I was having a productive day until a friend of mine sent me the following famous quote from C. S. Lewis in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, which appeared today (11/1) in the Wall Street Journal on page A17. Now I’m all riled up and I won’t get any more work done. My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position [imposing “the good”] would act as cruelly and unjustly as the... Read more
James McGrath posted the following on his blog about the type of reasoning one often finds among creationists. It is also applicable to certain strands of apologetics concerning Israelite history vis-a-vis the challenges of archaeology. Plus, they’re cute bunnies. Read more
A few weeks back I posted some thoughts (here and here) on Mark S. Smith’s (Skirball Profesor of Bible and Near Eastern Studies at New York University) presidential address at the Catholic Biblical Association of America meeting in August 2011, which was published in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly the next year (issue 74, 2012). Here is a third quote from that address. The revelation of God for the biblical authors did not depend on knowing history fully, whether the history of earliest Israel... Read more
Today’s post is an interview with Anthony Le Donne on his new book The Wife of Jesus: Ancient Texts and Modern Scandals. Le Donne (PhD, Durham) is the author/editor of six other books including The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David. He co-founded the Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts Consultation and serves as an editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. He is an affiliate of the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the... Read more
I shouldn’t have to say this, but experience suggests I provide the following disclaimer: The following makes a serious point through the use of humor, specifically, it exposes the absurdity of an argument–a literalistic reading of the creation story in Genesis–by applying its logic and premises to an analogous issue covered in Scripture–weather. If you do not see the humor in this, good enough, but do not assume others should join in you adopting your humorless disposition. If, however, you dispute the... Read more
Three years ago in Christianity Today, Frank James wrote about his brother Kelly’s death in 2006 while mountain climbing in Oregon. Since June of this year, James is president of Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, PA, not 5 miles from I sit typing this in my home office. Given our close proximity, I took upon myself to contact him, email him, and otherwise stalk him to get to know him a bit more. We recently sat down over a pint at the... Read more
I recently stumbled onto a review of Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism by Molly Worthen. The review is by Mark Edwards and posted on Religion in American History. I haven’t read the book, but the review and the teaser quotes Edwards gives ring true to me, and it looks like I need to add another book to my list. From the Amazon description: Evangelical Christianity is a paradox. Evangelicals are radically individualist, but devoted to community... Read more
Last week I attended a lecture on Psalms by Walter Brueggemann at Wayne Presbyterian Church here in suburban Philadalphia. Part of his talk dealt with what he called “God’s infidelity”–those times when God does not come through, or seem to come through, on what he promised, or otherwise acts in ways that are inconsistent with what we believe God should act like. The psalms that address this sort of scenario are often called “lament psalms“–which is a nice way of saying “give God... Read more
Today’s post is a short interview with Ryan Miller, author of everything breathes, which just came out this month. Miller spent 10+ years creating video games, including the best sellers Myst and Riven, before taking his creativity to a different arena: the church world. He eventually started Branches in Spokane, WA in 2010. In addition to being the pastor there, he owns and operates an online stationery boutique with his wife, does some graphic design on the side, and attempts to parent... Read more
Recently Dr. David G. Benner posted some brief thoughts on whether fear should characterize our response to God (taken from his book Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality). Remember, these are spiritual reflections, not an academic analysis of the various dimensions of fear and love, or how they might play off of each other. He is not talking about fear as “awe” (as in Proverbs, for example). Benner is a psychologist and spiritual mentor. On his mind are... Read more
Peter Enns
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