Providential Accidents

Last updated on: January 2, 2013 at 7:18 pm By Scot McKnight

How someone decides to study something, and then that something becoming one of life’s consuming projects, is often a story worth telling. (Got any stories of what led to any of your major passions?) Ed Fudge, deeply submerged into the culture of the Restoration (Stone-Campbell) Movement as a Church of Christ family, got into trouble with some because he believed in the “grace-unity-fellowship heresy,” which essentially meant that he, though CofC, believed others are “in Christ” and worthy of fellowship... Read more

Only a Child

Last updated on: December 16, 2013 at 8:52 pm By Scot McKnight

From a child’s grade school assignment: Read more

Humanists, Where Were They?

Last updated on: December 30, 2012 at 11:17 am By Scot McKnight

From Samuel G. Freedman, at the NYTimes: The funerals and burials over the past two weeks have taken place in Catholic, Congregational, Mormon and United Methodist houses of worship, among others. They have been held in Protestant megachurches and in a Jewish cemetery. A black Christian youth group traveled from Alabama to perform “Amazing Grace” at several of the services. This illustration of religious belief in action, of faith expressed in extremis, an example at once so heart-rending and so... Read more

Faith and the Father

Last updated on: December 16, 2013 at 5:40 pm By Scot McKnight

Source and via: In 1994 the Swiss carried out an extra survey that the researchers for our masters in Europe (I write from England) were happy to record. The question was asked to determine whether a person’s religion carried through to the next generation, and if so, why, or if not, why not. The result is dynamite. There is one critical factor. It is overwhelming, and it is this: It is the religious practice of the father of the family... Read more

Water Story

Last updated on: December 30, 2012 at 11:13 am By Scot McKnight

From Rachel at the Daily Infographic: Read more

World Systems Model

Last updated on: January 2, 2013 at 10:55 am By Scot McKnight

One of the New Testament scholars who has captured both an academic reputation and a spirituality/church reputation is Walter Wink. Wink’s focus was on the powers, that is, on the principalities and powers. So his theory of spiritual warfare, the first discussed in Beilby and Eddy’s Understanding Spiritual Warfare, is all about the powers — it is a “world systems model.” It is about what Wink calls the “Domination System.” This is an impressive chp and a summary of Wink’s life... Read more

Is Evangelicalism Ending? 3

Last updated on: December 31, 2012 at 6:02 am By Scot McKnight

What happens, then, to the doctrine of Scripture if David Fitch is right? What happens to what he calls “the Inerrant Bible” model — the model that speaks a polemical and ideological language game as it flows out of the modernist-fundamentalist debate and speaks against the liberal model? In his new book, The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission: Towards an Evangelical Political Theology (Theopolitical Visions), David Fitch proposes a view of Scripture that is both evangelical... Read more

Gratitude When Irate at the Gate

Last updated on: January 1, 2013 at 7:31 am By Scot McKnight

A bundle in our family was at the airport on our way to a family vacation, away from the wintry weather of Chicago and the snow storms were threatening, and our flight was delayed — 6+ hours, but who’s counting?! Folks at the gate were irate. Some threatened to abandon the trip altogether (they didn’t), others called the airlines central office, and one irate person threatened to call the media (as if they Chicago media don’t have leads and tips... Read more

David Brooks: The Fiscal Flop

Last updated on: January 1, 2013 at 7:31 am By Scot McKnight

From David Brooks: They could have shown the world that the two parties can work together to avert the eventual calamity. They could have produced a balanced program that would have combined spending cuts and targeted tax increases. They could have reduced Medicare spending on the rich to free up more money for young families. President Obama and Speaker John Boehner both earnestly wanted to achieve these things. But the deal we are heading toward is discouraging. Yes, the deal... Read more

New Year, New School Year

Last updated on: January 1, 2013 at 6:47 am By Scot McKnight

In my first year back teaching seminary students (after 17 splendid years at North Park University teaching undergraduates), I’m returning to subjects I haven’t directly taught in years or not at all. Last Fall I taught Synoptic Gospels, which overlapped with most of my career of teaching and writing and preaching, but I also taught New Testament Theology, which was a learning experience for me. This semester, which begins January 7, I will be teaching the Apostle Paul and the... Read more