Mythicism claims that the lack of details about Jesus in the epistles are an indication that their authors did not think Jesus was historical. I’ve pointed out before that this is silly nonsense – the relative silence in the epistles is silence about a celestial Jesus myth, if there was such a thing, every bit as much as about a historical life of Jesus. Ephesians 4:21 rarely gets discussed in this context, despite its relevance. It says, “For surely you have heard about... Read more
A number of people shared this photo from a Lifeway store on Facebook, where they had Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic book, The Cost of Discipleship, on sale at a discounted price, creating the possibility of a number of jokes. Actually, if you are interested, you can get the book even cheaper than this on Amazon.com… Read more
HT Chris Code on Facebook Read more
From today’s Bizarro Read more
I thought this was a particularly important statement in Benjamin Edsall’s review of Chris Tilling’s book, Paul’s Divine Christology: Tilling objects, rightly, to getting hung up on ontological questions in Paul’s Christology, and he spends the majority of the book discussing the Christ-relation and arguing that it has certain important structural parallels with a “typical” Jewish God-relation. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the language of “divinity” in the context of this topic is inescapably laden with ontological significance. An appointed mediator could conceivably have... Read more
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul makes a contrast between two human beings, Adam and Jesus. One is mythical. Is the other? And did Paul think that one or both of them were mythical? Interestingly, on this point, if none other, concerns of young-earth creationists and mythicists intersect. Is “human” ever applied without qualification to beings that are thought to exist purely in the celestial realm? Certainly we have instances of people seeing “men” but the interpretation is that they were... Read more
The image above appeared on the blog Friendly Atheist. It makes a number of points – not least of which is that the dishonesty and special pleading of young-earth creationists makes them a subject of deserved mockery. But it also engages in some sleight of hand itself. Creationists – meaning anyone who believes in a Creator – believe that “God did it,” but most do not for that reason deny evolution. They recognize that the same dots which, viewed from a scientific... Read more
Courtesy of Rachel Held Evans Read more
While this uncritically accepts the Biblical accounts as factual, it draws attention to differences between the Biblical material and many traditions, and does so in a comical way, and so I thought it to still be worth sharing. Read more
I always find it ironic when young-earth creationists and other anti-science folks say that biological evolution seems to them too fantastic to believe, despite the strong evidence showing that it occurred – and then proceed to say they believe something even more fantastic and which is at odds with the evidence. If your stance is that nothing is impossible with God, then that includes not just creation in an instant and creation in six days and intelligently designing malaria, but also evolution.... Read more
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