Peripatetic Pastor

Category: Biblical Reflections

  • TEXT AND TRAJECTORY: PART ONE OR HOW THE LITTLE PRINCE CLUES US TO READING THE BIBLE

    I began this post with the intention of writing about text and trajectory on the basis of John 14. I’ll do so in the next post in this series. But as I got into it, I realized I need to clear some ground. Along the way I wrote and discarded material on the history of…

  • DOES THE BIBLE HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR?

    Is the Bible ever funny? The question was put to me by an older friend. This friend had two worries about the Christian faith. One was that he would get to heaven and discover that there was no sporting competition there. He lived for his games and his teams. The second was that in heaven…

  • RETRIEVING THE BIBLE

    THE PROJECT: I began writing these blog posts (after a long hiatus) as a critique of a certain way of reading of the Bible, a way of reading that seemed to me to bind rather than to free, that has often been used against people rather than for them, a reading represented recently by the…

  • RETRIEVING THE WORDS OF FAITH 2: HOLINESS ONE MORE TIME

    Introduction to the Series: Over time through overuse and bad theology words of faith come to lose their meaning or to mean something they did not originally mean. Take “faith.” We often use “faith” to refer to belief. Faith, we suppose, is what we do with our heads. But belief is seldom what the Bible means…

  • RETRIEVING THE WORDS OF FAITH

    Introduction to the Series: Over time, through overuse and bad theology, words of faith tend lose their meaning or come to mean something which they did not originally mean. An example would be the word “faith” itself. “Faith” has come to mean mostly belief, as if faith is what we do with our heads. As a…

  • The Bible and Critical Race Theory

    We need historians. Especially now. Especially in traditional liberal arts colleges. Especially in Christianliberal arts colleges. We need historians because History—how to write it, teach it, and think it—is at the center of a current culture war. Often thought to be the dustiest of all academic subjects, History is now determining elections, causing people to behave…

  • 1 Timothy 2 and Women in Leadership: a Reading of the Text

    Those who oppose the recognition of women as pastors and elders in the church often suppose that they have the biblical high ground. They accuse those who welcome women into church leadership of denying the literal meaning of the texts, playing fast and loose with scripture. To open church office to women, they argue, undermines…

  • WHAT ABOUT PAUL?

    I began this series of posts with the question, “Is Genesis 3 a fall story?” The question can be answered in two ways. The first would be to say, yes, it is a fall story, but not in the usual sense. Better, and what I suggested in the previous post (“Is Genesis 3 a Fall…

  • THE BIBLE AND SEX

    I’ll call this post, “The Bible and Sex.” As you already know, it’s not everything the Bible has to say about sex, even though the Bible has less to say about sex than many people think.  Truth be told, this too long post is not even a good start on the Bible and sex. But…

  • THE CONVERSATION II

    This is the third in a series of posts responding to questions put to me by readers of my earlier series of posts I grouped together under the general title, “The Quest for “A Foundation-Laying Biblical Theology of Human Sexuality.” All are available on the website. The questions were broadly about two claims I made…