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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…
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SMALL KINDNESSES: AN ADVENT MEDITATION
In 1985, Robert Fulgham wrote an essay that later became the bestselling book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1990). It went viral. Fulgham’s premise was that the simple rules that children learn in kindergarten serve just as well in adult life, such things as: Share everything.Play fair.Don’t hit people.Put things…
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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…