These are difficult times. For many in our world, the difficulty is surviving poverty, or escaping from a murderous regime. I live in Australia. I don’t live in poverty, and while our government has some very bad features, it isn’t a direct threat to my life. For me, some of the difficult issues are ethical. […]
When I was a young christian (a few decades ago now!), evangelical churches tended to focus on evangelism, and some viewed justice and social action with suspicion. Things have changed since then, with most christians and churches supportive of social welfare and overseas aid programs. There is still a tendency to see these programs as […]
Before Christmas I reviewed Peter Enns’ book, Inspiration and Incarnation, and checked out his main ideas in a little more detail, finishing with Interpreting the Old Testament. Now to his summing up – what does all this say about the Bible and how we should read it?
Previous posts on topics related to Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation: The Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Literature and Variation in Old Testament teachings. Finally, how Jesus and the New Testament writers interpreted the Old Testament. It wasn’t the same way we do it today.
I’ve blogged about Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation, and about his first topic, The Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Literature. Now I want to look at his second topic. There are variations in teaching within the Old Testament. What do these tell us about God and his revelation to us?
Last post I reviewed Peter Enns’ “Inspiration and Incarnation“. Now I want to look at the first of three main topics in the book. How does seeing parts of the Old Testament in their ancient middle eastern context affect how we think of the Old Testament?
Understanding the Old Testament isn’t always easy. As well as Genesis-evolution, there are many apparent inconsistencies, within the Old Testament, and between the Old and New Testaments. And those who have read a little about ancient Middle East archaeology, history and literature may have noted similarities between Biblical accounts of creation, the flood and the […]
Women gained the right to vote in Australia just over a century ago, and since then, discrimination against women has been gradually removed and made illegal. Yet women still cannot be priests or preachers in many christian churches, making the church significantly our of step with our culture. And many christians are not entirely comfortable […]
Dave Tomlinson is a British christian who has always pushed the envelope: a leader in the UK house church movement in the 1980s, founder of the Holy Joes “church” in a pub and author of The Post-Evangelical in the 1990s, and now Church of England vicar at St Lukes in London and author of How […]
Last post I blogged about atheists at US universities, many of whom grew up in ‘fundamentalist’ churches. This post, we look at conservative christians who went through a period of examining their faith, but chose to continue to believe in Jesus, albeit their beliefs about God changed somewhat.