To Think God as Love

[We agree] that the Bible is somehow authoritative. But how does that work? [....] When we hear preaching in the broadest sense, that is to say, when the church’s servants call us verbally to faith and obedience, do we observe the speaker struggling to say what the Bible says? On more formal occasions, do we [...]

We need sermons from Leviticus. We need them for myriad reasons, and I can only outline a few of them here and now. 1. We need them because we – at least the overwhelming majority of us – have forgotten that we are bound to the whole of Scripture, including those parts that seem inexplicable [...]

In a recent conversation with a friend, I remarked that giving teenagers and immature believers Bibles was something like giving them condoms. Let me explain what I meant. No one knows by instinct how to live a sexually ordinate life. No one. Properly-ordered sexuality does not happen by accident, but only with intense and intentional [...]

Recently, an Egyptian professor came under fire for his comments about the Koran. He said it was a ‘supermarket’ in which a reader could find anything he would like to find. The same could be said for our Scriptures, as well. However, I think the problem has more to do with us as readers than [...]

If it weren’t so horrifying, it would be hilarious. Sanctus Christo has already addressed this well. I would only add that since the Bible is how one reads it, Anderson really believes — although he is unaware of it — that he is God. It is not for no reason that he displays supreme confidence [...]

In his paper ‘Using and Being Used: Scripture and Systematic Theology’  the late Colin Gunton, a widely influential Reformed theologian, argues for the formative power of words, and so, of texts – in particular, the Scriptural texts:  Words are among the earthen vessels by which we become what we are in our relations to one another. In so far as it [...]

Given inherency and given circumstance-situated human refraction, the Bible is endlessly a surprise beyond us that Karl Barth famously and rightly termed “strange and new.” The Bible is not a fixed, frozen, readily exhausted read; it is rather a “script,” always reread, through which the Spirit makes new. When the church adjudicates the inherent and [...]

Thus Eucharist and Scripture need to be held together if we are to have an adequate theology of either. The Eucharist is the primary locus of the listening Church, the place where it shows itself to be there in response to the call of God; and the Scripture that embodies that call has to be [...]

The Bible is not an intellectual sinecure, and its acceptance should not be like setting up a talismanic lock that seals both the mind and the conscience against the intrusion of new thoughts. Revelation is not vicarious thinking. Its purpose is not to substitute for but to extend our understanding… The full meaning of the [...]

The doctrine of God’s tri-unity began to emerge from Jesus’ worldly experiences – his unique 1 intimacy with God and the unique availability of God’s Spirit to him – and his own interpretation of his experiences. For instance,  he says of himself: All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son [...]

“The Bible is a book about God. But the God of the Bible is not Deus absconditus, but Deus revelatus. God is manifesting and revealing himself. God intervenes in human life. And the Bible is not merely a human record of these divine interventions and deeds. It is a kind of divine intervention itself. It carries with [...]

A quick post. (This is the week before finals, and I’m swamped.) Briefly, I think the misinterpretation of Scripture is less of a problem than the misappropriation of Scripture. I hold this opinion for several reasons, a few of which I’ll quickly enumerate. (1) Due to our limitations and frailties, we simply cannot trust ourselves to [...]