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READING THE BIBLE . . . WRONG: BAD THEOLOGY 6
The gospel reading this past Sunday was Luke 4:14-21. In the reading, Jesus has returned home. With “the power of the Spirit” resting on him (4:14), he must have seemed different. He has already been preaching in the villages round about Galilee, but now at last he is home in Nazareth. His fame (Greek phēmē)…
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QUESTIONS AND CONVERSATION: READING THE AKEDAH
One task in literature is to formulate questions and construct counter-statements to the reigning pieties. And even when art is not oppositional, the arts gravitate toward contrariness. Literature is dialogue; responsiveness. –Susan Sontag, quoted from The Best American Essays 2023, edited and with an introduction by Vivian Gornick; Robert Atwan, series editor, p. ix. The Bible…
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WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS AND WHAT THE BIBLE DOES
Usually the question is what the Bible says. In my denomination, for example, we have carried on a long and often acrimonious debate about what the Bible says about women and a shorter but no less acrimonious debate about sexuality. The standard procedure in my denomination for these kinds of questions is to appoint a…
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THE BIBLE AND MIKE JOHNSON
Can the Bible survive its friends? That question occurred to me again after Mike Johnson of Louisiana was elevated to Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Asked about his approach to governing by Sean Hannity of Fox News, he said, “Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It’s curious, people are curious:…
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READING PAUL: THE TWO APPROACHES OF DUNN AND WRIGHT
In the past two posts, I’ve been writing mostly about the (capital P) Problem with the human race: what’s gone wrong. The Bible has much to say about that, much that is ignored in popular theology, which tends to focus on a mistaken interpretation of the Genesis 3 narrative. The biblical idea of human evil…
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THE ART OF THE STORY II: REFLECTIONS ON DANIEL 2
The Dream In the post leading up to this one (https://peripateticpastor.com/2022/03/16/the-art-of-the-story-i-reflections-on-daniel-2/), I suggested that Daniel 2—the story of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream—proposes an intriguing take on the subject of divine revelation, how God speaks. The symbol of that revelation—no, more than a symbol, the manifestation of that revelation—is the dream. The dream, as we shall see in…
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TEXT AND TRAJECTORY: DOES THE BIBLE LEAN LEFT?
Does the Bible lean left? Someone recently asked me that. Truth be told, the question was more of an accusation than a question. It was, as I recall, “Clay,do you think the Bible always leans left?” More about me than about the Bible. The question is whether I characteristically read the Bible in a way that…