The Eagle & Child

Linda once again asks a question that has dogged me for some years: The crucial question is “What about making a decision?” This is the manner in which I have always heard the gospel presented. But what does it mean? That by OUR decision something is accomplished? She then refers to Ephesians 2:4-8, in which [...]

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Karl Barth, one of the 20th century’s greatest and most important theologians, said this to sum up his massive 14-volume Church Dogmatics: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” That tells you a great deal about his theology (countering my dad’s opinion of him as a “liberal” in the pejorative [...]

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Wow.  I’m not sure how this woman (Linda at Kingdom Grace) got into my head and then took what she found there and made it so beautiful and succint: This might be kind of quirky, but I really am enamored with this topic.  For over a year now,  it has been like a shiny object [...]

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In order to produce a ‘normative’ statement out of the New Testament it is practically inevitable that one will emphasize one part of the text at the expense of the rest. This functions, at both a scholarly and a popular level, by means of elevating certain parts of the theology of the New Testament…into a [...]

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Today this question came to mind: “Why do we believe in Christ?”* My childhood answer would have been, “So that I can go to heaven.”  I think that continues to be the answer of many mature Christians as well.  Maybe the answer would be more nuanced–something like, “Because he died for me/my sins.”  Or perhaps [...]

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David Bentley Hart has written a rather searingly critical essay on “The New Atheists” (e.g. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris). He laments the loss of the true skeptic of yesteryear (such as Hume, Neitzche, et al) and the shallowness of the New Atheists. It’s a very long essay.  But from what I can tell, Hart is a [...]

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I haven’t written anything about creation/evolution in a while.  I’m not really going to in this post, either. At least not in terms of theories or possibilities. However, the BioLogos Foundation has been posting a series of short video clips on YouTube, in which a variety of Biblical scholars talk about various aspects of creation/evolution, [...]

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It’s decision time again, or nearing it. One of the pleasures of school life is selecting next year’s classes and perusing their syllabi. It’s also a pain trying to make the classes I want to take work with the classes I need to take as part of the program. Decision A — Last fall I [...]

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how faint the whisper we hear of him! (Job 26:14, TNIV) * * * Here is bigger than you can imagine Now is forever (Bruce Cockburn) I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about pain and suffering and genocide and natural disasters and…God.  Without diminishing the pain and horror, and without denying the legitimacy of [...]

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I went with some friends to see Avatar on Friday.  I had been pretty annoyed that it got so many Academy Award nominations, but I had not actually seen the film, so my annoyance was based on absolutely nothing.  I no longer feel that way.  It is an absolutely stunning film, in terms of immersive [...]

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