General listing of posts and articles

Country: United States of AmericaBio: Success is only failure to a lesser degree. I’m an observer, vagabond, human, friend and pastor. I love theology and orthopraxy and Jesus....

Country: CanadaBio: -Assitant Pastor at Evangel Church in Oshawa, Ontario; Graduate Student, M.T.S. in Pentecostal Studies (Tyndale); Singer-Songwriter; Husband...

I shut down the private message function a while back because it was sending out false notifications to people. The module has been upgraded so, at John Clements’ prompting, I have reinstalled it. You will find a link to send a message to the author of posts and comments. You can also access it via the ‘My Inbox’ link at the top. ...

Country: United Kingdom A (budding) theological writer, peripatetic lecturer and website developer…as well as a father, husband, friend and networker. Bio:  Originally a civil engineer, trained at Nottingham University, I balanced an early engineering career with a Pentecostal training course and a vocational call which focussed upon Christian mission, scripture study, prayer and...

Hi there. I am busy reading an Archaeology book on the bible by Richard Horsley and others and it raises some important questions regarding history and narrative. Specifically theories about Israel’s origin. So bear with me here....

In critiquing D. A. Carson’s Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, James K. A. Smith makes a wonderful point. Smith says that Carson interprets the mentionings of “truth” and “knowledge” in the Bible as clear evidence that the Bible “also advocates the modern epistemological notion of objectivity.” Smith then goes on to argue that the Scriptures “give us good reasons to...

This was originally part of the thread introduced by Jacob on Foucault: The Shepherd’s Power. However, it took up wider themes, and I would like to invite participants on the site to make their own contributions....

I have been rather bothered recently by the way in which the emerging church - though not only the emerging church - makes use of the concept of the ‘kingdom of God’ to define its mission, the idea being that the task of the church is to extend or build the kingdom of God on earth. Very often there is an implicit polemical aspect to the usage: we build the kingdom of God rather...

Country: United States of AmericaBio: Firstborn of a Baptist pastor....

If we agree that the Scripture texts regarding the day of the Lord have an imminent, first century historical fulfillment and character (or some other local, historical fulfillment), from where do you arrive at the notion that there is more? i.e, a universal, final judgment....

The academy launches irrational hostility toward reputable scientists who dare to attribute intelligent design to biological structures.  ...

A set of lectures that Michel Foucault gave at the College de France during the late 1970s was recently published under the title, Security, Territory and Population. They trace out the genealogy of what Foucault calles “governmentality,” which is a snazzy way of talking about the development of the practice of governing men. An important part of that genealogy is what I’m writing about...

I’ve been reading N. T. Wright’s, Surprised by Hope and I’ve found myself frustrated by N. T. Wright. As one example, in part 13 ‘Building for the Kingdom’, Wright engages rhetoric that is overly reactionary and I think it mitigates the points he wants to make. Under redemption, Jesus’ resurrection and the new creation of salvation, Wright places the work of garden keeping...

Anyone reading these on-line articles might wonder how the author has time and leisure to put them together. If they show signs of haste in their composition - that is entirely accurate! They have been pieced together at odd moments between other more pressing claims on my time. This particular conclusion to the series is hastily rattled out as my long-suffering wife prepares a meal in the...

In my previous post, I tried to show that a radical and absolute eschatological character was given to each stage of the entire history of Jesus - not just to part of it, or even to one event within it. His birth, earthly life, death, resurrection, outpoured Spirit and return are all described in equally final terms - and each in some way reflecting the idea of a fulfilled and complete...

Having painted a picture against which we can view the significance of eschatology in relation to Christ, I continue by asking what “the end” was which is pointed to in phrases such as “the end”, “the end of the age”, and obliquely suggested in “the last days”, “the last times”, “the last hour”; also “the last day”, and references to “the day”, “that day”,...

In the previous post, I proposed that eschatology has developed two equal and opposite tendencies: either to consign an understanding of ‘the end times’ to events occurring in the far distant or yet to be fulfilled future, or strictly to consign that understanding to events which occurred in the distant past....

Country: United States of AmericaBio: I am fifty plus, married, with two grown daughters and two small dogs. I served in the Army Veterinary Service from 1972-1992 retiring as a Staff Sergeant. I am currently employed in the insurance industry. My interests include but are not limited to religion, computers, the internet, psychology, philosophy and things in general. I like to describe...

Eschatology is usually understood in theology to be the interpretation of things that happen at the end of time, and tends to occupy a separate section, somewhat detached from other theological concerns, at the end of systematic theologies. This divorce of ‘the end of time’ from the rest of theological history is a striking feature of theology, for which I wish to propose an alternative not...

Country: United States of AmericaBio: I am in the process of leaving 10 years of being a youth minister to go into preaching for a church in South Carolina. I am married and have 2 daughters. ...