Watch out for that 12%

In an interview on NBC’s Today Show with Matt Lauer, a Newsweek representative discussed the cover story for this week’s issue, “In Search of the Spiritual.” The feature is based on a Newsweek/Beliefnet poll focusing on spirituality and religious practice in America. Continue Reading...

Water is thicker than blood

In the current edition of The Weekly Messenger (no longer active), John H. Armstrong examines the role of pastor in the Protestant church. In “Getting the Role of Pastor Right Again,” he writes, For a long time I have had serious doubts about many of the models of pastoral ministry used and promoted in the West. Continue Reading...

Godless science and natural revelation

This week’s commentary by David Michael Phelps cites a University of Chicago study showing “that seventy-six percent of physicians believe in God, and fifty-five percent say their faith influences their medical practice.” Continue Reading...

The scientific study of consciousness

An article posted today at LiveScience explores the problems facing scientists who attempt to explain human consciousness in terms of human disciplines like physics or biology. According to the story, “Roger Penrose, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University, believes that if a ‘theory of everything’ is ever developed in physics to explain all the known phenomena in the universe, it should at least partially account for consciousness.” Continue Reading...

Tolerant evangelism

The abstract from an article in the latest issue of Dutch Crossing: A Journal of Low Countries, Volume 28, numbers 1/2 (Summer/Winter 2004), published by the Association for Low Countries Studies in Great Britain and Ireland: Edward Dutton, “Tolerant Evangelism. Continue Reading...

Culture of litigation infects the Church

The current issue of Christianity Today magazine examines the lack of discipline in evangelical churches, and is presenting the themed articles in a series on its website. The litigious nature of American culture has become one of the great contributing factors to the decline of church discipline. Continue Reading...

The hermeneutical spiral

Mr. Phelps takes issue with my characterization of Stanley Fish’s position as amounting “to a philosophical denial of realism.” Let me first digress a bit and place this comment within the larger context of my post. Continue Reading...

Virtual world project

For a very cool tool for anyone interested in archaeology, Biblical studies, or ANE history, check out The Virtual World Project hosted by Creighton University. To see the site I worked on in the summer of 1999, check out Israel: Galilee: Bethsaida (on the north side of the Sea of Galilee). Continue Reading...

The importance of the Pastoral ministry

In the words of puritan Samuel Hieron, in the care of a bad Miller we loose but our meale, of the Farrier but our horse, of the Taylour but our garment, of the Lawyer but our money, of the Physitian but our bodyes: but in the hands of an vnfaithfull minister a man looseth his soule and his everlasting portion in heaven. Continue Reading...

A homiletical emergency

Here’s a valuable article highlighting the author’s experience with Augustine during “a homiletical emergency.” David Neff writes in “Preaching Augustine” that the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) “is heavily used by college and university teachers who want to assign classic spiritual reading without adding to their students’ already hefty textbook bills. Continue Reading...