I’ve recently stumbled across a video series that is well done and insightful in regards to dispelling the theory that certain features of life are irreducibly complex, and therefore, must have been created.  This is an argument that I just  wish that my brothers in Christ would simply give up.  The more I see illogical arguments for the existence of god the more I wish they would just go away.

There is no proof for God, and irreducible complexity isn’t even close to respectable.  If you have not heard of irreducible complexity then it is better if you just don’t, but if you want to, here is a good article on it  Irreducible Complexity.

IC has been put forth to aid in the defense of the bible indicating that the earth is only 10,000 or so years old, or, if it is older, that god designed the life about that long ago.  This Young Earth Creationism (YEC) view is dangerous to Christianity.  It is dangerous because it forces people to believe in something that is contradicted by all evidence here on earth.  I personally believe that the universe was indeed created by god, and he did it roughly 14 billion years ago and has used evolution as his mechanism to create all forms of life.  God is Great!

But this pseudo-science is trying to undermine the majesty of god’s creation by making up arguments that have no basis.  These videos encapsulate many of the best arguments that I have seen against this ill informed approach.

Irreducible Complexity: Cut Down to Size

and

Rebuttals: irreducible complexity

Enjoy.

Kevin DeYoung, a Calvinist, has a post on his blog that I greatly enjoyed today.  This post and position is a great example of how two people could agree on a conclusion, but disagree on everything else.  I agree with the title of his post, but nothing else.

DeYoung’s post Why We Must Be Unapologetically Theological is a post who’s title sounds like something I would write.  I am a big fan of truly understanding the Majesty and mystery of Christan faith.  But once I get past the title, things go down hill quickly.

If you want the nutshell of this, just look at the graphic on his post.  It says “theology is simply the part of religion that requires brains”.  Wrong Kevin.  Theology is about Jesus and the gospel and is here for everyone.

1.  DeYoung says:

God has revealed himself to us in his word and given us his Spirit that we might understand the truth.

While I could agree with this on the surface, DeYoung is viewing this in a wild way.  First, he assumes that the only revelation of god is scripture, so he subordinates the Holy Spirit to the bible!  Wow, how can a Christian do such a thing.

2…. then the most important defense of his truth

The New Testament places a high value on discerning truth from error.

Well, I certainly believe that the New Testament is there to do exactly that, to tell us what is true.  But DeYoung goes no further in this point, he simply continues to say that we must guard truth, but does not say how to tell trutth.

3.  Now, to diminish Jesus teachings…

The ethical commands of the New Testament are predicated on theological propositions.  So many of Paul’s letters have a twofold structure.  The beginning chapters lay out doctrine and the latter chapters exhort us to….

Here is where DeYoung really begins to miss the idea.  He is assuming that the idea of the new testament is contained in the letters of Paul.  But that is just not true.  Paul talked about the most important aspects of Christianity with the people face to face.  He is clarifying, in general, fringe elements of the ideas in his letters.  There are a couple of exceptions, most notably 1 Cor 15, but in general Paul does not discuss the actual gospel.

4. Now to tell people that God is Love is not good enough, we must know that he is good to us through other means…

Theological categories enable us to more fully and more deeply rejoice in God’s glory.  Simple truths are wonderful.  It is good for us to sing simple songs like “God is good”……But he is also pleased when we can sing and pray about how exactly he has been good to us in the plan of salvation and in the scope of salvation history…….

Wow, I don’t even know what to say about this since this is loaded with code-speak for Kevin’s weird version of theology.  Kevin, the primary message is that god is good.  But as you can see in the quote DeYoung is immediately ready to tone it down and limit it by saying we need to understand exactly how…..  Now if I was saying this it would clearly be implying that the how is through Jesus and god’s love.  But for DeYoung, it is some complex web of him hating us and sin and finding mercy and yada yada yada

5…. now we find out that god is good because he has divine wrath to us (!)

