Sturtz Stuff

  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...