A former colleague of mine, whose name shall go unmentioned here, was notorious for off-the-wall comments in class. (Suggested names will be permitted, and if enough get it right I'll disclose the person's name). One student of his decided to begin recording them. She gave them to me, and I'll give you some of them here.
"Who's been to Broadway where all the sin is?"
"You have to read this on your knees before God."
"There's only one book in this class and it is not the Bible."
"Has anyone forgotten that I'm the teacher?"
"I don't really cry, because I'm the macho man."
"The question is, Should good Christian women dress like Brittany Spears? I don't want to see any belly buttons in this class."
"Any teacher worth his salt should be crucified."
"I should give more As, then God would reward me."
"Will someone please call me Mr. North Park please?"
"I want to use university words, so you can go back and use them and inflict them on your parents."
"Let's talk about how ignorant we are."
"I like the way I said that! I'm in love with that."
"What am I now talking about?"
"The first time I ever tasted Snapple was like tasting pleasure for the first time."
"Can you imagine anyone more intoxicated than me? I'm intoxicated with truth."
"I'm in love with my ideas."
"Will you crucify me if I call you adolescents?"
"Every time you think bad of me as a teacher you get black marks on your soul."
"I can identify with that ... I can't tear myself away from the mirror, that marvelous vision."
"You usually don't learn things in my class."
"Heaven will be like the greatest Frat party you've ever been to."
My colleague, Brad Nassif, will be giving a paper on what he learned from evangelicalism as an Eastern Orthodox theologian at a conference in the Chicago area. Details:
Papers by Jim Stamoolis on what he learned from Orthodoxy and Nassif on what he learned from evanagelicalism.
Oct 1; 9am-noon; Kern Hall; Northern Seminary; Lombard IL; $29 early bird special.
www.growcenter.org and click on Seminars.
Brother Maynard has done his best to come up with a not-to-be-continually- updated list of women bloggers, and it is worth checking out each site.
If you haven't been to Mark Goodacre's site, it is the best place I've seen for collecting and sorting out online sites for NT studies. I've visited often myself, but don't think I've ever mentioned it here.
Three major books on the resurrection have come out in the last few years, and each of them takes us well beyond the age-old debates and evidence that are continually re-hashed and offered up as boilerplate apologetics. N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God, Alan Segal's Life after Death, and now the extensively-documented, wide-ranging, and always provocative Resurrecting Jesus by Dale Allison.
We need a conference on the resurrection to put all this together.
One of those sayings with a funny name, "The Prohibition of Foreign Missions by Jesus," comes from Matthew 10:5-6. Jesus here tells his followers to concentrate on the "lost sheep" of the house of Israel and not go off to...
If you have followed the flap that some have with NT Wright, Jimmy Dunn, EP Sanders and others about the New Perspective of Paul and justification by faith, The Blue Rajah contends Leon Morris was not unlike them well before...
I'll be off to class early tomorrow morning, so I'm posting this one tonight. And if I don't get something off early, Kerry Doyal writes me and tells me I'm sleeping in or something. In this third post on Jesus'...
This is the first in a series of posts by Brad Boydston and me on Doug Pagitt's new book, Preaching Re-imagined. We will be posting these on both Brad's site and this site, so you can go to either to...
Mike Herman of Christianity Today has notified me that Tom Brokaw will be airing Sept 9 a new program about the influence of Evangelicals in the political realm. NBC NEWS TO AIR DOCUMENTARY ON THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION SWEEPING THE COUNTRY...
Psalm 55:17 (18 in Hebrew): "Evening, morning, and noon." Notice how the English translations translate. NRSV: "Evening, morning, and noon." TNIV: "Evening, morning, and noon." NLT: "Morning, noon, and night." The NLT thinks the original order (evening begins the day...
Because of the combination of a growing student body and the retirement of two colleagues (Cal Katter, Jim Nelson), we have an opening at NPU in the Biblical and Theological Studies Department. We are looking for someone who can teach...
The Real Shepherd, the Pastor of pastors, Jesus himself, was a compassionate person whose compassion for people drove him to prayer and to action for the people. A missional orientation will only be genuinely missional to the degree that it...
