Response to Postmodern Biblical Authority

Kurt Willems wrote an arti­cle on theooze.com regard­ing post­mod­ern bib­li­cal author­ity, this is some­thing of a response. In his arti­cle, Willems exam­ines the decon­struc­tion­ist philoso­phies of Jacques Der­rida and Jean-Francois Lyotard and from this, attempts to show that within a post­mod­ern frame­work, the Bible can be viewed as author­i­ta­tive. Willems sug­gests we can claim an author­i­ta­tive view of the Bible as the Bible is not a meta-narrative in the mod­ern sense, but a col­lec­tion of smaller sto­ries.1 “Post­mod­ernists are sus­pi­cious of meta-narratives, but highly value the ‘small sto­ries.’ Your story mat­ters; my story mat­ters. The mod­ern meta-narrative of progress has turned out to be a lie, but the ‘small sto­ries’ are what is real in…

Gospel of Thomas

Some­thing before my next post on post­mod­ernism… You can read the Gospel of Thomas here. The (infant) Gospel of Thomas has been the cen­ter of atten­tion in a few cir­cles (think Dan Brown groupies) and has, for some, become some­thing of an obsta­cle. I don’t believe there is any rea­son for accept­ing the Gospel of Thomas nor any­thing con­tained therein. Four rea­sons why I believe this, the third being most impor­tant: 1. Is what’s known as a psue­dopi­graph­i­cal work, a work his claims to author­ship (in this case the Apos­tle Thomas) is false and unfounded. 2. Writ­ten between 200 and 250 CE (3^rd cen­tury work). The last canon­i­cal Gospel is believed to have been written…

Book Review: The Shack

Pub­lished in 2007 The Shack con­tin­ues to be a highly rec­om­mended book, despite the (some­times intense) con­tro­versy that sur­rounds it. The ben­e­fit of writ­ing a review of The Shack almost two years after its ini­tial pub­lish­ing is that I’m able to draw upon a very large knowl­edge base when address­ing some of the con­cerns sur­round­ing this book. If you haven’t read the book what fol­lows would be con­sid­ered spoiler mate­r­ial. Also impor­tant to keep in mind, after read­ing the book I’ve come away from it with strong reser­va­tions. The review that fol­lows will be fair and bal­anced, how­ever, it will address the plethora of the­o­log­i­cal mis­steps in par­tic­u­lar. No one needs to be told that…

Truth and unbelief

John 8:45 But because I say the truth, ye believe me not. I fig­ure more could be said about the verse above (the words of Jesus). Jesus isn’t speak­ing these words with­out author­ity (although I say the truth, ye believe me not), as if to say them with a hint of res­ig­na­tion (I’m assert­ing one truth of many pro­posed truths, none any bet­ter than the other that we could know). Jesus is speak­ing strongly, but because I say the truth, regard­less and in the face of his oppo­si­tion. If there are those who will not hear the truth after hear­ing it plainly, how much more for those who aren’t given the truth? It is a dangerous…

Jesus, the path to right living?

“‘Who said any­thing about being a Chris­t­ian? I’m not a Chris­t­ian’. The idea Struck Mack as odd and unex­pected and he couldn’t keep him­self from grin­ning. ‘No, I sup­pose you aren’t’. They arrived at the door of the work­shop. Again Jesus stopped. ‘Those who love me come from every sys­tem that exists. They were Bud­dhists or Mor­mons, Bap­tists or Mus­lims, Democ­rats, Repub­li­cans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sun­day morn­ing or reli­gious insti­tu­tions. I have fol­low­ers who were mur­der­ers and many who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and book­ies, Amer­i­cans and Iraqis, Jews and Pales­tini­ans. I have no desire to make them Chris­t­ian, but I do want to join them…

Hell: Why don’t Christians do more?

If those who reject Jesus Christ as Lord and Sav­ior are going to Hell, why don’t Chris­tians do more? Hell is not sim­ply the nat­ural con­se­quences of reject­ing God. Some peo­ple say this in order to reject the thought that God sends peo­ple there. They say that peo­ple send them­selves there. That is true. Peo­ple make choices that lead to hell. But it is not the whole truth. Jesus says these choices are really deserv­ing of hell. “Who­ever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to [that is, guilty of, or deserv­ing of] the hell of fire” (Matt 5:22). That is why he calls hell “pun­ish­ment” (Matt. 25:45). It is not a mere self-imposed nat­ural consequence…

What is Hell?

Video from:  http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/resources/video/What-is-Hell Video From: http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/resources/video/What-is-Hell1 Fig­ured I needed some­thing of a foun­da­tion for when I write about Hell — Enjoy!

Aristotle on tolerance and apathy

Back in May Mykel Pick­ens wrote an arti­cle on theooze.com on tol­er­ance and what exactly tol­er­ance means: I’ve been think­ing a lot about tol­er­ance these days. What is tol­er­ance? Who is to be tol­er­ated? Is tol­er­ance needed in today’s soci­ety? Should we, as Chris­tians, be tol­er­ant? Aris­to­tle said that tol­er­ance is the last virtue of a dying soci­ety. When I first heard this quote, I thought he was argu­ing for tol­er­ance, but in fact he is say­ing that when our last virtue is tol­er­ance, then we have no virtues. I believe we need to value each other, not just sim­ply tol­er­ate each other. I agree with Aristotle’s state­ment, that when tol­er­ance is the last virtue in…

Cultural Theology

In fight­ing fire with fire there comes a dan­ger in reinter­pret­ing the truth of Scrip­ture in view of soci­ety, rather than pre­sent­ing the truth of Scrip­ture in a way rel­e­vant to one’s soci­etal con­text. The dan­ger of the for­mer is that as soci­ety changes, so too does the ‘truth’ of Scrip­ture change. A sys­tem which needs con­stant rede­f­i­n­i­tion is nei­ther author­i­ta­tive nor deserv­ing of speak­ing into people’s lives. We see in this a diminu­tion of doc­trine and the­ol­ogy in favor of an ‘all we need is Jesus’ reli­gion. This is a reli­gion which many believe can be prop­a­gated with­out defense, claim­ing it’s expe­ri­en­tial! The real­ity is that it does not require a defense because of…

Fetus: human being, if not, what?

We’ve all heard it said before: I don’t feel that a fetus is alive until it can sur­vive out­side of the mother. I’m not going to change my mind about that… I find this an unten­able posi­tion, though at least he used the word fetus rather than baby, excus­ing the emo­tional lan­guage, more on this in just a lit­tle bit. This entry isn’t intended as any sort of exhaus­tive dis­cus­sion of abor­tion, it isn’t even nec­es­sar­ily intended as a reli­gious exam­i­na­tion of abor­tion, though keep­ing in mind a Chris­t­ian world view would be of great ben­e­fit (as that is where I am ‘com­ing’ from, even if I try to remove as many of my pre­sup­po­si­tions as possible).…