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SPEAKING TO THE PRESENT AGE: TIM KELLER AND MARILYNNE ROBINSON
I’ve been writing about Calvin and Calvinism lately, and I mean to write more. I have lately been spending time reading and rereading Calvin’s chapters on divine providence with which he concludes the first book of the Institutes of the Christian Religion. I’ll get back to that and to Calvin’s approach to scripture in subsequent posts, but…
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THE GOD WHO PUSHES AND THE GOD WHO PULLS: What the Bible Says about Saving the Human Race, Part 1
THE HUMAN PLIGHT Before one can be clear about a solution, one must be clear about the problem. Or, to put this in theological terms, one’s view of salvation must be closely tied to one’s view of what’s gone wrong. For the past few posts, I’ve been looking at what the Bible has to say about…
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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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WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER: GENESIS 9 AND THE IDEA OF TOTAL DEPRAVITY
Often when truths, even great truths, biblical truths, are formulated into doctrine they lose their connection to life. They become mere beliefs—statements to which believers profess adherence but which no longer motivate their daily life and decision making. These doctrinal beliefs may come to parody the truth they were meant to embody. Total depravity is…
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The Human Peril: A Reading of the Story of the Fall
Some weeks back, the award-winning Tucson choral group, True Concord, presented the premier of a stunning new work for choir and orchestra: Earth Symphony (“Choral”), music by Jake Runestad and libretto by Todd Boss. The work tells a story with biblical themes, creation, fall, and restoration, but the story is both different from the biblical story and…
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THE TOWER OF BABEL: THE DIVINE PREFERENCE FOR DIVERSITY
The intriguing, funny, and cutting story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) is the last in the collection of stories that makes up the preface to the book of Genesis and, therefore, to the Bible itself. We do well to attend to these stories, not as histories, which is to distort them and lose…
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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…
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WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER FALL STORY IN GENESIS?
Fall stories are important (fall stories of the theological sort; not stories about the season). They account for what has gone wrong in our world. Perhaps, that’s not quite the right way to put it. “Gone wrong” implies that there was an earlier time when things had not gone wrong. But not all stories accounting…
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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…