November 18, 2008 – 10:27 am
1 Samuel 15.29 (REB):
God who is the Splendour of Israel does not deceive, nor does he change his mind, as a mortal might do.
My initial reaction is that open theism does not presuppose that God’s mind was determined in the first place, therefore the openness of his reaction or response to a situation is not [...]
September 24, 2008 – 8:15 am
In his book, In the End - The Beginning, Jürgen Moltmann notes the following consequences of Jesus fulfilling the role of Israel’s messiah and the savior of the nations:
Because Jesus has come as the promised son (Isa. 9.6), there is no longer any need for religious or legal privilege to be given to fathers and [...]
September 23, 2008 – 12:10 pm
In his book, In the End - The Beginning, Jürgen Moltmann writes that in contrast to the tradition of the Messiah as a male child as written in Isaiah 9.6 (”to us a child is born, to us a son is given”, there is another messianic tradition in scripture, the Wisdom tradition, that “identifies the [...]
August 12, 2008 – 10:27 am
Recently I’ve been moving away from reading theological blogs. It’s not that I find theological nuances uninteresting, but too often the discussions are just words to me and I don’t see evidence of them bearing fruit in my daily walk. So rather than continue in that personal wilderness, I’ve been trying to take a more [...]
For a fascinating comparison of Paul’s use of “Gentile” and “Israel” in Romans 11 with the OT language of the northern and southern tribes of Israel, be sure to check out Michael Barber’s new post: How “All” Israel Will Be Saved on his excellent Singing in the Reign blog.
The northern Israelites were sent into exile [...]
Revisiting Acts 13:48, Steve (Undeception) has written on the topic of the elect and predestination from his full preterist perspective. Working primarily from Romans 9-11, he writes that:
God’s purpose in election was not to arbitrarily divide all of humanity into two groups, the saved and the damned, but to further His redemptive purpose in a [...]
I was continuing to read in Acts 13 after the sermon in church today and found this little verse slipped in by Dr. Luke:
When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed. (Acts 13:48, TNIV)
Can anyone comment on the Greek [...]
The following was published today in Mikey’s Funnies, a daily humor subscription email:
CALCULATING GOD’S WILL
By Michael A. Halleen
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12)
John Cardinal Deardon once observed that “The designs of God are not able to [...]
HT: MetaCatholic
A previously unknown (to me) blog, Inhabitatio Dei, has posted an interesting matrix description of ecclesiology, i.e. the study of the Church. The blogger writes:
From my perspective there are two basic polarities which define the shape of a given ecclesiology. The first is what I term the High-Low polarity, the second I refer [...]
Building on the previous post about viewing the creation account of Genesis 1 from a functional hermeneutic rather than a structural perspective, I want ask some parallel questions, fast forwarding from Genesis to our life today.
The functional hermeneutic suggests that the things we view as structural objects to Creation, e.g. light, water, plants, animals, all [...]