Alex Lundry, Mitt Romney’s data analyst, recently reported that over 60% of evangelical youth support the legalization of same sex marriage (SSM). This number is in stark contrast to the responses of older evangelical Christians to poll on the issue. Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen cited this statistic on NBC’s Meet the Press this past Sunday. The context was a discussion over the upcoming Supreme Court decision regarding the constitutionality of state laws banning SSM. The panel...
Here in Sydney I’m currently co-teaching a seminary class on the doctrine of the Trinity. We’ve spent the first few weeks of the course reading and discussing some sermons by Gregory of Nazianzus. The next section will focus on parts of Augustine’s De Trinitate. In the final third of the semester we’ll work through §59 of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics–“The Way of the Son of God into the Far Country”. Anyways, one of the things we’ll be...
This week Christianity Today ran a short article commemorating the 100th birthday of its deceased founder, Carl F.H. Henry. Henry is worthy of memory; aside from the aforementioned magazine, he gave us Fuller Theological Seminary and he was a key signatory on the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy. He was passionately engaged in both doctrine and Christian work. Henry is largely a microcosm of the shift from early 20th-century “fundamentalism” (a rather vague term) to where...
The Bible bursts the bonds of our hermeneutical strategies. The Scriptures as the medium of divine communication are what Karl Barth called a “free Bible”. This is good news: the canon imposes itself upon us readers, transgressing the procrustean bed we inevitably bring to the table as interpreters. For Barth this fact necessitates the development of a “free exegesis”, which means that “Bible exegesis should be left open on all sides” and that “self-defence against...
Many evangelical churches’ and colleges’ professions of faith contain a statement on the inerrancy of the Bible. The Bible, so it goes, is inspired by God and is inerrant in the original manuscripts. This belief certainly has its staunch–and I mean staunch!–proponents, but it seems to me that a great many people are, frankly, embarrassed by this doctrine. Attempting to engage with broader theological concerns myself, I am more than aware of what a theological...
“…you become better and better by looking for so great a good which is both sought in order to be found and found in order to be sought…” -St. Augustine “Ethics” means more than understanding how one should act in a certain situation in order to be free from blame. This type of ethics is sinful man at his worst, worrying only about himself. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says that this type of ethics started at the...
Yesterday, Richard Beck of Experimental Theology wrote a post on what the word “biblical” means. As will be obvious, I don’t much care for what he had to say. In fact, it made me so grumpy that I thought I’d respond. I hope he takes it as a compliment. In his piece he concludes: Biblical is a sociological stress test. When groups gather…to have a conversation about what is or is not biblical they are engaging...
Earlier this year I submitted the following entry for The Lexham Bible Dictionary. This will be the entry for “Philosophy”. It’s obviously too late to change it for the dictionary, but let me know what you think anyways! (I like it alright, but the quote from Kierkegaard and the use of Kelsey make it a bit eccentric. Not sure what I was thinking!) Philosophy (φιλοσοφία) “Philosophy” (φιλοσοφία) literally means “love of wisdom.” The term takes...
In the undergraduate class I am teaching this semester, one of the research assignments students can choose is an analysis of the Barth and Bultmann debate over the nature of Jesus’ resurrection. One student who chose this assignment later changed their mind; this person sent me an email asking if it would be possible change to another assignment because, they asked rhetorically, “Isn’t Karl Barth heretical?” In fact, this person went so far as to...
I recently had a pastor tell me that the in-depth, formal study of what is commonly called “systematic theology” would be a waste of my time and would not have a real benefit for the church. When I tried to engage yet another pastor in discussion about theology he remarked flatly, “theology is boring.” Both of these men hold advanced theological degrees. I am quite certain that these men are not isolated in their sentiments. ...
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