Theology helps us more fully and more deeply rejoice in the blessings that are ours in Christ…..But how much fuller and deeper will your delight be when you understand that salvation means election to the praise of God’s grace, expiation to cover your sins, propitiation to turn away divine wrath, redemption to purchase you for God, justification before the judgment seat of God….

What?  OK, Jesus is here for all, and one could easily argue for the least, well, that’s just what Jesus says.  But DeYoung has to resort to a bunch of Christian gobbledygook that makes no sense.  Kevin, do you really thing that the Lord of the universe needs for us to understand election, propiation and such?  Do you really thing god wants us to fear him?!?!?!  OK, let me sing the praises of the propiation of God’s Wrath!  That’s enough to get me up in the morning.

That may be your god Kevin, but its not mine.

6.  …and this paragraph in its entirety:

Even (or is it especially?) non-Christians need good theology. They may not thrill to hear a dry lecture on the ordo salutis. But who wants dry lectures on anything? If you can talk winsomely, passionately, and simply about the blessings of effectual calling, regeneration, and adoption, and how all these blessings are found in Christ, and how the Christian life is nothing more or less than being who we are in Christ, and how this means God really does want us to be true to ourselves, but ourselves as we were born again not as we were born in sin–if you give non-Christians all of this, and give it to them plainly, you’ll be giving them a whole lot of theology. And, if the Spirit of God is at work, they just might come back looking for more.

OK, I get the idea that he is saying that great oration is not the point and I agree with that.  But Paul, the Calvinist prophet, has routinely said that what he does, simply, is preach Jesus, and Jesus crucified.  I have come to realize that Calvinists turn everything around to be something about them instead of something about Jesus and this is a great example.  Come on ” the blessings of effectual calling, regeneration, and adoption”  what is that?  I study this stuff all the time and I can’t tell you what he is talking about.  Nonsense.

DeYoung is so wrapped around the axle of his own theology that he has totally lost the ability to say something that relates to real people.  Even worse, he has neglected the actual teachings of Jesus enough that he considers the teaching to be “predicated on theological propositions” therefore you need to know those before you know Jesus.  Poppycock.  DeYoung has lost touch with reality.

I have found my beef heaven.  Between my wife and children (five of us, from college to eighth grade) I am the only one still eating beef, and that is quite unfortunate since I have finally figured out how to make roast beef the way I like it.  The way I like it is to resemble rare prime rib, and I had yet to figure that out.  But now I have!

I bought a 4.75 lb rump roast today at the local Food Lion since I did not want to drive the 20 miles to a store with good meat.  Originally I thought that I would get the butcher to cut me some thick cuts of the porterhouse on sale, but when I asked him to cut something thicker than 0.5 inches he said that he already cut all he is allowed to day.  What a shame.

Here is what I found:

• Preheat the oven to 500
• Put the meat in a shallow dish with plenty of garlic powder, Worcestershire sauce, and pepper
• Cut onion rings and put them on the meat
• Cook the meat for 15 to 20 minutes (about 5 minutes per pound) at 500.
• Turn the oven off, and cook it for another 15 to 18 minutes per pound (Do Not Open the Oven Door!)
• Take it out, let it set for 15 minutes, cut and enjoy!

Now there are a couple of notes here.  First, when I say do not open the oven door, I mean it, do not open the oven door, even for a peek.  The idea is to keep the heat in the oven and let it cook.  I read a bunch of commentary on this approach and see that some people have an oven that automatically starts to vent when you turn it off.  To ward off that problem I just lowered mine to 200 degrees instead of turning it all the way off.

I also made a horseradish sauce to go with it.  A heaping tablespoon of prepared horseradish (not the sauce kind) with another 2 level tablespoons of sour cream, and some dill week works great.

This was absolutely great.  The picture is the one I made tonight.  I wish I would have known how to do this 30 years ago.  Good luck and let me know if you tried it!

