There was a preacher on campus one day when I was passing through the quad, and from what he was preaching I felt compelled to stop and cut in when he stopped for breath. This was one of the verses I read out very loudly so his whole audience could hear.
I don’t understand why some people think that anyone being damned is somehow a wonderful thing. I used to suspect they must be Calvinists due to his double predestination nonsense, but over time it became evident that they were mostly just spiteful people who thought that victory required having someone they could look down on and gloat over being better than those.
I’m not familiar with Enns, but from the comments here I have some hope that maybe he weights in on the other side and perhaps provides a little light to steer people away from such foolishness.
Just 19 years ago about 250,000 people were killed in the Indonesia area in the Tsunami . If that had happened in ancients days no doubt a god or gods would have been blamed. We even still do that today to some extent.
Way earlier than that…about 100 years after it was written Origen’s commentary already says as much with his famous line about spiritual truth in material falsehood…
Yop. It would have been seen as an act of the gods. I don’t find it difficult deal with creation and the flood as non-literal as they are written based on evaluating those stories. The better conservative argument for them happening as such, however, is an appeal to the red letters in the NT and genealogy of Luke which seem to assume they were historical. That requires more careful thought and a measured response.
This used to bother me. However after listening to Pete Enns I accept that the NT writers were just making arguments based on what they knew or thought they knew at that time.
Which I agree with but Jesus and an NT writer is not the same in my eyes. Paul knew enough to carefully distinguish his commands from the Lord’s in Corinthians 7. We should all also know to do the same. I put my thoughts on it together here.
The human Jesus who was not omniscient may have accepted the account was historical ,or Jesus may have simply adopted the convention of the time….
Disagreeing with Jesus is not something those of us who call Him Lord and Savior should probably
ever do lightly….
Well, thanks for nothing. That rang a bell and sent me down a long rabbit hole. It was fascinating, tho. Long story short, it’s a 2 cm folded lead tablet found by an “archaeologist” from Katy, Texas, who works for Associates for Biblical Research, a fundamentalist Christian apologetics ministry that believes in YEC and the literal history of the OT. Scott Stripling didn’t excavate it. No, he found it sifting through the discarded leftovers of an illegal 1980s excavation at Mt. Ebal, which claimed it to be the site of Joshua’s altar. Thus, the connection to Joshua and the Exodus.
If anyone else cares to follow my breadcrumbs down that rabbit hole, here ya go:
This reminds me so much of the strictures put on students at a certain seminary that was in the same city as a Roman Catholic university, a private university, and a public university. Even though there were a number of excellent courses relevant to Old Testament and New Testament studies that students could have gotten credit for, they were discouraged from doing so and those who did tended to be regarded with suspicion.
And yet for those students brave enough to defy the preferences much of the Old Testament came alive in ways that just didn’t happen at the seminary.
John has history in it for sure but it’s not history. It’s a mix of things. You are also are assuming both John and Mark are historical here. John places the temple cleansing at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. Why couldn’t he move that saying around as well? I am not saying he did but Gospel authors felt free to rearrange material in their sources.
Not sure why you’re asking me. I have no actual opinion on the matter. My only “un-orthodox” view of John is that it wasn’t written by the Apostle but by a very young man with the same name who lived in Jerusalem.
Well I guess all I can say is that I don’t have time to respond because I’m going to my dead grandfather’s birthday today. He’s turning 112 and that’s the longest anyone in my family has lived. Plus i want to meet my uncle who’s the 8th out of 7 kids and he’s turning 113 today.
Darrell, when I first started a more intentional examination of my faith, apologetics seemed easily accessible and almost universal, probably because I began from a “proof text” perspective. “Is God real? Can the Bible be believed?” Over time, nothing seemed resolved. E.g., God either created the earth in 6 24 hour days or he didn’t. God either started, and occasionally adjusted the evolutionary process or he didn’t.
My efforts produced more fruit when I left apologetics and proof text reading behind, not because anyone was being less than truthful, but because the end of an apologetics/proof text journey is…the end. Our faith journeys don’t end and we can’t see clearly enough in this physical life to be certain of anything.
My journey changed as chronic, catastrophic medical conditions forced me into the “Why” questions. Apologetics are not designed to address that. The first book that grabbed my attention was “Simply Jesus” by N.T. Wright. Since then, I’ve read his four major academic works and many of his general audience books. I’ve also ventured into other authors with academic credentials who write for general audiences. Currently, I’m reading John Walton’s work “Wisdom for Faithful Reading.” John is a professor emeritus of Old Testament from Wheaton College. An example of his approach is the creation story in Genesis. He urges us to not put our own, or current societal take on it, but try to understand, if possible, the intent the author’s spirit led writing for that group of people in that time in that geographic context. Apologists from the fundamentalist or evolutionary camps are concerned with the mechanics, the how of the creation story. The original author, whoever he is, and after however many generations of oral history were transferred to successive generations, is concerned with God’s plans and purposes in Genesis and, for that matter, in all the books of the Old Testament. On Day 1, God is ordering - creating order - to the cycle of time: daylight, darkness, daylight, darkness. Each of the six days, in pairs (1-4, 2-5, 3-6) lead to the seventh day where God “rests…” upon his throne, as easily inferred from almost every other OT passage where God rests upon his throne to rule his creation. The purpose of the creation story is to reveal to the target audience of the time God’s purposes and plans, which is the purpose of every book in the OT.
As for Pete Ends, his “God Ordained” comment strictly is tongue in cheek.
I do love Pete. I hadn’t even heard of him before I started working here, but he has great stuff. Although I just read his new book, Curveball. And while it is good content, esp for sci/faith stuff…I don’t like baseball much and the extended metaphor was…a lot for me
Only baseball game I watched this year was last night, as I had to in order to keep my man card. At least Texas still has one winning champion team. I’ll have to read Curveball.
Completely understandable. I’ve mostly sworn off watching Concussion Ball but after the local team won its first several games this year I watched a couple. I find it much more intrinsically satisfying because of all the strategy. Fortunately they went on to lose a few which restored more hours in my week. Our local basketball team is the last one I follow but even there I’m only in it for the good times. When the show loses my interest I jump right down off of that bandwagon.
I’m falling way behind then lol. I’ve not watched a single game of any sport in the last decade other than a 10 minute video of arm wrestling once. Though I do go to a handful of my nieces softball practices and games. I guess also at some point in the last year or two I watched some Asian volleyball game where my fiancées cousin was a player in it. I’ve never been into sports. Though I enjoy small 5 minute clips of boxing every now and then.
