As soon as I saw Tenet, I knew it was a movie that I would need to see twice before I could comment on it once. Having done that, I am happy to now do so, since the movie has more than one theological aspect to it. One of those is in the very nature of time travel. Being able to move backwards through time so that one benefits from the knowledge acquired while moving in the other direction provides... Read more
The New Testament does not claim that Jesus was unique. That may be a shocking claim, but I think you will find it to be true nonetheless. He stood out from a crowd, from among his peers. Many people do. We might sometimes say certain people have a unique aptitude or are uniquely gifted, but we don’t mean that literally. We mean they excel relative to the population in general. I have been thinking about this as I’ve worked on... Read more
Initially the Doctor Who 2020 New Year’s special seemed to me like a collection of things that the writers wanted to happen at this juncture, mixed together with a revisiting of well-worn Doctor Who plot, and stirred into a mixture that didn’t quite turn into a meringue. Given how much there was that was interesting and enjoyable, I wasn’t quite sure why I felt that way. On further reflection, I feel that the question of whether there is a story... Read more
I will be testing out parts of a new open textbook I am writing on the Bible and music when I teach my class on that subject in a few weeks. I am rather worried, as well as hopeful, with respect to how the fact that not all students will be present physically on all occasions may impact things like listening and singing. I mentioned the book project to my Sunday school class, and now I will also be exploring this... Read more
Sorry to start the year on a somewhat disheartening note. However, if we are to have any realistic hope of the future being better, we need to do more than hope. We must take a long hard look not only at the past, not only at those around us with whom we disagree, but at ourselves. Many of us are asking ourselves a question when we get on Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere on social media and see things from people... Read more
“Welcome back my friends to the year that never ends…” It is time to bring 2020 to a close. Looking back, January seems so incredibly long ago. It is hard to believe that I started the year by traveling to Australia for the first time in my life. I accompanied students who would be spending the entire semester there (or so we all believed at the time, naive as we were), and had the chance to meet with quite a... Read more
It will probably never cease to seem ironic to me the extent to which conservative Evangelicals engage in historical revisionism on topics like the Bible and inerrancy, atonement, faith, science, abortion, and countless others. I distinctly recall how much emphasis was placed by the Evangelicals around me, when I was in that context, on getting back to authentic Christianity in contrast with the many counterfeits on offer. Yet those who study the early Christian movement with the tools relevant to... Read more
Religious freedom – it seems like such a simple concept and such a lofty ideal. Yet we can still find ourselves getting muddled in all sorts of grey areas, or at least areas that raise important additional issues, even if those pertaining strictly to religious freedom are ultimately clear cut. There is something fundamentally different between the free speech of a minority group and the free speech of a group that is in the majority, particularly if it is an... Read more
Those who simply identify Marxism, Communism, and socialism, and view socialism and Christianity as inherently incompatible, have never read The Communist Manifesto and have never understood the Bible. In most instances they also don’t understand American democracy either. I say that it is clear they have not read Marx and Engels because one of the things they do in their manifesto is argue against other varieties of communism and socialism, including Christian varieties. Even before that Engels quoted a statement by... Read more
I am puzzled why most commentators regard the reference in Mark 3:21 as being to Jesus’ family. It isn’t that I cannot see how that interpretation is possible, but why is it treated so much as the default that it is taken for granted by most modern English translations? I see several major difficulties with this interpretation of the text: It is not the most natural meaning of the phrase used, which is literally “those alongside him.” The family of... Read more
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