Dave

It has been awhile since I have posted, but it has been because I have been busy and not lazy.  As far as thoughts, ideas and Christianity, I have read or am reading a couple of books.

First, I cannot recommend too highly Scot McKnight’s new book, The King Jesus Gospel.  This book largely makes the whole concept of my site irrelevant since it tells the true story of the gospel.  Exactly what I was looking for.

Next, I was intrigued by the historical Jewish approach toward many of our modern problems.  Richard Friedman and Shawna Dolansky have written a very readable book about subjects such as homosexuality, abortion, women, capital punishment and the earth (actually that covers the whole thing).  Their book, The Bible Now looks at the bible in the context of having to make decisions about these issues in today’s environment.  Although there are no new testament considerations since the authors are Jewish, the book is a must read for those of us who want to understand these decisions and absolutely required for those who hope to influence others.

I have also started to study the letter of James.  Although I already had the Tyndale version of the Doublas Moo commentary on James, I was looking for something a bit up to date.  For those who do not know, Moo has written two versions of a commentary on James and apparently I have been reading the inferior of the two.  After talking with appropriate theologians, I got Scot McKnight’s (I really like Scot) fairly recent and quite comprehensive tome on James.  If you want a comprehensive study I highly recommend it.  The historical and biblical research and interpretation is impressive.

I have also been trying to finish Scot’s Community Called Atonement, but that repeatedly goes to the back in light of the more recently publish works.  But it is quite good and recommend it.

I also have read and re-read a couple of times the John Piper response to N.T. Wright’s book on Justification.  The Future of Justification, A Response to N.T. Wright is a Calvinist rebuttal to the new perspective exposition of Tom Wright.  I am not a 5 point Calvinist, actually I am a zero point Calvinist, but I often find that counter arguments to concepts provide good illumination into the context under scrutiny.  In this case I am just further reinforcing my view that the Calvinist movement simply misses the point as to what Christianity is all about.

I have also read twice, Pope Benedict’s wonderfully illuminating book Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration.  I know that many of my protestant friends will be reluctant to read  an obviously Catholic book, but it is well worth it.  This book is not full of church dogmatics, rather it is full of substantiated reason and exegesis of the core biblical texts.  Well worth the time.

I also went through N.T. Wight’s Paul for Everyone Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians (New Testament for Everyone) with a study group of a couple months and found it amazingly useful.  Reading Tom Wright’s translation of the bible has me waiting eagerly for his new, personal translation.  The Kingdom New Testament: A Contemporary Translation actually has come out!  As I am writing this I just ordered it, I can’t wait.  (and as I am still writing I got confirmation from Amazon that the book is on its way!)

The reading pile has gotten bigger with various other titles, but the one I most looking forward to is the classic by Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.  I am into the first couple of chapters and quite entertained.

I hope you all enjoy some of these as much as I have.

Christian Smith’s new book The Bible Made Impossible is an excellent argument for the need to go beyond the typical evangelical propositions concerning the bible.  Before people get too upset about him striking at the core of evangelical Christianity (more on that later), please note that he is also the one who coined the term Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) which is the opposite extreme.  I personally can attest to the problem with MTD since I belonged to a church for quite a few years who could not move past the shallow and selfish and go to the next level by helping others including the poor.  When I started complaining that we don’t need another building or to spend more money and we should start helping the poor they kicked me out.  So much for country club church with me.  Christian Smith nailed it in that one (see the Wikipedia article on MTD) and he has done it again with his latest effort.

