This is the eve of a significant event in Jewish history. 2532 years ago tomorrow, August 29, 520 BC, according to Haggai 1:1, God gave the command to rebuild Israel’s temple, destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC. That’s a long time ago, is all I’m saying. Think about it. Just 1/5 of this length of time takes us way back to about 1500, the days when Europeans were just staring to explore (and exploit) the known world by ship... Read more
In the most recent issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (June 2012, volume 55/2, pp. 408-10), Dr. Eric Bolger (Dean of the College of the Ozarks and professor of Philosophy-Religion) published a brief review of my book The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins (Brazos, 2012). Bolger’s review gives a reasonably accurate summary of my book, but his assessment of the book’s argument is limited to a brief concluding paragraph that in my view repeats... Read more
Over at Mere Student, John Oliff posted on the Greek historian Thucydides’s (c.460-c.395 BC) take on the nature of historiography. Sounds like a real snoozer, but grab a cup of coffee if you have to and read this quote from The History of the Peloponnesian War. In this history I have made use of set speeches some of which were delivered just before and others during the war. I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the... Read more
Over at GospelFutures, Neil WIlliams has a post that asks the question “What Good is Christianity?” His point is basically this: Christianity is in trouble. Why? (1) The intellectual challenges are serious and are too often not answered credibly, and (2) the church has a long track record of winding up in the wrong side of moral issues. I my experience, what Neil puts his finger on here has been a common lament of younger Christians, or former-Christians, raised in fairly traditional... Read more
Yesterday I wrote a post that linked to Sarah Kendzior’s recent online article “The Closing of American Academia.” In that article, Kendzior lays out the rather unsettling realities of academic jobs in the humanities. Today she follows up with a post, “The Conversation Continues,” that outlines the various conversations that have spun off of her article, including mine. She also provides a link to the daily online publication Inside Higher Ed, which has a comprehensive report on the working conditions of adjunct faculty (which,... Read more
Sarah Kendzior received her PhD in anthropology this past May from Washington University in St. Louis. Earlier this week, she posted her reflections on the dim outlook of freshly minted PhDs, and I think she makes a number of sober observations. (I posted on this issue a while back here and here.) Highlights (or, as it were, lowlights): 67% of American university faculty are part-time with contracts renewed on a semester by semester basis. At an adjunct salary, a typical full time teaching... Read more
David Williams continues his “What is the Gospel?” series. To refresh your memory, Williams is arguing (as many do) that “fundamentally the gospel is the announcement of Jesus’ being Lord of lords, and that the NT writers did not equate the gospel with the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone.” In his first post, Williams looked at how “good news” (Greek euangelion/euangelizomai) usually functioned in the Greco-Roman world of the NT writers. In his second post, Williams looked at the ways in which “good news”... Read more
Carlos Bovell is our guest blogger today, and has written numerous posts for us over the past few months on the topic of evangelicals and the Bible. His most recent book is Rehabilitating Inerrancy in a Culture of Fear. Here he interacts with Craig Blomberg’s recent review of Christian Smith’s The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. Blomberg is distinguished professor of new Testament at Denver Seminary, and Smith, a former evangelical, is... Read more
In chapter 11 of his book Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture, Kent Sparks tackles the question of whether our Christian theology should be limited to the Bible. In the opening paragraph (p. 118) Sparks says “no,” that we must “move beyond Scripture’s discourse” and attend to other “voices”–four in all: Spirit, Cosmos, Tradition, Experience I realize some will quickly chime in, “No, no. Only the Bible! There is no other foundation upon which to base Christian theology.”... Read more
Recently, Hans Madueme, assistant professor of theological studies at Covenant College, wrote a lengthy review essay (5000 words plus footnotes) of The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins. I appreciate the effort involved, and Madueme’s sincere attempts to maintain a balance between clarity of his conviction, Christian courtesy, and denominational constraints. (Covenant College is the denominational college of the Presbyterian Church in America, which requires belief in a historical Adam.) Others have reviewed my book... Read more
Peter Enns
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