BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGISTS are about as certain as you can be about these things that the conquest of Canaan as the Bible describes did not happen: no mass invasion from the outside by an Israelite army,...
Andrew Perriman at P.OST (postnost.net).
We understand today that the physical universe is bigger and older and operates very differently than how the biblical writers, and all other ancient people, thought. Many Christians stumble over this...
Think of the resurrection as God unexpectedly going off script and bringing into the present time a bit of the future.
There’s an irony: the passionate defense of the Bible as a history book among the more conservative wings of Christianity, despite intentions, isn’t really an act of submission to God; it is making Go...
The Bible isn’t a cookbook—deviate from the recipe and the soufflé falls flat. It’s not an owner’s manual—with detailed and complicated step-by-step instructions for using your brand-new all-in-one ph...
The Adam story, then, is not simply about the past. It’s about Israel’s present brought into the past—even as far past as the beginning of the human drama itself.
Should we be the least bit surprised when we, along with some biblical writers, find ourselves wandering beyond the words in the Bible as we think about what God is like, sensing that the God we see t...
I mean, if we try to explain Jesus’s handling of his Bible in terms of how many Christians today feel the Bible ought to be read, Jesus will look like one of my college Bible students, playing free as...
I definitely get where these questions are coming from, and remember: I don’t think knowing or seeking to think correctly about God is wrong. Not at all. The problem is preoccupation with correct thin...
For Christians, then, the question is not Who gets the Bible right? The question is and has always been, Who gets Jesus right? The Gospel writers and Paul couldn’t have made that any clearer.
Doubt signals that this process of dying and rising is underway. Though God feels far away, at that moment God may be closer than we realize—especially if know what you believe is how we’re used to th...
Trust—not clarity, not certainty, but trust in God. And all of that poured out to the people around her.
When Christians feel crushed by such people of God, faith is exposed as something that just doesn’t work here and now. And if something doesn’t work, intellectual arguments for staying in the faith lo...
Trust does not cancel our mind but circumscribes it and tames it—and so we do not succumb to fretting or anxious thoughts of being unsure.
The need to explain Jesus as both surprise ending and deeply connected to Israel’s story drove the Gospel writers to do some creative reading. Sticking to what the Bible says wasn’t their goal. Talkin...
The Bible isn’t a book that reflects one point of view. It is a collection of books that records a conversation—even a debate—over time.
That is the lesson we learn from the Old Testament, Israel’s story. God meets the ancient Israelites as they are able to understand him—as a warrior who slays his enemies, human and divine; a deity wh...
Rounding out our list of early Christian writers is Augustine (354–430), especially his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis, where he shows, among other things, how much intellectual effort is require...
Rather than focusing on the badges that define our tribal identity (our church, denomination, subdenomination, doctrinal convictions, side of the aisle, whatever), a trust-centered faith will see the...