As bad as MTD is, I believe Biblicism is even more dangerous.  Per Smith, Biblicism is:

1. Divine Writing:  The Bible is God’s very own words in human language
2. Total Representation:  Everything God wants us to know is in the Bible
3. Complete Coverage:  All issues are represented there.
4. Democratic Perspicuity: All reasonable people can get the meaning of what is written
5. Commonsense Hermeneutics:  Read the plain literal meaning of the texts
6. Solo Scriptura:  The bible needs no outside creed or teaching to interpret any part of the text
7. Internal Harmony:  There are no inconsistencies
8. Universal Applicability:  What is taught in the bible is valid for everyone at all times.
9. Inductive Method:  Everything we need to know can be known by piecing together the bible
10. Handbook Model:  The bible makes a good handbook for living using its divine knowledge

Does that sound like anyone you know?  It does to me.  I live in rural Virginia and regularly run across people for whom this is the only way to understand the bible.

Smith’s central premise is that there is Pervasive Interpretive Pluralism in Christianity and given that, Biblicism cannot be true.  Further, Biblicism itself contributes to the amount of interpretive pluralism out there in the community.  I certainly agree.  To say it in other words, if the bible is a divine representation of everything God wants to tell us and it is plain what those teachings are then why do so many people have different opinions about the truth the bible is supposed to reveal?  Good question.  The answer is that the Biblicism outlined makes the Bible impossible.  It is not the Bible we have been given.

I feel this biblicism is dangerous because:

• It sets up people to fail.  That is, they cannot succeed in seeing what biblicism says they should see.
• It makes Christianity close to being a cult, where people have to believe things that are unreasonable
• It puts people’s interpretation of the bible on the same level as the word of God
• and most importantly, it keeps people from truly discovering Christ Jesus.

Smith does not shirk responsibility and throw down the gauntlet without at least pointing us to a solution.  And the solution is the obvious one, we need to interpret and understand scripture using a Christotelic hermeneutic.  That is, we have to understand that the end purpose of scripture is Christ Jesus and we need to have Jesus be the center of our interpretation.  Yes!

Now Smith’s book has been received very well by some elements of evangelical Christianity, including me, and quite poorly by others.  Some have even said that this book takes a cut at the heart of evangelical Christianity.  One of the interesting dynamics about the reviews is that the negative ones assert that the book is not about them, but then they go on to take great offense at what is written.  Well, if the shoe fits, they need to wear it.  If you care to read this negative review, and go toward the end of the comments section you will see Smith directly engaging the blog author on the review, good stuff).

While this book is definitely academic and not really the type of thing I would recommend to the average pew sitter, I enjoyed it so much I bought 4 copies so I can share.  Give it a try!

I have been fact checking postings that some of my friends make on Facebook lately since it seems that the far right has decided that they no longer need to base anything in fact.  So I thought that I would start posting some of these informal fact checks here so they are saved in a place I can access in the future, instead of just on someone else’ wall of Facebook.  So here is the first.

Israel a Sponsor of Terror

Obama Puts Israel on ‘State Supporters of Terror’ List, Then Opens Diplomatic Relations With Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This is from the site, Conservative Crusader.

Now that is some grabber for a headline, right?  But, I have the scoop on this.  This is a case of a radical group distorting facts and lying.  The radical group in this case is the Conservative Crusader.

The official “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list has the following countries on it. Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. The following countries were once on the list and have been removed. Iraq, Libya, North Korea and South Yeman.

The article implies that Obama removed North Korea from the list while putting Israel on the list, but that is simply not true. Israel has never been on the list, and it was the Bush that removed North Korea from the list.

The article has this line in the first paragraph, and it is a direct lie “His latest outrage is the dual absurdities of, on one hand putting Israel on a list of state sponsors of terrorism”.  Here is a good article on the actual list.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Sponsors_of_Terrorism

Having said that, Israel was added to a list of 36 countries who “If a traveler from one of the countries is detained, the country’s inclusion on the list triggers a special check by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division.” Sounds like a prudent policy to me. The list includes a number of other close US allies, like Turkey, Bahrain, Morocco and Philippines, as well as nations beset by internal fighting, like Sudan and Somalia.  This comes from the site the Jerusalem Post.  Now if they are not upset about this, then why are our radical right wingers?

