John Barton
The Nature of Biblical Criticism, Reviewed by James D. G. Dunn
Roland Boer
Symposia: Dialogues concerning the History of Biblical Interpretation, Reviewed by Henning Graf Reventlow
Enjoy.
His trial is over and the jury has returned a guilty verdict. Which means that 12 empowered people know what the rest of us know- that Boyd had part after the fact in murdering Channon Christopher and Chris Newsom. Four trials remain for the remainder of the defendants. Or, as one of the victim’s dad’s put it- one down, four to go. Sentencing for Boyd is set for August.
Via Robert Kraft- [originally posted April 15]
It is with immense sadness, but also with immense thankfulness for a singular life wonderfully well-lived, that I write to inform you that Krister Stendahl, our beloved friend, teacher, colleague, and former Dean, died this morning. A funeral service is planned for Friday morning at University Lutheran Church, and a memorial service to be held at Harvard’s Memorial Church is being planned for sometime in May. Details on that University event and on other chances to recall, celebrate, and honor Krister will be communicated as soon as we know them, by email as well as on the HDS website. Please keep all of the Stendahl family in your thoughts and prayers.
Sincerely,
William A. Graham,
Dean
May he rest in peace.
UPDATE: Niels Peter Lemche writes-
According to Swedish news, Krister Stendahl died Tuesday in his home in Boston. He was professor in NT at Harvard until 1984 when he became bishop of Stockholm. He was 86.
UPDATE II: The New York Times has an obituary.
UPDATE III: Harvard’s obituary of the good Doctor is here.
You would be ashamed to know as little about internal combustion as you know about Christian beliefs. I admit, you can practise Christianity without knowing much theology, just as you can drive a car without knowing much about internal combustion. But when something breaks down in the car, you go humbly to the man who understands the works; whereas if something goes wrong with religion, you merely throw the works away and tell the theologian he is a liar. — Dorothy Sayers [via AKM Adam].
Truer words…
If natural selection and ’survival of the fittest’ are the core notions of evolutionary theory, why do you care what happens to the starving Africans in Darfur?
UPDATE: D.T. gives his take on the topic here.
An armed killer destroyed the lives of 33 people at Virginia Tech. Anybody remember it? Or, in our media saturated world, do we too hastily move past things that should fill us with horror and drive us to action. Yet, today, a year after (and even longer since the Amish School slayings and other equally horrific gun violence) we remain enslaved to gun lust and the NRA still controls our Congress. One has to wonder what it will take for our society to realize that what we love so much kills our children? And to beat it all, some folk will be more upset about this…
Worship, evangelism, outreach, ministry in the name of Christ, these are concepts set aside quite widely these days and replaced by environmental consciousness and ‘being green’. Ethics Daily reports that Churches are using Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth as a teaching tool. Why?
Sure, Christians should be environmentalists. And sure, they should be caretakers of God’s creation. But emphasizing such things at the expense of core subjects is becoming more and more commonplace. And I don’t like it.
Here’s what I believe: the Gospel is in and of itself sufficient to transform lives. Once transformed, those lives begin to look for ways by which to please their redeemer, their rescuer. In gratitude, they reach up to God in worship and out to their neighbors with spiritual and physical assistance.
To ‘put the cart before the horse’ and use some other message, means, or method to get folk involved in God is precisely backwards. Mind you, I’m not suggesting that’s what the Gore-ians are doing- but the story cited above reminded me of how far we Protestants have drifted (ran) from our roots.
Consequently, having abandoned the Evangelical Center (in the sense that the word was used by the Reformers), some have replaced it with planetary stewardship, seeker sensitivity, emergent skulduggery, and other methods which are not so concerned with the Gospel as they are with humanity.
The Gospel is theocentric, as it begins and ends in God. All of these other ’socializations’ of the Church are anthropocentric, having their beginning and end in ‘what’s best for man’. As such, these socializations of the Gospel are damnable heresy and their practitioners heretics (in the original sense of the word- not in the sense that they should be taken out and sunk in the Limmat with a pair of cement boots. Although….)
Here’s a plate from one of Zwingli’s booklets. The first to identify 1) the book, and 2) the persons represented by the images from the plate, will win a cool book (from a category of the winner’s choosing- i.e., Old Testament, New Testament, Theology, or Church History). Winners, I’m sad to say, must reside in the U.S. (because mailing anything out of the country costs a ton- thanks to our miserably weak economy). Leave a comment and solve the riddle.
If so this fascinating book by Luc Zaman may interest you (published by Brill- which is why you’ll need that ‘lot of money). Still, it sure looks intriguing.
