8/21/2018

How many English translations of the Bible do we need? New translations appear at a dizzying pace, each one promising superior accuracy and readability. The profusion of translations is evidence that they will all sell at a brisk pace – publishers publish what they think people will buy.

8/7/2018

Fall reading selection: Future of Mainline Protestantism

7/24/2018

Some sermons are like easy listening music on the FM dial – smooth, comforting, in one ear and out the other. Other sermons are unsettling – more like a challenging piece from a contemporary composer on the classical music station. Michael Eric Dyson’s sermon is not easy listening; like modern symphonic music it is bold, taxing, thought-provoking.

7/10/2018

For centuries, American Protestants read the Authorized Version of the Bible (better known as the King James Version). In the mid-twentieth century a revision of the KJV appeared: The Revised Standard Version. The RSV changed Elizabethan language to contemporary English and made use of better Greek manuscripts. The RSV was itself revised 40 years later as The New Revised Standard Version – NRSV. But, in addition to KJV, RSV, and NRSV, we now have the NIV, TNIV, ESV, NEB, REB, TEV, CEB, JB, NJB, NKJV, and more, in addition to paraphrases such as J.B. Phillips, the Living Bible, and The Message.

6/29/2018

Augustine’s City of God is a tour de force, tracing the pilgrim City of God’s movement among the ungodly. Augustine examines the course of the two cities created by two loves. “The one, therefore, glories in itself, the other in the Lord; the one seeks glory from men, the other finds its highest glory in God, the Witness of our conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, “Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.” (XIV,28)

5/15/2018

George Marsden has not written a biography of a person, but the life of a book. His biography of Mere Christianity is one of a series, “Lives of Great Religious Books” published by Princeton University Press. Included in the series are “biographies” of Augustine’s Confessions, Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, Calvin’s Institutes, and Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, as well as other religious classics.

4/4/2018

The sacraments have been referred to as “means of grace.” The term has fallen out of theological fashion because it is ambiguous and open to misunderstanding. Are Baptism and Eucharist instruments of grace? vehicles of grace? conveyors of grace? elicitors of grace? symbols of grace? reminders of grace? Do sacraments do something, or do they mean something, or do they indicate something, are they solely something?

3/6/2018

The 500^th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation has come and gone, with little fanfare and minimal observance. It is worth noting that 2017 was the anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

2/12/2018