So that is the first part of the dual accusation in this article. This is clearly lying and fear mongering since Israel is not even remotely considered to be a state sponsor of terrorism, and, the removal of North Korea from the list was done by Bush, not Obama.

Muslim Brotherhood

The second part of the post deals with the US recognizing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  The article says:

That’s right, Obama has decided that the terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt deserve to be treated as a legitimate political body, one that official deserves recognition by the USA.

In explanation, an Obama administration official told the media that, “The political landscape in Egypt has changed, and is changing… It is in our interests to engage with all of the parties that are competing for parliament or the presidency.”

What makes this a big stretch of the truth is that it seems to be the natural thing to do.  I don’t think we make the judgment for recognition as a function of whether they believe the same thing that we believe, but we make that judgment based on their legitimacy to power in the country.  As far as I know, we do not dispute the legitimacy of the ruling party in Iran and recognize them.  Likewise, I bet we recognize the government in Russia even though we have more than a difference or two with them.

Conclusion

This article is clearly meant to instill fear in the radical right wing of the US.  That seems to be the over arching idea in right wing politics: to bring fear of others into their mind so we will not reach out to other people.  I can’t imagine anything less Christian.

With all of the worry these days about people allowing too many people into heaven, it may seem odd to consider the exact opposite.  That is, perhaps no one is going to heaven.

We have been debating and considering the nature of our soul over on Scot McKnight’s blog The Jesus Creed, and one of the ideas that is coming up is that we are somehow a composite being, not a dualistic being consisting of a body and a soul that can be separated.  More specifically, we do not have a soul that can go anywhere when we die since our body will be dead and the only way the soul can exist is with the body.

I admit that this idea rocks my perception of life and god to its core.  I have been taught and never questioned the absolute fact that we have a soul that will live on.  Only in the past year have I been able to even consider such a thing.  Let’s face it, science has never been able to come up with a way to measure or confirm the existence of an immortal soul.  But on the other hand, every major religion out there says that there is an immortal soul, right?

Well, if I am going to seriously consider that there may not be an immortal soul and be a Christian, I need to look at what the bible says about my soul.  There are many approaches that I could take to researching this, but for the first attempt I decided to explore the most immediate implication.  If there is no immortal soul that can be separate from the body, then this soul obviously cannot go to heaven when we die, right?  To examine this I set out to look at all of the instance of the word heaven in the New Testament and see if any of them said that we will ever go there.

If you want to view the raw data then take a look here. These data came from a search on Bible Gateway.com by choosing the word heaven, looking in all books from Matthew to Revelation, and use the NIV, which should be the NIV 2011 edition.  This results in 276 entries while my table only shows 271 entries.  The entries I eliminated were the three occurrences of the phrase “highest heaven” and the two occurrences where the section heading had the word “heaven” in it but did not have the it in the actual text.  I eliminated the “highest heaven” ones because when I looked at other translations and the Greek it seemed that the word heaven was not actually there, just the word “highest”.

Here are the categories I came up with. (after the jump)

KoH – The phrase Kingdom of Heaven is primarily used in Matthew, and many consider it just another way to say the phrase Kingdom of God.  Many Jewish people would not say the word God because they may inadvertently take the name of the Lord in vain, thereby sinning against God.  Therefore KoH=KoG found elsewhere in the new testament.  Further, I am not taking the phrase KoH or KoG to mean another word for heaven.  When reading the text it becomes obvious that the Kingdom of Heaven/God more refers to us being a citizen of God’s Kingdom.  Not that we are in the same place as God.

Place of God – I used this category when the authors are simply referring to the place where God is.  For example, in Matthew 6:1 it says “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Here it is clear that they are using the phrase Father in Heaven to mean God, and the “in Heaven” part is the place where God is.

Place of Storage – In some cases the bible refers to a place where you have a reward or store up riches.  For example, Matthew 6:20 says – “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.” This is not saying that you have to go to heaven to get those treasures, but they are stored there.  N.T. Wright put it this way (I am paraphrasing), “When my wife tells me that she has something special for me in the oven, it does not mean that I am supposed to physically put myself in the oven take advantage of it.”

