{"id":6081,"date":"2005-12-27T23:39:38","date_gmt":"2005-12-27T23:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/slate-theological-hotbed.html"},"modified":"2005-12-27T23:39:38","modified_gmt":"2005-12-27T23:39:38","slug":"slate-theological-hotbed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/slate-theological-hotbed.html","title":{"rendered":"Slate, theological hotbed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Online mag Slate<\/em> has been on a theology-for-the-masses run of late. First off, a perfectly predictable piece from Episcopal priest Chloe Breyer (daughter of the Supreme Court Justice, btw), outlining her doubts about the Virginal Conception, which are not new to anyone who has read skeptical New Testament scholarship (aka what is taught in most seminaries) over the past thirty years. It’s here<\/a>, and Albert Mohler takes it apart here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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What? It would be "rash" to rule out the possibility that the Gospel writers mean the opposite of what their words mean because "theologically it works so well?" This is theological insanity, but it is indicative of what has become of "mainstream" biblical scholarship in the liberal academy. Schaberg argues — and Ms. Breyer affirms — that Matthew and Luke (or whoever wrote those two gospels, she would argue) wrote in their gospels that Jesus was born of a virgin so that their readers would understand that they really meant that Jesus was not<\/em> born of a virgin at all. Still following? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the same "issue" of Slate, Jack Miles has a far more interesting and thoughtful piece of the silence of the infant Jesus.<\/a><\/p>\n

Far more useful than Breyer’s open-minded closed-mindedness is a discussion between three scholars, including Larry Hurtado, who has done close and convincing work on the development of devotion to Jesus as Lord among Christians.<\/a> Short version: It happened very early, is related to the early Christians experience of Jesus himself, and cannot be explained away as simply  a riff on either Jewish or pagan spiritual and theological traditions. It was just too different. I’m glad to see Dr. Hurtado offering the clear-headed kind of thinking on the Gospels we also see from the likes of N.T. Wright on the ..er..pages of Slate<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Online mag Slate has been on a theology-for-the-masses run of late. First off, a perfectly predictable piece from Episcopal priest Chloe Breyer (daughter of the Supreme Court Justice, btw), outlining her doubts about the Virginal Conception, which are not new to anyone who has read skeptical New Testament scholarship (aka what is taught in most…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSlate, theological hotbed - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/slate-theological-hotbed.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Slate, theological hotbed - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Online mag Slate has been on a theology-for-the-masses run of late. First off, a perfectly predictable piece from Episcopal priest Chloe Breyer (daughter of the Supreme Court Justice, btw), outlining her doubts about the Virginal Conception, which are not new to anyone who has read skeptical New Testament scholarship (aka what is taught in most…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/slate-theological-hotbed.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-12-27T23:39:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Slate, theological hotbed - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/slate-theological-hotbed.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Slate, theological hotbed - Via Media","og_description":"Online mag Slate has been on a theology-for-the-masses run of late. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}