Archive for September, 2008
An Evil, Bipolar God
Keith Ward, in chapter 6 of Is Religion Dangerous, deals with the issue of morality and the Bible. He addresses the charge that religious morality is based on an unthinking acceptance of old religious laws. As his example, he brings up one of the most notorious of religious injunctions – Deuteronomy 20:15-18.
“But these instructions [...]
A Pneumatology of the Mundane
Is Sunday more holy than Thursday? Are the Eucharistic elements more sanctified than my Wonder bread and Welch’s grape juice? Is a church sanctuary more holy than the public park?
For modern Christians the answers are generally, Yes, each of the former is more holy or sanctified than the latter.
But I want to argue [...]
The Christian Other
I’m a member of a local community of Christians who reject eschatologies that posit a rapture, an antichrist, all that jazz. We read the Apocalypse of John along with other ancient Christian, Jewish, and Roman apocalypses and find that it points to a veiled (read: symbolic) critique of the Roman empire and about the [...]
Biblical Economic Principles (and Quranic ones as well)
But the basic religious economic premise was not just about being nice to poor folks. It was about the flow of God’s abundance that must move through the whole society, not get stuck in the pockets of the rich.
Read the rest: Let’s Try Biblical Economics from On Faith by Arthur Waskow
The OT in the NT Quiz
Here is a quiz by Zondervan to see how you understand the NT authors’ use of the OT texts. This is to help promote their new book that highlights three differing views. I fell in line with Darrell Bock’s view, “Single Meaning, Multiple Referents and Contexts.” Take the quiz and see how you fair.
Koinonia: Test [...]
Problems in Theology
I have a question to ask you folks:
What is the largest stumbling block in your theology?
Me? Its gotta be the violence of God in the Old Testament. I can handle textual composition problems. I can handle problems of causality and God’s power, and I can deal with contradictions between the narrative [...]
The Spirit is Not the Marlboro Man
The enlightened, autonomous individual - that rugged, Marlboro man who needs nothing but his own cigarettes and skepticism, has fallen on tough times. To some extent Postmodernity is the driving force of decay, falsifying individualism and reviving the idea that humans realize their fundamental identity within community. I’m skeptical of the kind of community ultimately [...]
The Holy Spirit in the Old Covenant
Here is an interesting post at the Biblical Theology blog on the Holy Spirit’s activity in the Old Covenant. I thought that in light of Tom’s recent posting that this would provide some food for thought until the next post in Tom’s series of posts. Here is the article.
God with Men in the Torah by [...]
Tom in the Box News
I came across a wonderful Christian satire site, Tom in the Box News, today. The Better Bible’s Blog turned me on to it today, aleting me to the plight of some poor missionaries who are having a hard time translating “thees” and “thous”. Here is a sample of their wonderfulness.
Dr. Simmons lamented along a similar [...]
A couple of New Features
I changed the site’s skin the other day. I was just sick of the dark screen and was yearning for something that looked bright, clean, and readable. In addition to this, I added a couple of features recently that I want to alert the readership to. Firstly, when you are viewing an individual post, you [...]
The Person of the Spirit: Emotion
Persons have emotions. Even unborn babies respond emotionally to certain stimuli. But when we think of the Holy Spirit we don’t think of a person, we think of a force or energy. This is largely because, in our minds, the Spirit does not have emotion.
We don’t think the Spirit has emotions for two reasons. First, [...]
God acting in the Old Testament
As I was preparing for something this afternoon, I came across this passage in Inspiration and Incarnation.
“[F]rom one perspective, the entire narrative structure of the Old Testament is fueled by the back and forth, give and take between God and Israel. The Old Testament portrays God as a being who can be acted upon, a [...]
Linkables
Should you translate ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ as “the kingdom of God” or “the rule of God?” I favor rendering it as “the kingdom of God,” but technically, I think you can do it either way. If you have an interest in this topic, or know Greek, I encourage you to read what Hank has [...]
The Person of the Spirit: Divine Feminine?
Another reason Western Christians often have difficulty thinking of the Spirit as a person is because persons have gender.[1] Gender tells a lot about a person: their history, roles, stereotypes, privileges, function in society, experiences, etc. Without knowing the Spirit’s gender, we have difficulty discerning some of these core identity markers.
Strictly speaking, the entire Trinity [...]