Heaven and Earth – This category contains two types of references.  First, if the text says “heaven and earth” then that is what is hear here.  The second type of reference is when it is clear from the text that the author is referring to the place up above the earth, in other words the sky.  In that sense they are referring to heaven as a physical place up high instead of down low on the earth.  For example, Matthew 14:19 says “And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people.” Here it is clear that Jesus is looking up, that is heaven.

Heaven and Hades – There are two references to heaven that play it off as the opposite of hades.  Both of them are the same basic quote “And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day.” It does not seem to me that we can take this reference to mean that we all may go to heaven some day.  Lifted up to the heavens probably means something much more like what people do when they are making an offering to God, they lift it up to the heavens.

Place of Other Beings (e.g. angels) – These verses are referring to angels and other heavenly beings that the author assumes are in heaven.  It is not people who are there.  For example:  “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”  or  “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,”

Sin against Heaven – This is obviously another attempt to not use the name of God “I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.”

John uses *from heaven* – The author of John uses the word heaven in less obvious ways.  Some of them could have been categorized as the Heaven and Earth variety, but to avoid that I classified most occurances within John as this special John type.  Here is one use “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.” Or, “Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”” Now I suppose that I could have assumed that this was from the sky, but John is using highly theological language and I felt that it is not doing him justice to classify this purely as coming from the sky.  Regardless, he is not saying that we are going to be in heaven.

Attribute of Godly – There are places where it seems that heavenly is another way of saying something of God.  For example “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit,” I don’t think the author is saying that this is someone who went to heaven, rather it is someone who has experienced a gift from heaven.

House in Heaven – In Corinthians, Paul refers to a tent or house in heaven 3 times.  I don’t believe that it makes sense to assume that these occurrences mean that we are going to be there, but more like there is something there in heaven that we are going to get.  Here are all three occurrences.

[ Awaiting the New Body ] For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling,

These are as close as it gets in the bible to referring to any sort of place that we will eventually go.

Lastly

Third Heaven – Again, in Corinthians, Paul uses another phrase that does not appear elsewhere.  Here it is   “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows.”

So What Does This Mean

I recommend that you read through the list of the occurrences yourself. No where does it say we are going to go to heaven.

Here are some summary statistics on the occurrences.

I believe that the view of Heaven that is in the bible has largely been lost to Christianity today.  If you read through the whole list of references to Heaven you will see that God and Jesus and Angels are the only ones that are in Heaven.  We will never go there.

But we do have the opportunity to live on forever.  There is the second coming and the New Heavens and New Earth that will be created for our bodily resurrection.  That will be wonderful!

I hope to follow on with this study by examining less obvious phrases that could imply that we will ever go to heaven.  God bless.

Dave

I have had awhile to live with Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins now and am starting to feel comfortable with his message and content.  I am a fan of the audio media since I drive a minimum of one hour a day and try to get 30 minutes of exercise in too.  Along with some lounging in bed, mellowing out while eating lunch at my desk, I am nearly able to knock off his book in a day.  With just a little bit of extra time dedicated specifically to the task and it is a one day deal.

One of the very nice things about Rob’s book on audio is that he narrates the book himself.  I have experienced this in a couple of his other books and admit that it makes the experience quite nice.  Rob is an engaging speaker and his writing in the book reflects his speaking style.  I have read some folks who are rather dismayed about his style in writing, well, I suggest that you try the audio version and you will see why he writes the way he does.

The overall tenor of the book comes across as Rob sharing his view of the nature of God and the implications of that nature in the realm of what happens post-life.  He grounds most of his arguments in the bible, though I agree with some other commentators that he sometimes seems to lack precision in his exegesis.  I am going to withhold a firm conclusion on that until I have participated in some of the debates on the content.

