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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Category Archives: Faith
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 To an extent, this is understandable, but when we refuse to treat the Gospels as historical documents themselves, we rob them of their legitimacy as witness reporting.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
Paper Towns and The Idolatry of Imagination: Part 3—The Vessel
“Forever is composed of nows.”-Emily Dickenson
Part 3: The Vessel
[read Part 1: Strings and Part 2: Grass]
Quentin Jacobson had been searching for Margo Roth Spiegelman, but he had yet to go on a journey. Like Whitman, he needed to travel across the country, become exposed, truly listen for Margo. He needed to experience and understand that paper towns existed all over, with paper people living in all of them. “The world is full of people,” he comes to say, “full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently mismanaged.”
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Paper Towns and the Idolatry of Imagination: Part 1—Strings
“Doing stuff never feels as good as you hope it will feel.”
Part 1: Strings
John Green’s novel, Paper Towns, soon to be a film, can be read as a kind of spiritual parable. With the exception of TFIOS, his three other novels seem to follow a similar formula: Eccentric yet normal teen boy falls for unattainable and eccentric girl because she is such a mystery, and she becomes a puzzle for him to solve as much as a love interest to pursue. Academic references must follow. Were it not for the occasional sexual controversy, Green seems to be begging for his books to be taught in school, pushing aside bulky classics less relevant to teens.
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When is it Right to Take a Stand?—Posturing Faith
“Stand up for what’s right.”
Occasionally somebody somewhere urges you to “do the right thing” in the form of “taking a stand” or “standing up” for whatever is good, right, or the truth.
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CALEB COY 