This engaging reconstruction of Jesus’ life provides an up-to-date critical overview of the historical Jesus debate, covering the Jewishness of Jesus’ teaching, the foundation of the earliest groups of his followers, and the location of Jesus within his wider context.
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What is seldom noticed by traditional Christians is that consignment to hell is not the payback for “sin”; it is the consequence of not believing that Jesus was the one Anointed by God to return the world to God’s covenantal rule. If you don’t believe Jesus was the one – according to Matthew – you won’t follow Jesus’ teachings, and when the transformation comes, you will be found in the company of the goats.
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The process the early followers of Jesus went through that resulted in the Church of Jesus Christ is fairly long, fairly obscure, and full of pitfalls for those who seek to recreate it.
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Shortly before his deadly rampage in Norway in July, Anders Behring Breivik posted a rambling Christian jihadist manifesto on his Facebook page. Within days, a self-professed Christian fundamentalist who blogs online claimed the mass murderer was no Christian because he “supports Darwinism and human logic, demonstrating a rationalist worldview rather than a Christian one.” Uh-oh. While I would also identify myself as some kind of “Christian,” I couldn’t resemble either of these two characters less. So what kinds of beliefs and behaviors do I accept and refute to describe my own “Christian” identity? What kind of a “Christian” am I? …
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I had the opportunity to do some extra reading this summer and I want to recommend three books that I found uniquely helpful and interesting. Two of these are big picture kinds of books and the other is a more scholarly but still a relatively easy read and simply fascinating.
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The world has grown too small and the stakes for mankind have grown too high for any of us to engage our faithas if our understanding of God represents the only way God s presence may be known in the world.
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In the last two centuries, theologians have been abandoning the view of divine revelation. This move has radically changed, if not actually rendered obsolete, the role once played by confessions and creeds.
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Paul’s interpretation of who Jesus was probably never crossed paths with the later gospel writers. Or, if it did, most of his theology was misunderstood.
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I would like to share a little story. It is a story that has been told before but does not get told often enough. I am not certain that it happened this way but I know that it is true.
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The events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth did not happen in a vacuum, nor are these events history as history is now defined.
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You have become the most widely known person in the world. And this in spite of the fact that, as my six-year old granddaughter said a few years ago, ‘You don’t hear much about Jesus these days!’
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Jesus fully embodied the Christ. Who and what is Christ? A woman named Anne-Marie once asked me what I believed the second coming meant. Who Christ and Jesus are is communicated in my response to Anne-Marie. “I’m …
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The events and characters that are described in Revelation are infused with a certain fundamental archetypal significance that can be applied to a wide array of individuals and situations—including ones in the present-day.
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Faith is not about getting our doctrines right. Nobody gets the doctrines right. It’s about doing the right things.
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Matthew 16:13-28; Romans 6:5-11 This commentary is going directly through Matthew without regard for the traditional Christian liturgical year, so will not skip to the end of the gospel to Jesus’ “great commission” to “make followers of …
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Even where two or three are gathered, if the spirit is present- that spirit of fire, and power, and passion, and love- then amazing things will happen. Unexpected things.
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Gregory C. Jenks latest book, The Once and Future Bible, offers lessons on making the bible relevant for today’s progressive believers.
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I reject the virgin birth, sinless life, divinity, and physical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. And that’s just a short list of the traditional Christian doctrines that I don’t buy into. There are a lot of open-minded, …
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