For the most part, I feel he is making a case for a version of purgatory.  Since I was raised in the RCC I am quite familiar with this concept, but apparently there is not widespread familiarity in the protestant circles.  Purgatory is not a mechanism for getting a second chance in the after life.  It is a mechanism for being purged of our sinful selves so that we will better be able to become one with God in heaven.

Rob also makes a big deal in the book about inclusivism.  I certainly would classify myself as an inclusivist in that I don’t believe that someone has to have an overt knowledge of Jesus to be able to end up with God some day.  Look at it this way, if Gandhi, the Buddha, and all people who never had the opportunity to know about Jesus in this life are sent to hell, then I don’t think that fairly represents what is said in the bible.  Please read this section of the Wikipedia article for a compelling list of citations that make the argument for being an inclusivist.

I am especially fond of Rob Bell’s book because it will bring out the conversation of this important topic in churches around the country and around the world.  My Pastor of my last church, Western Hanover Church, refused to allow any topic like this to be discussed in the church and went so far as to kick me out of the church for trying to have a serious conversation about theology.  In his words he would say that theology divides people so we will not discuss theology.  Now that is an exercise in missing the point.  That church is a great example of one of the major points in Rob’s book.  The leadership of that church believes that everyone is going to be taken away to another place after they die, and that it is only people who profess to “believing in Jesus” that are going to go to heaven.  Therefore they refuse to do anything to help the problems in this world.

So I encourage the community of Western Hanover County to buy this book and discuss it!  It is important to the world.  Christianity is not about just sitting back and spending 1 hour a week in a church service, it is about helping our fellow man.

I picked up the N.T. Wright study guide; Paul for Everyone Romans a few weeks ago in anticipation of going through this Epistle with a study group that I have attended for the better part of a year now.  I had high expectations that Tom would present his ideas in a clear and compelling way and his book has lived up to my expectations.  The book comes in two volumes with chapters 1-8 and 9-16 separate.

Not only does Bishop Wright interpret the text for us, but he also provides his own translation of the text that is consistent with his interpretation.  I think this is key since part of the problem of Romans is that the language has changed so much and is so embedded in the culture of the day that a word for word translation is not adequate.  Here is an example from Romans 1:

I am under obligation to barbarians as well as to Greeks, you see; both to the wise and to the foolish. That’s why I’m eager to announce the good news to you, too, in Rome.  I’m not ashamed of the good news; it’s God’s power, bringing salvation to everyone who believes – to the Jew first, and also, equally; to the Greek.  This is because God’s covenant justice is unveiled in it, from faithfulness to faithfulness.  As it says in the Bible, “the just shall live by faith”.

This can be compared with the NIV 2011 translation:

I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. 15 That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,[e] just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

Tom Wright’s translation really brings out the nuance of his interpretation of the ‘righteousness of God’ as well as clarifying what is meant by Greeks and non-Greeks, for example.

Another interpretation difference that Wright makes is that he regularly interprets ‘khristos’ as King instead of the more traditional Christ.  I believe that this adds to the ease with which we are able to transition from our world into the world of the first century ancient near east with more of the political and sociological overtones being present in the text.

So I am a big fan.  Wright presents many everyday situations that relate to the text and truly feel that his rendering of Romans is accessible by everyone.  Highly recommended.

Anyone who knows me will attest of my preoccupation with Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  Big Al is a tried and true Calvinist who feels that it is important for all of us to shun anyone who feels the primary message of Jesus is Love, and most particularly to shun the likes of Rob Bell for writing a book released yesterday, Love Wins.

I have not read Rob’s book yet, but in Al Mohler’s blog, he comes down on the side that Rob Bell being a heretic with this book as proof of his slide into liberalism.  Oh my, liberalism.

If you have time, tomorrow March 17, please tune in to hear Al Mohler and his buddies try to show that Love does not win, instead hell and hate do.