Some years ago I was sitting in the office of my spiritual director and was riveted by a large poster on the wall with this image. The picture is from a stained glass entitled “Isaac” located at Eglise de la Réconciliation in Taizé, France. What stands out to me is how innocent and completely subject …
“Take Your Only Son Isaac, Whom You Love . . . “ Read More »
The problem of violence in the Old Testament is something the Church has wrestled with for hundreds of years. Most people intuit that such violence—especially against children—is wrong. Various solutions have been proposed, including allegorical interpretation. The popular medieval study Bible, Glossa ordinaria, insisted that the laudation of dashing infants’ heads against a rock in …
Re-Thinking Old Testament Violence: Abraham’s Example Read More »
Welcome to the 149th Biblical Studies Carnival covering the month of July 2018! I am glad you stopped by. If you’ve never been to the Carnival before, here is the scoop: there are a lot of scholars out there on the internet writing insightful things (or making an attempt anyway), so each month we have …
Is there an “original” Bible? Can we sort through copies of biblical manuscripts to reconstruct the first autographs penned by individual authors? Often Christians believe it’s essential to find the single, original meaning of the Bible, usually through a branch of biblical studies called textual criticism. Textual criticism is a form of scholarship that compares …
As I discussed in my post “Religious Trauma and the Rainbow Flag,” many conservative Christians have an adverse response to common LGBT symbols such as the rainbow flag or pink triangle. This reaction often stems from repeated exposure to distorted media caricatures. In this post, I want to provide a helpful introduction to these symbols …
What Does the Rainbow Flag Mean? A Guide for the Perplexed Read More »
When I see the rainbow flag, a flood of toxic adjectives come with it. The conservative newsletters that came to our family mailbox juxtaposed LGBT symbols, including the flag, with phrases like “cult-like mentality,” “militant,” “lack of maturity,” “stark, scary,” “lack of authenticity,” and “sneaky” (from an actual pamphlet). And these phrases are tame compared …
For convenient access, I have collected the five blog posts on inerrancy here: Part I: What Is Biblical Inerrancy? Part II: Biblical Inerrancy Debate: Al Mohler and Peter Enns Part III: Biblical Inerrancy Debate: Michael Bird, Kevin Vanhoozer, and John Franke Part IV: Does the Bible Have Errors? Part V: Would You Sign the Chicago …
This is the fifth and final post in a series on inerrancy. Would you sign the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy? Why or Why not? Should the statement be discarded? Revised? Affirmed? CSBI has 19 articles. The preface to CSBI states, “We invite response to this statement from any who see reason to amend its …
Would You Sign the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy? Read More »