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.
Long before European invaders and settlers arrived in Australia in 1788, the aboriginal people had occupied this continent and developed a culture and lifestyle that could sustain them in some harsh environments. A fascinating recent ABC documentary, First Footprints, gave a deeper insight into the lives of these pioneers.
Recently I posted on Rob Bell and some of the ways he gets up the noses of many conventional christians. One of the biggest furores was caused by his book, Love Wins, which hinted at universalism – that everyone, regardless of belief now, would turn to God in the next life. Has universalism got a […]
I have blogged about Rob Bell before (Hell and Rob Bell), but he hardly needs any introduction. After the President, he may be the person many conservative christians in the US most “love to hate”. I have been checking out a few of his videos lately …..
We all know what the gospel is, don’t we, even though we might express it slightly differently? You’re a sinner (so am I), Jesus died to save you from your sins, now you can go to heaven instead of hell. That’s good news, and that’s what “gospel” means. Trouble is, that’s not exactly what the […]