Once one opens reading Paul through the Story/stories at work, everything falls into place. Such an approach, followed by NT Wright in his new Paul and the Faithfulness of God, permits Wright to explain two major, major issues: the law and Jesus. Where does the Torah/Law fit in all this? It all begins with a recognition that when Paul said “Law” he meant the Jewish Torah and not the “law principle” of life. So when Reformed theologians speak of the “covenant... Read more
From the GAFCON conference in Nairobi: Link to GAFCON itself. After celebrating the East African Revival on the opening evening of the conference, those attending GAFCON2013 on Tuesday morning were presented with challenges facing the church around the world. The day began with a Eucharist in Nairobi Cathedral where there was standing room only. Afterwards the 331 bishops, over a third of those in the Anglican Communion, gathered for a group photograph in which they gave the “One-way” sign. In... Read more
I saw this story by Lynn Wilder and it triggered for me, of course, my studies in conversion theory (Turning to Jesus and, with Hauna Ondrey, Finding Faith, Losing Faith). The summer of 2006, my husband and I mustered the courage to drive two hours away from our largely Mormon community in Utah to attend a non-Mormon church on a Saturday night. That way, no Mormon friends or priesthood leaders could possibly see us. We were paranoid, worried that if someone... Read more
It could be argued that Wesleyan theology, with its emphasis on “free grace” or free will (properly understood), leads the sensitive Christian toward fear of final salvation or toward a lack of assurance, just as one could argue that Calvinism, since it assumes God’s sovereign and preserving grace, can lead to too easy of an assurance or to resignation to whatever happens, including sin at some level. But neither is a fair description, and that is why Don Thorsen’s book Calvin... Read more
This recent post at John Piper’s site (by Jonathan Parnell, but repeating what I’ve heard from Piper for years) is why we need books like Don Thorsen’s fair-minded and accurate sketch of what both Wesley and Calvin believe (Calvin vs. Wesley). Those who will but read Roger Olson’s erudite and source-quoting Arminian Theology will be well-informed of what Arminians believe. I have highlighted in bold the caricature-like descriptions. Either Jesus died to save his church or he didn’t. There isn’t a third option. Either he gave... Read more
Source: To recap: Mac OS X Mavericks is free and available today. There are updated 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros and both are available starting today. The 13-inch starts at $1,299, the 15-inch at $1,999. The Mac Pro has a price tag, $2,999, but the release date is still a vague “later this year.” iLive and iWork are both getting update for Macs and iOS devices. To stay on theme, they are available staring today. There is a new full... Read more
When I wrote my little book The Real Mary I learned about girls’ names in the USA and how “Mary” used to be #1 all over the USA. Here’s a link to 60 years of girls’ names, from 1960 to the present popularity, though nowhere close to former levels, of Sophia: Read more
Within the church we most often consider the intersection of science and faith from a perspective that asks if science is a threat to faith. Within the scientific community (and the academic community more generally) the question is often flipped. Rather than science as a threat to faith, faith is viewed as a threat to science. Both are questions worth considering. I recently came across a video put out by Big Think that features Francis Collins addressing this very issue... Read more
Symbols and praxis need a story in a worldview to make sense. Famously, Bultmann stripped the New Testament of its mythology, but notice how N.T. Wright, in his Paul and the Faithfulness of God, describes Bultmann’s agenda: The main problem with Bultmann’s proposal, in addition to the muddling of different senses of ‘myth’, is that when he insisted that we should strip the early Christian world of its ‘mythology’ he meant not only that we should express the existential challenge... Read more
This study surprised the researcher, will or will not surprise many of us, but the controlling for demographic features just might let loose an avalanche… anyway, here’s a clip: Sarah Theule Lubienski didn’t set out to compare public schools and private schools. A professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she was studying math instructional techniques when she discovered something surprising: Private schools—long assumed to be educationally superior—were underperforming public schools. She called her husband, Christopher A. Lubienski, also... Read more
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