One of the foundational arguments of Christians who affirm that traditional view of homosexuality is that same-sex sex is contrary to nature. This argument rests on a couple of assumptions: 1) that the world today is a corrupted version of the world’s original condition a few thousand years ago and 2) that Genesis 1-2 gives … More Using the Bible in LGBTQIA Discourse (Part 5)
Everyone who uses the Bible does so selectively. The Bible is too big to let us to do justice to every verse, too complex to allow equal weight to every passage. Selective reading and use is unavoidable. But serious readers know that selective reading often results from the quest to find support for our views. … More Using the Bible in LGBTQIA+ Discourse (Part 3)
What do L+ discourse and the Bible have to do with an old-fashioned card catalog from a library? Actually, quite a bit. These catalogs were ways of categorizing. Information was sorted, boxed, and labeled. Close study of the Old Testament reveals a passion for categorizing and labeling things. It starts with Genesis 1 when God … More Using the Bible in LGBTQIA+ Discourse (Part 2)
Factors Behind Biblical Illiteracy A serious student of scripture at work Last week I complained about the problem of teaching the Bible in a context where, increasingly, people are ignorant of the Bible. This week I’d like to talk about a related issue. One of my goals is to get students to see each biblical … More Why Bother with the Bible? Part 2
July 22, 2016 In the great contemporary struggle to find alternatives to wooden, sclerotic literalism some Christians have landed on the view that the Bible’s authority lies in its message of salvation. The implication, sometimes expressed, is that the Bible is not an authority on other matters, especially on scientific matters. As John Wesley wrote, … More Galileo and the Bible (conclusion)
July 19, 2016 The Bible has a lot to say about the natural world, but what does it say? I’m not asking, “Which words does it use and which sentences does it contain?” but instead “When the Bible talks about the natural world, what is the nature of its discourse?” As I discussed in a … More Galileo and the Two Books: The Bible and Scientific Knowledge
July 1, 2016 In my journal entry of June 28, I discussed Galileo’s notion of the two books, viz., the Bible and the book of Nature. Galileo’s goal was to prevent theological and ecclesiastical inference in scientific research. Pictured: Scientists at work, happily free from ecclesiastical interference To achieve his goal, Galileo limited the … More Galileo: The Man Who Made the Bible Safe for Science (continued)
The Christian faith affirms the reality of progressive revelation; without it, the New Testament would be, not new, but only a different version of the Old Testament. For Christians, the New Testament bears witness to a revelation that is more complete than what we find in the Old Testament. And even in the New Testament … More Progressive Revelation
A Chart Explaining Biblical Prophecy and Its Fulfillment I have taught the same adult Sunday School class for more than ten years. From time to time we have studied the Bible’s prophetic writings. I remember distinctly when we studied the Old Testament’s minor prophets. A recurring experience of the members of the class was exasperation … More Three theses on biblical prophecy
To be human is to receive the divine command or question and to respond. … More The Unsettling Encounter with the Word of God
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