How do humans accomplish God’s will? James tells us that human anger can never bring about God’s will, and he has to be speaking here into (at least) the zealot option of the 1st Century. The Zealots, if you remember, believed God’s will was so urgent that violence was necessary. Notice these words of James:…

In the second chapter of his book Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives Peter Bouteneff discusses the uses of the creation narrative in the New Testament. The most important New Testament references are in the Pauline literature – which Bouteneff takes to include Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians.  He considers the Pastoral…

The most significant error among populist evangelical Christians, one heard in almost any adult SS class or Bible study, is docetism. Never put quite that way, belief by many is that Jesus’ humanity is not quite what it seems. In fact, in unguarded moments, many will say something like “Jesus only seemed to be human.”…

It seems every year someone brings up the Bible and alcohol (the drinking kind). My first response, kept to myself but now made public, is this “Yo, have you ever tasted Brunello or a South African wine or a good pint of Boddington’s?” But that doesn’t seem to be the approach needed here. What I…

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