re sensing,” he told me. “It’s ambition.” As I observed the body language among the group (so many firm two-handed handshakes!), and listened... Read more
“The root of ignorance,” Don Thorsen says, “is ‘ignoring,’ and too many Christians intentionally ignore the beliefs, values, and practices of others, including those of other Christians and churches” (Calvin vs. Wesley: Bringing Belief in Line with Practice, 89). On this Thorsen is not only right but a model of its opposite: he patiently explains both what Calvin teaches and what Wesley teaches. I admire Don’s effort in this book. Would that we would all be this fair-minded. The problem,... Read more
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