think hard, think well

"As Nathan Hatch and Mark Noll have pointed out, one of the peculiarities of American evangelicalism is that its theological disputes are often settled in the court of popular opinion. Whereas evangelicals appeal to the ‘Bible alone’ for authority, they lack adequate mechanisms for settling differences on how the Bible is to be understood. Typically having weak views on the church or of central ecclesiastical authority, they cannot depend on synods or councils to adjudicate their disagreements. Nor is there any clear principle for establishing the authority of the expert theologians. The authority of anyone in most of evangelicalism thus depends on winning popular support. Losers and disputes among theologians, or among competitors for theological influence, can always go to the court of popular opinion…. Popular opinion has thus functioned as the evangelical pope, the ultimate court of appeal. Vox populi vox papae. Or perhaps popular opinion has more often provided, as in the late Middle Ages, multiple popes, each denouncing the others."

George Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 291.

In MT 1 Sam 1:11, Hannah vows to YHWH that a razor would never touch her son’s head (should YHWH give her a son). But the LXX (1 Kgdms 1:11) contains a plus: that her son would never drink wine or strong drink. Continue reading →

“The point is not whether 1 Sam 31 and 2 Sam 1 originate from one source or two, but that this line of inquiry does not help us to understand the story. For regardless of its origin, the material has been reworked into an integrated narrative–one that must be understood as it stands now. To unravel it into its (hypothetical) original sources is to destroy it. Continue reading →

My sister has been posting chapters from her book, A Wandering God Was My Father. Check out her site, and share with friends if you enjoy it! Here’s a brilliant excerpt from her latest chapter:

As the god watched Hagar trembling by the spring, he felt spasms in his own fingers and legs, and his gut began to match the tumult in Hagar’s pregnant belly. This was his lot now, ever since the humans he had made from dirt and wind had turned their faces from him. The moment his breath had filled their clay lungs and turned them into flesh, a thread between their organic bodies and his own pneumatic being formed. He felt every pulse, each tremor riddling the human body. When he’d cursed humans with toil and pain in childbearing, he had known that every day after, he would be sweating and writhing and toiling along with them, his spirit striving with humans forever.

I was at a birthday party for one of my son’s friends last week, and got into an interesting conversation about tithing. One of the moms explained that her church has provided a giving page on its website for tithing, and also provided a direct-deposit option for recurring giving. She also described a church in a more hip area that appeals to “the younger folks” by inviting folks to whip out their phones and give via app during the service while the traditional pass-the-plate offering is being held. Continue reading →

“Although moderns tend to regard genealogy as a type of science—a cataloging of people according to precise biological relationships—it can also function as social science, or even as art. Biblical genealogies do not simply assemble real or purported facts. They interpret the world. And in Genesis they provide a framework essential for understanding the whole of the book and everything that comes after” (43).

Mbuvi, Amanda Beckenstein. Belonging in Genesis: Biblical Israel and the Politics of Identity Formation. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016.