It has been a great blessing to teach through 1 Corinthians this year in Sunday morning Bible Study at my church in Dallas, TX. This past Sunday I taught on chapter 11:2-16, the passage on “headship” and “head coverings” in the church. In my preparation for teaching, it became abundantly clear that the interpretation of this passage has cause no little controversy among commentators—most of them struggling to reconcile Paul’s apparent patriarchal language with a gospel that they think affirms the current culture’s flattening out of gender distinctions (cf. Galatians 3:28). In order to resolve this tension, commentators tend to interpret Paul’s language non-patriarchally (i.e. head in v. 3 means…
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Russell Moore’s ETS Paper: The Best Yet
The week before Thanksgiving, I attended the 57th Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. Evangelical scholars gather annually at this meeting to present scholarly papers on sundry biblical and theological issues. Out of all the papers and addresses that I have heard over the years, only a very few have stood out to me as particularly good. I have to say that the best paper presentation that I have ever heard at ETS was given at this latest meeting by Russell Moore of Southern Seminary. The paper was titled “After Patriarchy, What? Why Egalitarians Are Winning the Evangelical Gender Debate” and can be accessed here. Not only was Dr.…
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Bush Knew That There Was No Connection between Iraq and 9-11
A story in the National Journal claims that President Bush knew ten days after 9-11 that there was no connection between Iraq and the attacks of 9-11. My response: big fat hairy deal! This little tidbit of information would be important if the administration had ever claimed that Iraq was somehow directly involved in the 9-11 attacks, but neither the President nor the Vice-President ever said any such thing. Anyone who claims that the administration did make such a claim participates in cynical historical revisionism. I wrote pretty extensively on this subject before the presidential election of 2004 (click here to read “Making a Staw-man out of the President’s Iraq…
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Questions about the Safety of the Abortion Pill
In today’s New York Times: Federal drug regulators have discovered that all four women in this country who died after taking an abortion pill [RU-486] suffered from a rare and highly lethal bacterial infection, a finding that is leading to new scrutiny of the drug’s safety. . . Ms. Patterson died seven days after taking Mifeprex. She lived in Livermore, Calif. On Dec. 29, 2003, Vivian Tran, 22, of Costa Mesa, Calif., died six days after taking Mifeprex.On Jan. 14, 2004, Chanelle Bryant, 22, of Pasadena, Calif., died six days after taking Mifeprex. And on May 24, 2005, Oriane Shevin, 34, of Los Angeles died five days after taking Mifeprex.…
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Vice-President Cheney Makes the Case
In a speech yesterday, Vice-President Dick Cheney made the “two plank†WMD argument that I talked about in a previous post. Here is the relevant excerpt from the Vice-President’s speech (the parts in brackets are mine): [1st Plank] Although our coalition has not found WMD stockpiles in Iraq, I repeat that we never had the burden of proof; Saddam Hussein did. [2nd Plank] We operated on the best available intelligence gathered over a period of years and within a totalitarian society ruled by fear and secret police. What this part of Cheny’s speech illustrates is that the Bush Administration’s WMD argument for the war had two planks. First, the administration…
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My ETS Paper
For those who read my blog, you may think that my only interest is politics. The truth is that following politics is more like a hobby. The thing that I am most serious about is the Bible. Yet most of what I write on biblical studies does not make it to this blog. That’s I why I am happy to share a paper that I presented on Thursday at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. Here’s the link: “N T Wright, Corinthian Sloganeering, and Paul’s Doctrine of the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 6,12-20†This paper is a work in progress. However, I received some good feedback at…
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Russell Moore’s Review of New Johnny Cash Movie
One of the things that I love most about Russell Moore is his taste in country music. He is not nearly as much a Dixie-Chick-Keith-Urban country music fan as he is a George-Jones-Loretta-Lynn kind of a fan. He likes the old timey stuff. That’s why I enjoyed reading his review of the new movie about Johnny Cash. Moore discusses the movie Walk the Line and generally gives it a good review. He also talks about Cash’s conversion which is not featured explicitly in the movie. The last paragraph of the review sums up Moore’s admiration for the late Johnny Cash. My sons know Johnny Cash quite well because they hear…
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Tom Schreiner’s New Page
Dr. Schreiner and I on my graduation day (December 12, 2004) I am so thankful to have had Dr. Tom Schreiner supervising me in my doctoral work. Throughout my time as his student he pushed me to be an exegete first and to let the scriptures alone have their say. He is an expert in his field, a godly man, and a great pastor to his flock. That is why I am happy to direct you to his faculty page on Southern Seminary’s website which lists books, articles, book reviews, and editorials that he has written. Go check out his page, and take advantage of the many contributions this great…
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Who Is Lying About Iraq?
I cannot recommend highly enough Norman Podhoretz’s recent essay “Who Is Lying About Iraq?†(available in html and pdf). It is a singular word of sane analysis among a din of media reporting that merely parrots anti-war talking points. I have been writing about this topic a great deal lately because opponents of the Iraq War have been making hay out of Scooter Libby’s indictment (read here, here, here, and here). They have used the indictment to slander President Bush by claiming he lied in order to dupe the nation into going to war.
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The New York Times Misses the Point Again (probably deliberately)
I am not surprised at the superficiality of an editorial in today’s New York Times. The editors at the Times are notoriously predictable in their knee-jerk defense of secularist liberal values. Unfortunately, this fact often means that they do not engage the real issues that are at stake in a given debate. In the editorial “The Democrats and Judge Alito,†the Times once again shows its penchant for missing the point. The gist of the piece argues that “there is reason to believe that Judge Alito could do significant damage to values Democrats have long stood for.†It goes on to complain that “Alito showed as a federal appeals court…