Discussing (on Facebook) Pete Enns’ recent post on Canaanite genocide and the diversity of views in the Bible, I wrote the following, and thought I’d share it here too: Perhaps the key is that reading the Bible, without flattening it to claim that it has a single viewpoint and teaching, will lead us naturally to conclude that we need to figure out for ourselves what to do in conversation with others, and cannot just turn to the Bible to figure... Read more
A post about the nature of the Bible on Tom Rapsas’ blog includes an interesting question. Instead of cursing the fig tree for not bearing fruit in the story in the Gospels, why didn’t he bless it and make it fruitful? The real question for us today should be what the story means, and we ought not to make the mistake of treating it as though it were a real account of miraculous horticulture rather than a symbol. And approached... Read more
From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Read more
My students recently submitted assignments on the problem of evil. The reading on this topic included J. L. Mackie’s famous essay “Evil and Omnipotence” (not “Evil and Impotence,” as a student wrote in an essay for a colleague of mine). Mackie discusses the argument that good is a statement of contrast, and thus that there cannot be good without evil. Mackie is not particularly impressed with this line of argument, but students often disagree with Mackie about this. An interesting... Read more
This icon came to my attention via Unvirtuous Abbey on Facebook. Star Wars episodes I-VI are profoundly about redemption, about a man who turns to evil in order to try to hold on to someone he loves, ends up harming that person in the process, and eventually is helped to find his way back from the darkness by his son. And so a depiction of St. Vader – or should it be St. Skywalker? – seems highly appropriate.   Read more
Tom Verenna shared a really interesting assignment from a class about the historical Jesus that he is taking. It asked students to write an obituary for Jesus. He did something even more interesting with it, creating an epitaph on the model of ancient funerary inscriptions, rather than a modern-day type of obituary. I won’t summarize it here, since I think it would be interesting for people to try to come up with their own before doing so. But after you... Read more
As we reached the end of Hebrews in my Sunday school class last week, I was struck once again by how there are texts which are so clearly at odds with mythicism, and yet which are explained away with a little hand-waving. One example is the reference to Jesus suffering “outside the gate” (Hebrews 13:12). Earl Doherty suggests that this is the gate of heaven, but that is not something that the author has thus far suggested. The author clearly... Read more
Rock and Theology linked to Commonweal Magazine which shared this rock version of the Lord’s Prayer, which reached No.4 on Billboard’s Top 100 chart back in 1973. Sister Janet Mead is one of a very small number of nuns to have a gold record. Enjoy! Read more
The BBC announced that it would be releasing a new trailer today celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who. Well, it’s here, and it gives some clues about “The Day of the Doctor.” Enjoy! Read more
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