The title of this post combines two interests of mine: Biblical studies and bad puns. It is frequent, in discussions of the resurrection, for those who are persuaded that our beliefs on this topic ought to remain static to appeal to Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 15:17, which says that “if Christ was not raised, your faith is in vain”. What makes this interesting, and somewhat ironic, is that, for most contemporary Christians (N. T. Wright and a few of... Read more

Whoever clings to his or her faith shall lose it, and whoever lets go of his or her faith shall keep it. [A variation on Luke 17:33] Read more

This is just a reminder that this month’s Biblical Studies Carnival will be right here on Exploring Our Matrix. Send in the clowns…er, I mean, your submissions for the carnival! Read more

Growing is painful. No one who is now mature bypassed adolescence, and while we may sometimes feel nostalgia for a time when things were (or I should say seemed) simpler, most of us appreciate the broader and deeper, if more complex and less easily manageable, view of things that comes with growing up. Today in my Sunday school class, I said a little bit about James Fowler’s “stages of faith“. Without going into detail here, the main idea is that... Read more

Scotteriology seems to be the latest to join the diablogue about inerrancy and the Bible that has intersected with, branched out from and returned to this blog over the past couple of weeks. The post there uses analogies from The Matrix, which makes it all the more relevant and appropriate as a reflection on what’s been going on here. On a related note, On Journeying With Those In Exile has a post advocating the abandonment of the terminology of “high”... Read more

A number of blogs have intersected and interacted with the thread on Biblical (in)errancy here on my blog. Now the discussion can be accompanied by your choice of theme song. John Hobbins has the highly amusing details. Any bibliobloggers want to make an attempt at completing the lyrics and recording them? Read more

Saying that The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth by Davis A. Young and Ralph F. Stearley (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008) is probably the best book of its kind would not be saying enough, since there really is no other book of its kind: a treatment of the varied and overwhelmingly consistent evidence for the antiquity of our planet, written by Evangelical Christians with the aim of not only making the scientific case... Read more

Eric Reitan was kind enough to engage some of those who commented on a post featuring a quote from him. The discussion has spread to his own blog, and most recently he has offered a lengthy response to one commenter who claimed that an errant Bible would imply a God who is either not omnipotent or not benevolent. But the gist of the argument is powerful in its simplicity: If such logic works in the case of the Scriptures, then... Read more

Lately LOST has been creating time loops, and at least since Locke spotted “tall Walt” after having been shot, there were hints that individuals might move around in time. A recent MAJOR spoiler suggests that some characters who have been in the background all along, but have increasingly come into the foreground in recent episodes, have been acting to try to do something about things that happened in the past – or perhaps are trying to prevent tampering with the... Read more

A lot of the most fervent action on this blog in recent days has been on a post that offered a quotation from Eric Reitan. Well, Prof. Reitan has been kind enough to stop by and leave a couple of comments on that thread, and his words are worth hearing. So I invite even those who may have read the original post, or have followed the comment thread for a while and then grown weary, to pay it just one... Read more