We talked about inclusio.
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Category Archives: Faith
Jesus and the EyeWitnesses: A Study with a Skeptic Friend, Part 5—The Twelve Disciples
By far, most recent scholars accept the twelve disciples as a real group. The 12 are listed, not merely as individual sources for parts of the story, but as a singular and overall collective source of the entire story. They were people who lived on after the resurrection and continued to teach of the events they witnessed together. Most people who get into this subject, skeptic or faithful, hear often of the harmonization of the Gospels. One of the harmonies is the lists of the twelve, including their epithets.
Jesus and the EyeWitnesses: A Study with a Skeptic , Part 4—Names of Witnesses
Ever wonder why certain people are mentioned by name in the Gospels, and others not? Bauckham explains in his book how people are named because of their role as eyewitness to the story they participate in. Cleopas, for example, didn’t have to be named, but was, possibly to identify him as an eyewitness.
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Jesus and the EyeWitnesses: Study with a Skeptic, Part 3—Papias
Papias, Papias, and more Papias (continuing from our previous study)
Papias was a bishop of Hierapolis, a 3rd generation Christian who compiled oral reports of the life of Jesus. In his book, Bauckham spends a great deal of time on Papias, who naturally assumed that the elders he received his reports from had spoken with the disciples of Jesus directly.
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Jesus and the EyeWitnesses: A Study with a Skeptic, Part 2—History, Jesus, and The Holocaust
What is the difference between what the Bible says about Jesus (testimony carried on), and what history can tell us (history outside of the Bible)? It is claimed that when true scholars subject the Gospels to objective scrutiny, much doubt is cast on their storytelling. It seems legit that we believe what we see in the Bible not because it said so, but because “the historian has independently verified it.” To an extent, this is understandable, but when we refuse to treat the Gospels as historical documents themselves, we rob them of their legitimacy as witness reporting. In our study with our skeptic friend, we began to talk about why the Bible is mistrusted as a source of history.
Jesus and the EyeWitnesses: A Study with a Skeptic Friend Begins
Jesus and the EyeWitnesses: A Study with a Skeptic Friend
Part 1—The Study Begins
This past year I had the chance to do a long study with a who has lost their faith, but was willing to study. They had let many doubts pile up over the years, and chief among those doubts was in the reliability of scripture.
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Did God Harden Pharaoh’s Heart? YES or NO—I need to know!
You’re Moses, and you want your people freed. After decades of oppression by this ugly empire you were brought up in but fail to accept, you want your people to be delivered. Yet Pharaoh, the self-claimed ruler and “god” of Egypt, refuses the gesture. You don’t get it. Ten plagues later, he doesn’t get it. You don’t get that he doesn’t get it. Is he even human? Well, he thinks he’s above human.
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Baby Turtles Hustling to the Ocean: Like Baptism
It was a Sunday morning. We were down at the beach before going to worship. A baby turtle had just broken through the sand after hatching and was making his way down the man-made path toward the ocean, helped by the guiding hand of a volunteer “turtle person.” My 3-year-old son watched with us and cheered the palm-sized turtle on as he scuffled.
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Kneeling at the Cross in Charleston
It’s one of those days where a nation is met with terrible news of unspeakable, unpardonable violence. We wish for less of those days. We cringe at the hearing of them. Sometimes we are quick to respond. Continue reading
A Church Who Loves the Idea of Racial Diversity
At our church we are very passionate about diversity. We may not have a diverse family in our belief community, but we believe in having one. We are very quick to tell you we are very diverse, and just as quick to tell you that we are not as diverse as we would like to be. We know you are looking for a church with ethnic diversity, but if you happen to be white, don’t be afraid of tampering with our ethnic variety ratio by joining. 
We are neither Jew nor Greek, neither black nor white, neither Polynesian nor Cambodian, neither Serbian nor Turkish, neither Guatemalan nor New Guinean—but our home page photo sure is. You can’t find a more inclusive congregation than that. Even photo models who have never even heard of our church are members.
We love to use photos of diverse, happy herds of people, people gathered into tight groups on an invisible plane, surrounded by an endless sea of white background. Always a white void we contrast against, always white and pale. Anyway, we are desperate to appear to visitors and seekers as a colorful cast of differing faces all unified in racially diverse solidarity, and we will pay whatever price we can for those photos, even if none of us are in them. We will put those stock photos on our website, photos with a decent ratio of males to females, and a spectrum of whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, and maybe even one Pacific Islander. Some churches hope that one day “Muslim” will be added to the wish list, while other churches hope that one day the distinctions between “Arab” and “Muslim” will be more widely known
CALEB COY 