A real reformer is not a member of a faction. Men have always tended to divide into opposing factions, whether it is Crips and Bloods or Guelphs and Ghibellines. But factional differences (while very real) don’t go down to the deep foundations. An ancient city is debating whether to defend the city with a powerful …
When We All Say Whooosh Together
I appreciate the discussion of natural law going on under the previous post. I’d like to respond to a few of the points made, and develop everything just a tad further. First, when I say the teaching of Scripture “trumps” natural law, I was doing nothing more than applying a standard rule of hermeneutics within …
Grace and Culture Building
INTRODUCTION:As a community of Christians we were all called and shaped by radical grace. One of the things that grace does (and which law cannot do) is build a culture with standards—which then presents a potent threat to grace. We are called to understand this dynamic because if we don’t, we will be continually frustrated. …
Going Splash in the Sea of Japan
One other point needs to be made about sexual egalitarianism, but let me, if I may, move it (somewhat) away from N.T. Wright’s support of women’s ordination. We need to address, in a more general way, the idea that milder feminism (in those manifestations which are for some reason palatable to evangelicals) is “not about …
The Trumpets of Smooth Jazz
In my recent interaction with Brad Littlejohn about N.T. Wright, a phrase taken from Matt Anderson was invoked, that phrase being intellectual empathy. His original post on it is here, and in the main I think what he was saying — when applied to what he was talking about — is just fine. But there …
Right This Very Minute
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 …