Sturtz Stuff

Luke 2:8-19: And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,   14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” 15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” 16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in th...

Tim Keller's Gospel in Life Study Guide expounds upon the difference between religion and the gospel. The following is the excerpt from page 16. While I like things like this I would add that I would agree with William Cavanaugh's postion found in his book The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict that the word "religion" is a made up word and difficult to define. However, I like the chart.

  Renowned Author and speaker N.T. Wright sits down with J.D. Walt, Maxie Dunnam and Ben Witherington III to talk about his view on justification and salvation. In part two of this four part series, Wright explains how many people have misread Paul's letters in light of justification and salvation.    

  Ran across this blog from Richard Beck . Thought it was good, funny and truthful. Something worth sharing. Our bible class at church recently wrapped up a series on 1 Thessalonians, a study led by my ACU colleague Trevor Thompson. Trevor is a historian and NT scholar in our College of Biblical Studies. One of the texts we wrestled with is 1 Thessalonians 4.3-4. From the NIV: It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable... In the NIV there is a note attached to the phrase "control your own body." The note reads: Or learn to live with your own wife; or learn to acquire a wife Obviously, there is some interpretive ambiguity here. Is Paul saying "learn to control your body" or is he saying "learn to live with your wife" or is he saying "go acquire a wife"? The translation "go acquire a w...

Unconventional Thanksgiving Quote From G.K. Chesterton’s Autobiography, Chapter XVI: “The God With The Golden Key” I can scarcely think of a better–albeit unconventional–note for Thanksgiving than this one, from the salty rhetorical cleverness of G.K. Chesterton:   “… A whole generation has been taught to talk nonsense at the top of its voice about having ‘a right to life’ and ‘a right to experience’ and ‘a right to happiness.’ The lucid thinkers who talk like this generally wind up their assertion of all these extraordinary rights, by saying that there is no such thing as right and wrong . It is a little difficult, in that case, to speculate on where their rights came from; but I, at least, leaned more and more to the old philosophy which said that their real rights came from where the dandelion came from; and that they will never value either [the rights or the flower] without recognising its source… [But] the first thing the casual critic will say is ‘What nonsen...

Babylon Revisited: How Violent Myths Resurface Today       By Walter Wink Violence is the ethos of our times. It is the spirituality of the modern world. What is generally overlooked is that violence is accorded the status of a religion, demanding from its devotees an absolute obedience-unto-death. Its followers are not aware that the devotion they pay to violence is a form of religious piety, however. Violence is so successful as a myth precisely because it does not appear to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It is what works. It seems inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts. It is embraced with equal alacrity by people on the Left and on the Right, by religious liberals as well as religious conservatives. That threat of violence, it is believed, is alone able to deter aggressors. It secured u...

David Lipscomb (1831 –1917) was a minister, editor, and educator in the American Restoration Movement . Lipscomb is known for many achievements. Some of his achievements include publishing the Gospel Advocate and the founding of Lipscomb University . Lipscomb was greatly influenced by the Restoration Movement minister Tolbert Fanning , the horror of the Civil War and Anabaptist teachings which underlay much of Restoration Movement thinking. Why did Lipscomb object to voting? According to Lipscomb voting is a form of force and, thus, a form of violence. More, voting embroils the church in the conflict between the political parties. That is, the sight of Republican Christians fighting against Democratic Christians is a vision antithetical to the Kingdom of God. Lipscomb wrote: [T]o vote or use the civil power is to use force and carnal weapons. Christians cannot use these. To do so is to do evil that good may come. This is specially forbidden to Christians. ...

The book by Rachel Evens titled " A Year of Biblical Womanhood " is not out yet but is already causing a stir. I was aware that she was in the process of writing about her experiment to earnestly try and live out literally (in the flat) what the Bible commands of women. Rachel Evens book does not come out until October 30 so I offer the link to Roger Olson's blog where he reviews his advanced copy. This topic of trying to be a "Biblical women" seems to touch on a frustration that many Christian women and men sense. That often the stereotypes of men and women are placed on top of scripture and then told this is what it means to be a Biblical man or women. Thus all real Christian women are "submissive" which is code for meaning something like the man of the house gets to do what he wants when he wants  and all real men are warriors which is code for meaning something like real men hunt. It seems to me that many Christian men and women are all confused...

Mark Goodacre, Associate Professor of Religion at Duke, recently posted some updated stuff about the so called "Jesus Wife" fragment. He offers some solid research and evidence that it is mostly likely a modern day forgery.  Here is what was posted on October 11, 2012 by Mark Goodacre: If you would like to view this post on Mark Goodacre's blog then click here . Just when you might have thought that the story of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife was dying down, there is another twist in the tale. Andrew Bernhard has just published the following piece: How The Gospel of Jesus' Wife Might Have Been Forged: A Tentative Proposal I am going to cut to the chase and offer an "executive summary" of what I regard as the most important contention:: Line 1 of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife fragment copies a typo from a website interlinear of Coptic Thomas And now a little more detail. One of the difficulties with the Gospel of Jesus' Wife fragment is th...