We've put a poll on the sidebar to poll readers on some topics. I'd like to see how this works and we could have some fun with it. (I haven't voted.) And, it would be really nice if you'd obey...
In this series of posts, I will look at what Jesus did and said and says to us today about being missional. "Missional," if you recall, is a global term for what God is doing in this world and how...
I must tell three people a week that the emerging movement/conversation is too diverse to classify, but I continue to hear stereotypes -- one recently by a professor who has absorbed the stereotypes as his own judgment. So, if you'd...
I will be blogging shortly on preaching -- its problems, and then do a series with Brad Boydston on Doug Pagitt's new book, Preaching Re-imagined....
I've offered a mild case for inclusive translation in a previous post, and here I will use Kevin Vanhoozer's section on what "contextual theology is not" and apply his four criteria to "what dynamic equivalency is not." Some are suggesting...
Yesterday's post discussed inclusive translation for public readings, but raised the question of what translation is all about. What are we doing, or trying to do, when we translate? I will begin with James 1:20 again. Here is the original...
My son's new post on short stories is up....
In general, I believe most translations are fine -- I can read the KJV and ASV and the NASB and NIV and the NLT and the NRSV and the ESV and even something as paraphrastic as The Message and say...
My son, Lukas, now has a blog. Take all your baseball questions to him. What a hoot for us to find that one tonight!...
Just in case you didn't see this one, you might like Brad's story about his son. I know how he feels....
It is only 2005 and I am willing to stick my neck out and announce the best book on Scripture for the new century. Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine, has captured the modern discussions about propositionalist, expressivist, and the...
Just in case you haven't heard what Pat Robertson said, or want to read a nice aggregation of responses, see this site at CT. HT: Bob Robinson. The issue for me is not whether he apologized or not (and his...
Choosing a college for a young man who grew up among fundamentalist Baptists, who had preachers come through annually to tell us that the Rapture would occur any day now and why it will end by 1973, was not an...
There is no reason here to get involved in all the discussions that linguists and translation theorists get into today. Here are some thoughts we need to consider when we talk about why there are translations. First, the context of...
I got a request from an e-mailer to blog on translations. This is the first one of such posts.There are a number of good translations available, and there are advocates for each one, and they use a variety of reasons...
Perhaps this has been done and I have not seen it, but there is a need for a study of the praxis of early Christian visitation. Check the word books on episcopos/episkep-- and you will see the issue quickly become...
Yesterday I was invited to speak at an all-day Faculty Retreat for Minnehaha Academy in Minneapolis. The school has about 1200 students (K-12), and the Faculty represent a wide spectrum of the Church -- many, of course, from the Evangelical...
The following is a lecture I gave at North Park, and at a few other places and in a few different forms. It studies "liberal arts" and then encourages writing. I shared some of these in a previous blog, enough...
This week ends officially the summer break, and we head back to North Park University. Tuesday is our traditional Gathering Day -- we have breakfast and then the President (which is now "three" as we continue our search for a...
The following is a chunk of an address I gave to our Faculty. The address was called "The Professor as Scholar," and some of it was devoted to some ideas about writing. Here are some of those suggestions.First, writing is...
My son is a fiction reader, and here are his Top Ten Books: Novels. Thanks Luke. Did he miss some good ones?Top Ten (Semi)-Recent Novels1. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway- saddest bookI can ever imagine, and classic Hemingway dealing...
Every writer likes to talk about writing, the way golfers want to talk about golfing and parents want to talk about kids, and travellers talk about where they've been. I've been asked by some e-mailers and bloggers to talk about...
A list of my top ten biographies is likely to connect with nobody completely, but that is because biographies are enjoyed because they connect with us for a variety of reasons. I've listed those that I've enjoyed the most and...
3.0 General DiscussionAt this point another gap occurs in the notes. Theophilus has only a few notes but it appears that there was considerable discussion on where to shelve the Gospels. Simon and Eleazar seem to have been in the...
Covenant Companion, at this place, has an interview with Brian McLaren by Stan Friedman, and will soon be doing a piece I've written on the Emerging movement....
