Kierkegaard on Christian Scholarship
I found this marvellous quote from Kierkegaard in Richard Bauckham’s monograph on James: Christian scholarship is the human race’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the New Testament, to ensure that one can continue to be a Christian without letting the …
New Book by Carolyn Tan
Congratulations to Carolyn Tan on the publication of her book, The Spirit at the Cross. What was the Holy Spirit doing at the cross of Jesus Christ? Jesus’ death and resurrection are central to God’s reconciliation with humanity. Does the Holy …
Scripture on Sunday – 2 Corinthians 5:14
In the opening chapters of 2 Corinthians Paul is defending himself against some at Corinth who are questioning his motives and ministry, and perhaps accusing him to others in the church, evidently seeking to ingratiate themselves to the Corinthians in Paul’s place. …
The Christian’s Political Duty (10 Theses)
Last week I posted on Barth’s “conversation” at the Zofingia Student Association meeting on June 3, 1959. At this meeting Barth addressed the questions put to him, What are the role and duties of the Christian as a political citizen? Does Christianity …
The 2019 Annual Vose Lecture
On August 2, 2019 Ben Witherington III delivered the Annual Vose Lecture on the theme, “A Singular Jesus in a Pluralistic Culture.” In essence, the lecture was an applied New Testament apologetics within a Wesleyan Evangelical framework of thought. Witherington explored Jesus’ …
Scripture on Sunday – Of Hairdos and Hierarchies (1 Corinthians 11:2-16)
Read 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 One of the more difficult and obscure passages in the New Testament is 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, which seems so distant from the modern world in setting and argument. I read this passage during the week, and flummoxed (again!), …
A Christianity that “Deserves to Perish”
On June 3, 1959 Karl Barth was a guest at the Basel chapter of the Swiss Student Association Zofingia, a fraternity established 200 years ago in 1819, and of which Barth himself had been a member in his student days. The photo …
“Slow Conversion”
The Western Australian Churches of Christ journal On Mission Journal has published a brief article I wrote. My article is on the idea of Slow Conversion, based on the Patristic practice of the catechumenate. It is a ‘practical’ adaption of my longer recent …
An Ethos of Pastoral Care – Gerard Manley Hopkins
In a class on pastoral care yesterday, we read and discussed Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “In the Valley of the Elwy.” Hopkins was a Jesuit priest in nineteenth-century England seized with a deep sense of missionary vocation. After his early death, he …
Academic Argument
Brian Smith for The Chronicle Review I was interested to read the chapter on academic argument in Winning Arguments by Stanley Fish. That is what you have to do to earn your bona fides as an academic: enter an ongoing conversation about …