Who can be against progress? G.K. Chesterton points out the problem. The problem with progress is that it does not mean anything. You cannot have progress unless you have established what your goal is. Progress itself cannot be a goal. Progress cannot be an ideal. Chesterton says, the word “is simply a comparative of which we have not settled on the superlative.” In Heretics (1908) pages 16-17 Chesterton writes: Nobody has any business to use the word “progress” unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals. Nobody can be progressive without being doctrinal; I might almost say that nobody can be progressive without being infallible at any rate, without believing in some infallibility. For progress by its very name indicates a direction; and the moment we are in the least doubtful about the direction, we become in the same degree doubtful about the progress. Never perhaps since the beginning of the world has there been an age that had less right to use the word “pr...

Here is a great blog post from Richard Beck a professor at Abilene Christian University . I recently did a class here at ACU with my friend and colleague David McAnulty about the challenges of religious belief today. In telling my part of the story (some of which I've discussed before on this blog) I began with the analysis of Peter Berger and Anton Zinderveld in their book In Praise of Doubt . In the book Berger and Zinderveld evaluate "secularization theory," the notion that as modernity advances people will give up religious belief and become "secular." According to Berger and Zinderveld if we look at the evidence secularization theory has been falsified. Belief continues to flourish in modernity. What has happened in modernity, argue Berger and Zinderveld, is not secularization but plurality . What we see around us isn't a binary choice between faith and unfaith . Rather, we face choices amongst faith s , unbelief being one choic...

Prof. Francis Watson (Durham) has just produced an intriguing line-by-line analysis of the Coptic of the newly-publicized “Jesus’ Wife” fragment, in which he argues that it is a collage of phrases, mainly from the Gospel of Thomas, by some modern forger/prankster. You can read the essay here .

In Acts 8 a little known disciple named Philip is told to take a southern dessert road down to the city of Gaza.    Gaza, at this time, was a city that had been destroyed 100 years earlier and would not be rebuilt for another 30 years after this moment. This means that Philip was sent to a city that did not exist. Gaza was a ghost town. It was also about 50 miles southwest of Jerusalem which equals about a solid two day walk. It is fascinating to look at this story and see that this is sometimes how God works. Sometimes he will plant in us some vision, direction or hunch. A hunch that we are to go someplace and do something that does not always come across as the best strategy. Philip is being sent to a ghost town which does not sound like the best strategy. As Philip journeys to Gaza he discovers that the real goal was not Gaza but who he meets on the road. Along the route to Gaza Philip meets an Ethiopian, shares the good news, performs a baptism and then seems to vanis...

 Here is a recent blog post by Larry Hurtado on the so called "Jesus' wife" text that has been announced. Larry is a New Testament and Christian origins scholar. Here is his take on the Jesus wife buisness from his blog .  It would be helpful to other scholars to have Prof. King’s full paper, but in the meantime, the Harvard Divinity School page on the item gives a proposed transcription, translation, and a “Q&A” section as well here . For her own personal, initial “take” on the item by a respected scholar in ancient “gnostic” texts, see April DeConick’s blog posting here . Aside from the need to have further analysis of the likely date and authenticitity of the fragment, there are also a few other matters that make some of the news claims . . . exaggerated, or at least premature. The Coptic of line 4 of the text appears to have Jesus referring to “my wife/woman”, but it is actually not explicit that this refers to the “Mary” mentioned in the preceding line as “...

In Acts 6 some false witnesses have been produced against Stephen. Stephen has been selected, along with seven other men, to oversee the daily distribution of food (also see Acts 2). Acts 6 tells us that Stephen has been doing some amazing things beyond distributing food. Stephen has been preaching about Jesus, debating fellow Jews and performing acts of healing. Those feeling threatened by Stephen’s message and actions have brought him before the Sanhedrin to answer the charges leveled against him. The Sanhedrin is the most powerful Jewish court at the time. They are like the Supreme Court and have the power to issue the death penalty. When Stephen is brought before the Sanhedrin he is asked “Are these charges true?” (Acts 7:1). What is interesting is that the charges are not true. Stephen could answer the question with a simple “no”.   Instead Stephen produces the second longest sermon in the whole Bible and the longest sermon in the book of Acts. Stephen answers their quest...

Here is a great read from Roger Olson on the issue of the priesthood of all believers. He is mostly addressing his writing towards those of the Baptist tradition. While churches connected to the Restoration Movement like the Indep. Christian Churches and Churches of Christ would shutter to know . . . but the Baptist tradition and the Restoration Movement were and are both heavily influenced by the Anabaptists. Thus while the article is addressed to Baptists it also hits home with those of us within the Restoration Movement. Below is the article. Click here to go to the original post by Roger Olson. The priesthood of the believer, of every believer equally, is one of the cornerstones of Baptist doctrine and practice. As we can see from 1 Peter 2:9 it is also a biblical doctrine. The New Testament calls Christians “a royal priesthood” without exceptions. But today there is a great deal of confusion about this bedrock Baptist belief. What does it mean? How doe...