John Frye's got a long rant, ending with a beer, on what it means to be a pastor....
2.3 Plotinus, the Roman: Life of Jesus.Plotinus was next, and he evidently had little to add to the discussion. He stated that his counselors saw the Gospels as memoirs of some early Christians, perhaps the Apostles themselves, or as lives...
It is not uncommon to hear a theologian or a philosopher or a student say this, "We have to bracket that thought or belief or conviction, in order to work on this problem, etc.." For instance, you will sometimes hear...
We've had a look at what Aponarius, the Greek librarian had to say about the Gospels and now it is time to turn to Simon the Judean.2.2 Simon, the Judean: Haggadic BiographySimon declared immediately that, though he had never seen...
This post follows up on yesterday's post about my favorite lecture that got away.The scroll was interesting for it contained the notes of the librarian’s discussions with other experts on where to classify certain books, including such books as what...
In this our last post on a generous orthodoxy that can genuinely shape a fourth way, I want to look at a basic premise of the younger generation and a premise that many of my generation find difficult to handle.I...
In the Autumn of 1989, I gave a lecture to my Synoptic Gospels class at Trinity that got suddenly out of hand. I never intended it to, and because it did get out of hand, I never gave it again....
A genuine generous orthodoxy is conversational in style and in relationships. Conversation transcends everything we are and do. If we define "conversation" properly, it moves beyond "chatting" to become central to who we are and what we are aboutl.OrthodoxyThe first...
If you've never entered this minefield (or mindfield), be careful because it is complex. But as good an introduction as I've seen can be found in Sean du Toit's nice survey....
Here is a letter from a pastor (a former student) to his congregation out in Manhattan, KS, named Steve Ratliff. Great guy; great pastor.Five Things I Love About This ChurchBy Steve RatliffPlease rest assured that I don’t have any illusions...
I've mentioned this in a previous blog or two, and I've had enough conversations with pastors and others who'd like a brief listing of this, that I've decided to make a separate post of it so it will be more...
This series on Generous Orthodoxy, which I think remains an evangelical movement until it can find a genuine fourth way, I have looked at a number of features that may provide a basis for conversation as we look into the...
John Frye's got another good one....
This post will be the most radical I will present on generous (evangelical) orthodoxy.The best of Christian theology begins at the End, at the Eschaton, when God wraps all of history up. And this means that the best understandings of...
Today Kris and I went with family to The Lion King. Simply fantastic.An incredible display of artistic talent -- dance, singing, and color.And a very pleasing plot and story.Dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant: Via Veneto in Lincolnwoord.Risotto and a...
When I was in seminary, one of my teachers was asked "What kind of evangelical are you?" and he said, "I am a C.S. Lewis kind of evangelical?" To which he was asked yet another, "What kind is that?" and...
Check this John Frye blog. Some beautiful ideas here....
One of the more provocative books I've read from the Emergents is Doug Pagitt's Church Re-imagined (aka, Reimagining Spiritual Formation). Within the pages of that book Pagitt discusses how Solomon's Porch deals with the creeds because, as Pagitt informs us,...
Many of us have now read all three installments of Brian's story of his life, his ministry, his heart, and his writings.All I want to say is this. Brian, I am grateful for what you have done to me and...
This series of blogs on Generous (evangelical) Orthodoxy is important as I try to grapple with the challenge McLaren has given to fashion a generous orthodoxy. Tomorrow I will look at how anything "orthodox" must be "creedal," but just how...
The community focus of generous orthodoxy begins with a vibrant non-Puritanism. Puritanism was the attempt by some to "purify" the Anglican Church of unbelievers and the unorthodox and questioning and struggling, and has been one of the many movements in...
Is there a possibility for a Fourth Way for the Emerging Church? A way that lives in the story of the entire Church, including the Eastern Orthodox tradition and the Western Roman Catholic tradition, as well as the Protestant tradition,...
Brian McLaren, over at Emergent's website, is telling his story. There is no such thing as a theology that is not at the same time an autobiography, so it is nice to see this story....
