A comment on my previous post got me thinking about the image of “cafeteria Christianity” – the idea being of a smorgasbord from which one picks and chooses, which is not in and of itself necessarily a bad thing. I’d like to explore the metaphor further. All who consider themselves Christians are in the cafeteria. The difference is that some of us enter delighting the buffet, eager to taste new things and help ourselves to a little of this and... Read more

Today in my Sunday school class we continued to discuss how we as Christians might, and should, view other religious traditions. To facilitate this, the pastor and I will provide an overview about some major world religions in next week’s class. Providentially or coincidentally, I found that I had taken along as scrap paper some notes from a talk I gave at Butler, as part of a series called “Loving Your Neighbors, Understanding Their Faiths”. In it, I presented some... Read more

Someone recently suggested to me the relevance of Apollos, as depicted in the story in Acts 18:18-28, to the subject of oral tradition and the spread of information in early Christianity. Here we have an individual who had apparently, on the one hand, been “instructed well” about Jesus and Christianity, and who was able to develop his own understanding and arguments from the Jewish Scriptures, and yet “knew only John’s baptism”. Regardless of what the story’s historical accuracy might be,... Read more

I saw the new Star Trek movie last night. It is fantastic. I can’t imagine (in spite of what some have been saying) that devoted fan of the original series will not love it. Star Trek had parallel universes and alternate time lines built into it all along, and so tinkering with the “canonical history” is less of an issue than in the case of rebooting Battlestar Galactica – or even making a movie that tinkers with Lord of the... Read more

I wonder if the hiring of an actor to “play Jacob”, like the filming of multiple versions of the final scene from last season’s finale, is a ruse, and Jacob is in fact going to turn out to be someone we know well: Jack Shepherd. I wouldn’t bet money on it, not by a long shot, but I can certainly see how such a plot development would make sense. If Jack succeeds in detonating a bomb and preventing the incident... Read more

Kathy Hanson has a guest post at the blog Dream Awakener on the question of whether the way we live, or the things we believe and say, ought to be paramount for Christians. Her post leads me to reflect on the fact that Jesus, for the most part, particularly in the earliest stories told about him, does not use healing people or exorcisms as an opportunity for doctrinal instruction. He never tells them “four things God wants you to know”,... Read more

We’re off to see the Wizard…er, I mean Jacob…as LOST moves towards the end of its penultimate season [There are SPOILERS ahead if you have not yet seen the most recent episode to air in the US] Last night’s episode “Follow the Leader” saw John Locke leading “his people”, the Others, to go see Jacob, and to the surprise of everyone watching, the episode ended with Locke telling Ben he intends to kill Jacob. We should not forget the earlier... Read more

Well, we’re getting close to the end of the season, and some pretty remarkable plot developments are carrying us along. It has been said that the finale (to be broadcast next week) will be so game-changing that we’ll wonder how the show can continue after it. My guess is that Jack and Eloise and crew will succeed in detonating the bomb, and that’s where they’ll leave us hanging until the Fall, wondering whether that changed the course of history or... Read more

A while back I shared the first part of this video, showing why “flood geology” is bogus. Here’s part two, with more overwhelming scientific data coupled with enjoyable British sarcasm (HT AIG Busted): Open Parachute blogs about answering the big questions. 3quarksdaily has Philip Kitcher on religion after Darwin. See also Phil Plait on what’s been going on with science education in Texas, as well as Friendly Atheist who cover atheist buses and a creationist congressperson in Indiana. Kevin Edgecomb... Read more

Although there are all sorts of spiritual adventures that can involve blogging, I am referring here to Philip Clayton’s recent book Adventures in the Spirit: God, World, Divine Action (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), a copy of which Tripp Fuller kindly provided me with as part of the Transforming Theology Theo-Blogger Consortium. In the book’s prologue, Clayton sets the stage for what follows by highlighting the denial by many that middle ground exists in the interaction of sacred and scientific, of ancient... Read more