When dealing with the question of women’s roles in the church, many cite Romans 16:7 to demonstrate that women could and did serve as apostles in the early church. In the ESV, the verse reads “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles.” Some have pointed to the ESV as a thumb-on-the-scale translation, in rendering the verse “They are well known to the apostles” instead of…
The discussion around women’s ordination, and complementarianism versus egalitarianism has percolated for decades, but has lately risen to a boil. Several books have come out, and when a church as high profile as Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church ordains women, something different is happening. The reception of Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood made me wonder if new data had come along. After reading it, I don’t believe so. Barr frames the issue as…
Is there a solution to the “problem” of reconciling divine sovereignty and human responsibility? I use quotes because there are many who say there’s no problem whatsoever. God is sovereign. However, while most readers of Scripture would agree with this, it is likewise too facile an explanation of all the biblical data. My thoughts were once again drawn the topic by reading D. A. Carson’s Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension. I…
A byproduct of social media is that the degree of separation it provides makes some feel emboldened to speak (or post) in ways they might not if they were sitting across a table from someone. Quite often this takes the form of what I refer to as either a “triumphalist” tweet, or a “peremptory” post. That is, the words are designed as a slam-dunk on a (potential) opponent (the triumphalist) or the thought is expressed…
It is probable that some reader of this post will brand me a heretic. Such is the state of things when discussing theology proper. I was reminded of this difficulty through reading James Dolezal’s All That is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism. This isn’t a book review per se, but reflections on the topic of divine simplicity spurred by reading Dolezal. I am not denying divine simplicity, rather I…
I was intrigued when I saw Paul Maxwell’s book The Trauma of Doctrine about to launch, particularly for the subtitle of “New Calvinism, Religious Abuse, and the Experience of God.” I have interacted with a lot of Reformed writers and sources, and while I wouldn’t term myself a Calvinist (nor would they likely claim me) I regard Calvinism and Reformed theology as something every student of theology must engage with. It’s simply too important historically…
Culture can be an imperious force In the previous two posts I put forth the idea that music has didactic power quite apart from any words we may add, and that music has idioms, syntax and semantics that work in similar ways to language. To conclude, I want to consider more concrete ways in which culture is at work here. While musical sounds may in themselves be neither moral nor immoral, the culture has provided…
Idiom, syntax, and semantics work in music as well as words. (Part 2 in a series on the didactic power of music.) Far from being a universal language, music in its disparate forms is rather a polyglot that makes communication even between those in the same house sometimes difficult. Parents do not understand or do not like the music their children are listening to, and this has created some of the conflict which Ron Powers…
It’s the music itself that’s teaching us. Music is very much a part of the worship life of any gathering of Christians. It is an important component in our offering of adoration to God. The Bible repeatedly invokes music in praise of God, and among the many references we could cite, one of the better known is the command given in Ephesians. “Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and…
There have always been some in church history who affirmed universalism, the view that all of humanity will ultimately be saved. Origen believed even the devil would finally be reconciled. More recently, David Bentley Hart has offered an apology for universalism in his recent book That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation. Hart’s book is polemical, for which I fault him not in the least. The topic is such that it is…