I gave this paper sometime ago, but it pertains to The DaVinci Code movie. What I do is deal witih the proposals of heresy and orthodoxy behind the book, and the two major proponents of these theories today: Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman. It is a bit hard-hitting at times, but I think it is warranted. I’ll do this over three days. I thought I had posted this before, but didn’t find it. |inline
Another way at looking at emerging evangelism, or what we might better call a missional preoccupation in life, is to examine how Jesus related to others. So today we will simply sample Matthew 8–9, two chapters that record Jesus’ interactions with others. |inline
Denny Burk, a blogger and NT scholar, got Criswell Theological Review to send me some files of the Spring edition of the journal. It is devoted to the emergent movement, and they sent me the editor’s introduction, an interview with Brian McLaren, a piece by Mark Driscoll, and then a study of truth in the emerging movement by David Mills at Cedarville. I’ll look today at the interview with McLaren. |inline
Bart Ehrman, in his new book, Misquoting Jesus, tells his story: how he found an evangelical faith, attended Moody, Wheaton and then Princeton — during which time he came to the conclusion that the Bible is simply a human book. Here’s his story. What did you think of his book? |inline
Let me suggest at this point that there are five elements in moral decisions, and each interacts with one another rather than being a simplistic conveyor belt series of elements. Some will give more emphasis to one than another; some will seek to reduce it all to “what the Bible says” but we are learning more and more that it is not quite that simple. So, what do we learn from each? |inline
Tarif Khalidi, in his ground-breaking The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature, introduces the “Muslim gospel” and then provides translation and brief commentary on 303 sayings/stories about Jesus in Muslim literature. It is just the sort of book more of us need to read. Why? It is important in our changing world to become more aware than ever of Islam’s perception of Jesus. What do we learn? |inline
Tarif Khalidi, in his ground-breaking The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature, introduces the “Muslim gospel” and then provides translation and brief commentary on 303 sayings/stories about Jesus in Muslim literature. It is just the sort of book more of us need to read. Why? It is important in our changing world to become more aware than ever of Islam’s perception of Jesus. What do we learn? |inline
At the deepest level, Jesus summoned his followers to love God and to love others. The God they were summoned to love was the God of Israel, and the God of Israel spoke in Scripture and Jesus’ followers were therefore summoned to let that story of Israel be their story, which involves (as I concluded in the previous post) passages that are taken to one degree or another to be about homosexuality, though as we saw there, the OT texts in Genesis, Judges, and Leviticus are about violent sex acts and pagan idolatries. I also stated my belief that same-sex sexual actions were assumed to be “out of order.” Not all would agree. Today we need to pick up the NT texts. |inline
“What would Jesus say?,” or “What would Jesus do?,” are the questions we are asking. We know “what Jesus would say” would be embodied in “how he lived” and how he treated those who were same-sex in practice. So, the place to begin is at the table with Jesus, and there we learn that he’d welcome, talk to, and summon all to follow him and to be converted. A third topic of Jesus’ teachings on morality is that of the Jesus Creed: Jesus would summon people to love God and to love others. Clarity on our topic can be reached at this juncture. |inline
Because of the heated emotions that rise to the surface even in genuine discussions of this topic, I want to begin by saying that in many ways I’m struggling both to discuss homosexuality on a blog and I continue to learn what Christians ought to think and believe and do. Part of the context of our discussion involves learning what it is that we are talking about. Let me simply make some comments, and I open this for discussion. I’ll offer some more comments in the next post. |inline
Jesus Creed
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