we are the Pharisees

“The church in North America is not like the Pharisees—we are the Pharisees, and Jesus does not like Pharisees.” -Reggie McNeal
( HT: Emergent Village -> The M Blog )

Innerrancy or Truth

What provides “home run power” – is it the bat, or the batter’s swing? Both, of course.
Vanhoozer likens Scripture, the written Word of God, as the bat, and the triune God speaking through it as the batter. So the statements “Scripture is true” and “the living God speaks truly through Scripture” are not necessarily equivalent [...]

NT Wright: “there is life after life after death”

Another fantastic article, as usual, from NT Wright (or Jedi Master NT Wright, as Matt Ritchie has been known to call him).
This interview was conducted with pastors/teachers as the primary audience, but I think that there is a lot in it that is useful regardless of your vocation. Here are a few choice quotes [...]

Penal Substitutionary Atonement: Let’s flip it on it’s head

So, there’s this thing called Penal Substitutionary Atonement (I’ll call it PSA from now on)… which is just a theological/geeky way of describing how it is that Jesus accomplished the task of reconciling people back to God.
It points back to Old Testament practices of having an “Atoning Sacrifice”, which was an animal that was killed [...]

Scot McKnight: The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel

This one’s just a quick head’s up about a great article from Scot McKnight:
The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel
Our problems are not small. The most cursory glance at the newspaper will remind us of global crises like AIDS, local catastrophes of senseless violence, family failures, ecological threats, and church skirmishes. These problems resist easy [...]

How do you interpret and apply Scripture?

Take a look at Scot McKnight’s Hermeneutics Quiz and determine how you personally interpret and apply the Bible. You just have to answer a handful of questions, all multiple choice, and it returns a numerical position on a scale ranging from more conservative to more progressive treatment of the Bible.
Here are my results if [...]

Brian McLaren – God’s Righteousness = God’s Justice?

Thoughts/Comments?
(HT: Matt)

The Big Story

“Here’s an attempt to explain the Christian faith… in three minutes.”

This short video is based on some themes from a new book coming out called “True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In“. Here’s a short blurb from the book’s site:
In this engaging narrative, James Choung weaves a tale of [...]

Do you really need the numbers to know the Bible?

Luke, Matthew, Mark, John, Paul, Peter, Apollos, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin, Polycarp, Origen, a couple of Clements, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Augustine, Gregory, Jerome, Cyril, Basil, Ambrose, Anselm, Bernard, Wycliffe, Thomas a Kempis, Erasmus, Tyndale, Luther, and Calvin—just a few of the people who couldn’t study the Scriptures very well because they didn’t have the benefit of [...]

It’s about participating in something…

Imagine what it would be like in our churches, if there were no such division (between personal justification and social justice). If we were not invited to go forward as individuals to receive a packaged salvation from God that gets us off hell, but instead came forward to become part of something, what God is [...]