A good book for understanding a Kingdom perspective on "gospel," is R.J. Sider, Good News and Good Works: A Theology for the Whole Gospel (Baker, 1993). Followed by Churches that Make a Difference....
The place to begin in mapping a generous orthodoxy is the Kingdom of God as the vision Jesus gave to us for God's redemptive work on this earth. As I said before, this map of mine is preciptiated by Brian...
In my previous blog, I suggested that the Emerging Movement is essentially an evangelical or (post) evangelical movement. My next series of blogs will make clear that it is the term "generous" that gives the Emerging Movement the opportunity to...
Brian McLaren's Generous Orthodoxy has called forth an enormous response, much of which has simply not taken the time to read the book carefully and assess it as a rhetorical wake-up call for Evangelicalism to take stock with how it...
In her hauntingly interesting book about "being lost," Rebecca Solnit (A Field Guide to Getting Lost) makes a profound observation about beauty."Beauty is often spoken of as though it only stirs lust or admiration, but the most beautiful people are...
Since the Left Behind series has come out, I have been asked hundreds of times "What do you think of the Left Behind series?" My answer has always been something like this: "I disagree completely with how they understand prophetic...
I want to continue listing books in a Top Ten series, but my next series will be on this topic:Generous (Protestant? Evangelical?) Orthodoxy....
In this series of Top Ten Book we've looked at Spiritual Formation, Missional Formation, Jesus books, the Apostle Paul, and New Testament Theology. This one is a list of my favorite books on earliest Christianity that don't really fit into...
We're in a series of blogs about Top Ten Books. We've looked at Spiritual Formation, Missional Formation, Jesus books, and the Apostle Paul. This one is on New Testament Theology, by which I mean books that take on the big...
The Lord's Prayer is an amendment of the Jewish prayer called the Qaddish. We stated in a previous post that the amendment was just like the amendment Jesus made to the Shema, where a balance between loving God and loving...
In this series of blogs on Top Ten Books, I want to cover a variety of topics. Today's is on Paul and sometime this weekend I want to post one on the Top Ten Books in Biblical Studies (overall).The Apostle...
Here's a great blog again by John Frye....
This one is impossible. Why? So many books on Jesus have been truly ground-breaking and paradigm-challenging, and I've limited myself to ten. This list is the top ten Jesus books that I like to read and from which I have...
If the Lord's Prayer is the sort of thing we pray for if we love God and love others, then it would be good to look at some specifics.In the first half of the Lord's Prayer we learn the following...
Graham Old's comment stung. Thanks Graham. The list on spiritual formation was slanted too one-sidedly toward individualism, and so I want to add a second list to balance it out. This one focuses on formation as a communal and missional...
One of the more interesting features of the Lord's Prayer is that it is both like a Jewish prayer, called the Qaddish, and at the same time unlike that same prayer.The Qaddish reads like this:Magnified and sanctified be his great...
In this series of blogs I want to look at a variety of categories and the top ten books for each category. Today we will look at Spiritual Formation.By way of preface, there are four books that look at spiritual...
What difference does it make, really, to be either Calvinist or Arminian in one's interpretation of the Warning Passages of Hebrews? There are lots of ways to talk about "difference," but at the level of concrete Christian living does it...
Everything about the Warning Passages in Hebrews hinges upon the audience: Who are they? Are they believers or not?I begin with this observation: in the history of the Church many have made a distinction between a genuine believer and a...
I've pointed to John Frye's blog before, but today his blog is especially choice. He's defining "pastor," and this by one who has pastored for years and who has written about it. After all these years, he's now working out...
Somehow I lost this blog in cyberspace, so here it is again. A very good study of what it means to be missional as found at Andrew Hamilton's site....
The issues in the Warning Passages in Hebrews eventually come down to (1) what the sin is that the author is so concerned about and (2) who the audience is. In this post, I'll look at the sin that concerns...
The Warning Passages of Hebrews, which have vexed both ordinary Christians and professional scholars for centuries, have four elements: the audience, the sin, the exhortation, and the consequences. Our blog today will look at the exhortation. In my own journey,...
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