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Making sense of intriguing correlations between the Gospels (Part 2)
My previous blogpost spotlighted Lydia McGrew’s treatise, Hidden in Plain View (DeWard Publishing; 2017). In it, she explores a variety of “undesigned coincidences” appearing in the Gospels and Acts to affirm the reliability of the Gospels. I used McGrew’s foundational premise to consider an episode recounted in the three Synoptic Gospels, in which Jesus and His disciples experienced a violent windstorm while in a fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee. In the current blogpost, I want to lift up for consideration a second episode involving Jesus, His disciples, and the Sea of Galilee. The intent is to showcase another example of how seemingly unrelated details in various Gospel accounts…
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Making sense of intriguing correlations between the Gospels
Within New Testament studies, extreme versions of historical criticism approach the question of the Gospels’ historicity and reliability with a hermeneutic of suspicion. In its most cynical expression, advocates question everything in the Gospels and affirm virtually nothing. Adherents of the preceding view contend that the final form of the Gospels has little, if any, connection to real people and actual historical events. Instead, all that is left are faint memories or kernels of truth about the way Christians eulogized, or wanted to commemorate, Jesus of Nazareth. Some proponents even allege that the Gospels are an amalgam of later additions, revisions, and redactions spanning the following centuries, until the dominant…
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Vindicating the Vixens
Vindicating the Vixens (Kregel Academic, forthcoming, Octobre 2017) is the work of a diverse team of sixteen male and female theologians who’ve partnered to take a second look at vilified and marginalized women in the Bible. The church has often viewed women’s stories through sexist eyes, resulting in a range of distortions that cause us to miss what we should actually see in the text. In this panel discussion three theological professors and three seminary graduates talk about the women they revisited. SaveSave SaveSave 0
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Complementarians on Women in Ministry: Diverse Images
I read recently that when boards of directors have both male and female representation, they make better decisions. Doesn’t that sound consistent with Genesis 1:28? Not to everybody. Especially not those at the conservative end of the complementarian camp (and it is a very wide camp with a lot of difference inside). The word “complementarian” gets underlined in red in a Word doc, because it’s a word people made up. And they did so to emphasize that men and women are complementary. Some say “egalitarians [hereafter E’s] believe men and women have no gender differences and that complementarians [hereafter C’s] believe in the beautiful design of God for gender…
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“Christian” Homosexuality Advocates?
“Rebuke your neighbor frankly so that you will not share in his guilt” (Leviticus 19:17b, NIV 1984). This column is the first in response to a man named Donald who wrote some replies to my column entitled, “Should a Christian Attend a Homosexual Wedding?” In light of recent events, I believe it would be best to answer Donald’s comments in a more visible way, not only in the response section of my previous column. Two things first: 1. If this column appears to start in the middle of a conversation, it does not; it simply follows from the above mentioned column. 2. I have slightly edited the responses to make…
