Doing the best as we can to figure out life, to discern how or if a certain proverb applies right here and now, is not an act of disloyalty toward God, rebellion against God’s clear rulebook for life....
Doesn’t God realize that we don’t share the common understanding that, say, Paul shares with the people in Corinth or Thessalonica? Doesn’t God realize that making twenty-one of the twenty-seven books...
But doubt is not the enemy of faith, a solely destructive force that rips us away from God, a dark cloud that blocks the bright warm sun of faith. Doubt is only the enemy of faith when we equate faith...
Burridge, Richard A. Four Gospels, One Jesus? A Symbolic Reading. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. *Campbell, Anthony F., and Mark A. O’Brien. Unfolding the Deuteronomistic History: Origins, Upgrades, Pr...
Believing is easy. It gives us wiggle room to think our way out of a tight spot. But trust doesn’t have any wiggle room. It explodes it. Trust is about being all in.
Because, more than the other three Gospel writers, John is big on Jesus’s divine authority over the religious leaders. That’s part of his agenda, and so he shapes the past to make the point.
Baker, Sharon L. Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught About God’s Wrath and Judgment. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2010. *Batto, Bernard. Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in t...
As we saw concerning Chronicles in chapter 2, the Old Testament already does in principle what Paul is doing here: reworking the past to speak to the present. That interpretive conviction is seen time...
Aligning faith in God and certainty about what we believe and needing to be right in order to maintain a healthy faith—these do not make for a healthy faith in God. In a nutshell, that is the problem....
Adam in primordial times plays out Israel’s national life. He is proto-Israel—a preview of coming attractions. This does not mean, however, that a historical Adam was a template for Israel’s national...
A story like the exodus story is what happens when, as I said previously, God lets his children tell the story—in ways they understand and that is packed with meaning for them.
———. The Mystery of Israel’s Origins: An Introduction and Proposals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. *Stager, Lawrence E. Forging and Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel, in The Oxford Hi...
Was learning to trust God enough (what a concept) to know that, like family (the Bible calls him Father after all), he will come through no matter what, that his love and commitment to me is deeper th...
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 God submit to us. In...
It is worth asking what standards we can reasonably expect of the Bible, seeing that it is an ancient Near Eastern document and not a modern one. Are the early stories in the Old Testament to be judge...
A literal reading of Genesis is not the firmly settled default position of true faith to which one can hold firm or from which one strays. Literalism is a hermeneutical decision (often implicit) stemm...
You get the feeling from the Bible that being unsettled is almost a normal part of the process. Not that we should go looking for it-- it will find us soon enough-- but struggling in some way seems li...
Wisdom, in other words, was not an add-on, but was always central for obeying any law in the Bible. Laws, once we begin thinking about what they mean and how they are to be obeyed, actually push us to...
Wisdom teaches us to embrace both the adequacy and the limitations of our God-talk, to keep the two in tension. Perhaps accepting that paradox is true faith.
Whether we are aware of it or not, behind our religious deliberations, in one form or another, we are really asking a deeply foundational question, What kind of God do I believe in, really? This is no...