• Theology/Bible

    Stanley Hauerwas: Why So Asinine?

    I know Stanley Hauerwas is a provocateur who is often given to hyperbole, but I am having real trouble with something that he said at the 2003 Emergent Convention. The recording of the lecture is the latest download from the Emergent Village podast. I won’t attempt to critique the entire talk, but there was one sentence that jumped out to me: To suggest that hope in afterlife is a way to deal with death is about as stupid as suggesting we ought to have children because they’re our hope in our future (Stanley Hauerwas, 2003 Emergent Convention).

  • Theology/Bible

    Southern Baptist Mistake

    Pastor Mark Dever writes that Southern Baptists made a huge mistake at their convention in Greensboro, South Carolina when they refused to consider a resolution calling for intergrity in church membership. He writes: When a question was raised about the propriety of allowing those who are able to attend church, but who never do to remain members of our churches, the answer was given that this was in order to keep the names as “prospects”. Presumably, the intention is that our prior contact with them gives us an excuse for contacting them personally. . . For me to allow my local congregation to continue on, with people in membership regularly…

  • Culture,  Politics

    Petitioning for Life: A Story of Survival

    In today’s Wall Street Journal, Julia Gorin declares “I was not aborted.” Why is she making this proclamation? She is responding to a petition being circulated by Ms. Magazine that invites women to declare publicly “I had an abortion.” It’s hard to believe that anyone (even readers of Ms. Magazine) would relish the opportunity to announce such a thing, but Ms. Gorin thinks that the antidote to such foolishness is for nearly-aborted people to tell their own stories.Ms. Gorin does tell her story in this piece, and it is a poignant and powerful narrative of her mother’s decision to buck the Soviet norm in order to have a second child.…

  • Politics

    Hezbollah Balks: Is Anyone Surprised?

    “Hezbollah refused to disarm and withdraw its fighters from the battle-scarred hills along the border with Israel on Tuesday, threatening to delay deployment of the Lebanese army and endangering a fragile cease-fire” (Washington Post).Is anyone surprised that Hezbollah is refusing to disarm and to pull out of South Lebanon? Is anyone one surprised that Hezbollah is jeopardizing the cease-fire brokered at the U.N.? Does anyone have any more doubts about who is gunning for a prolonged fight? I hope not. Read on: “Hezbollah Balks At Withdrawal From the South” – Washington Post

  • Book Reviews,  Theology/Bible

    Review of Richard Bauckham’s The Theology of the Book of Revelation

    Rudolf Bultmann famously derided the biblical book of Revelation as “weakly Christianized Judaism” (Theology of the New Testament, 2:175). But, as Richard Bauckham points out, this phrase “betrays the influence of the tendency of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Christianity to deny its Jewish roots. It makes the extraordinary suggestion that only what is not Jewish is really Christian and that Christianity somehow came into being by negating Judaism. We should now be able to recognize . . . the unconscious tendency to anti-Semitism in this approach” (pp. 147-48). The anti-Semitic approach is not the one that Bauckham himself follows in his helpful little book The Theology of the Book of…

  • Theology/Bible

    Who Needs Apologetics When You Have Chick Tracts?

    Who needs apologetics when you have Jack Chick’s Tracts at your disposal?Perhaps you have never heard of these little publications, but they are fascinating little pieces of literature. Chick Tracts are miniature “gospel” comic books. I first came across these tracts when I was in high school, and they immediately piqued my interest because they had a knack for the sensational–even depicting people burning in hell who had rejected Christ. I have since come to the conclusion that the best use of these little booklets is to set them forth as illustrations of how not to share the gospel. For this reason, I still use one of Chick’s tracts every…

  • Theology/Bible

    Why Are Emergent Pastors Reading N. T. Wright?

    For those of you who think I’m too critical of N. T. Wright (see previous post), I direct you to Jim Hamilton’s recent evaluation of Wright’s theology. Jim and I have discussed this many times, and we are on the same page when it comes to Wright. There is much good, but there are also some things to be concerned about.Go check out Jim’s post: Why Are Emergent Pastors Reading N. T. Wright?.

  • Theology/Bible

    John Piper Is Back (with Guns Blazing)

    Maybe you don’t like the war-metaphor “with Guns Blazing,” but it is a biblical one (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). John Piper is back in the pulpit after a five month sabbatical, and in his first sermon he goes to war with the New Perspective on Paul and its denial of the imputed righteousness of Christ.In particular, Piper confronts the imputation-denying theology of N. T. Wright.

  • Politics

    Ned Lamont: Karl Rove’s Dream Come True

    In today’s Wall Street Journal, Martin Peretz boils down what’s at stake in the much ballyhooed senatorial contest in Conneticut between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont. The contest in Connecticut tomorrow is about two views of the world. Mr. Lamont’s view is that there are very few antagonists whom we cannot mollify or conciliate. Let’s call this process by its correct name: appeasement. The Greenwich entrepreneur might call it “incentivization.” Mr. Lieberman’s view is that there are actually enemies who, intoxicated by millennial delusions, are not open to rational and reciprocal arbitration. Why should they be? After all, they inhabit a universe of inevitability, rather like Nazis and communists, but…

  • Politics

    Too Wimpy To Win the War?

    John Podhoretz of the New York Post poses a set of questions that we would all do well to ponder: WHAT if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests? . . . Could World War II have been won by Britain and the United States if the two countries did not have it in them to firebomb Dresden and nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Didn’t the willingness of their leaders to inflict mass casualties on civilians indicate a cold-eyed singleness…