Allow me to take just a brief moment to respond to some of the arguments presented here by Brad Littlejohn, in response to my recent interactions with N.T. Wright on the question of women’s ordination. Brad has a three basic problems with my take on the N.T. Wright business with women bishops. First, he is …
Exegetical Confustication
Prodigal Thought chides me and a few other complementards for missing the main point of N.T. Wright’s piece on women’s ordination, which was the fact that the resurrection was absolutely transformative when it comes to issues like Jew/Gentile, slave/free, or male and female. The issues about Mary Magdalene, Junia, and Phoebe were side issues. What …
Serious Scholars Clown Car Review
In the previous post, I took N.T. Wright to task for trifling with the text of 1 Tim. 2:12, and for insulting our intelligence. A discussion broke out in the comments about whether I had been too cavalier and dismissive of Wright. So here’s a little something about all that. In the first place, I …
Fresh Butter at Ephesus
The other day, when I responded to N.T. Wright’s foray into extreme Pauline makeovers, a friend sent me a link to a longer and more scholarly defense of Wright’s posish. That link I now pass on to you. And being a good Christian, and a fair-minded soul, I read it. All the way to the …
Squeezing Harder Than That
The Church of England just recently said no to women bishops. There were howls of outrage from all the predictable quarters, for whom such a troglodyte move is just smack-the-forehead baffling. Now I can understand a vote against women bishops as a preliminary move to try to undo the ordination of women priests. And I …
Just What Siddhartha Wanted
I am glad that Andrew Perriman thinks I am genial fellow, which is a trait that really ought to be cultivated more, as I believe, in most discussions of everlasting damnation. And I am happy for the opportunity to interact a bit with Andrew’s response to my Hell and Hellenism post. Just a few comments …
Jesus and Conservatism
Everyone must stand somewhere in order to say anything. And even if what he wants to say is that the previous sentence is not true, he still has to stand somewhere to say it. We can run, but we can’t hide. If one of the things I want to say (or confess) is that Jesus …
More on Child Communion
Over at Canon WIRED, I recently answered a question about child communion, and that answer elicited this response. Since these are reasonable questions on a complex subject, let me add just a few more thoughts (three to be exact) to the matter. First, we hold the formal requirement for entry to the Supper to be …
The Need for a Sense of Smell
I recall one place where N.T. Wright said that the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher were “evil.” As a good portion of the Western world is now in the process of running out of money, this set up an interesting train of thought. Is it “evil” to be broke, to run out of money? Presumably …
Not to Mention Unsightly Splotches
This weekend I had occasion to browse the theolgy section of a bookstore, and picked up Spong’s The Sins of Scripture. The funnest part of that experience was reading the blurb for it on the back cover from Bill O’Reilly, of Fox News fame, which seemed to me to be just about right. Inside, Spong …