OnlineCollege.org  Read more

The recent resolution of the Southern Baptist Convention can be plotted along the lines of some New Testament scholarship of the 1980s in which the Politics of Holiness was challenged by Jesus with the Politics of Compassion. Is this the culture war? What is the strategy? What happens when Holiness comes into conflict with Compassion? Here, then, is the Politics of Holiness: In a news conference following the convention’s adoption of the resolution, Lemke emphasized that the resolution was not... Read more

My friend and colleague, Claude Mariottini, argues that Paul’s use of not muzzling the ox is not an argument from the lesser (ox) to the greater (apostles) but allegory: Paul’s argument was that if draft animals could share from the results of their labors, then those who work promoting the cause of Christ should also share from the results of their work. But Paul is not using a qal wahomer. Paul is allegorizing the text in order to bring canonical authority... Read more

Joel Willitts, my friend and former colleague at North Park, has a post on a problem in much of biblical theology: it gets supersessionistic (a term often begged in definition). Here’s Joel: But just recently I’ve come to realize what it is that makes me uncomfortable with much biblical theology today. I noticed it most clearly in two books on biblical theology published in the last year: Gentry & Wellum’s Kingdom through Covenant, and Goldsworthy’s Christ-Centered Biblical Theology. Here’s my problem. These... Read more

For some odd reason beyond my ken grace seems rather easy to misunderstood, either by softening it into bald forms of tolerance or overcooking it with a dark side. Listening to people makes me think that “grace” means God is love and God is loving and “God is just so incredibly nice” or something like “God has given us such a nice world and home and clothing.” That is, “grace” means good things, which is only partly right. Frederick Buechner... Read more

From USAToday: America’s families may be shrinking, but our houses never got the memo: They’re moving in the opposite direction. Census Bureau data out this week show that the size of new homes keeps rising even as Americans over the past two generations have had fewer children. At 2,306 square feet, the typical new home is about 50% larger than its 1973 counterpart while the typical family is 10% smaller and the typical household 15% smaller. The Census Bureau defines... Read more

Excellent, informative and suggestive probing into what was really happening with the Pythia at the oracles of Delphi … by Jelle Zeilinga de Boer and John R. Hale: The ancient sources describe two distinct types of prophetic trance experienced by the Pythia. First, and more normally, she would lapse into benign semi-consciousness, during which she remained seated on the tripod, responding to questions—though in a strangely altered voice. According to Plutarch, once the Pythia recovered from this trance, she was... Read more