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Romans 13 as death penalty proof-text
There’ve been a variety of discussions and arguments among Christians in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s execution about whether it’s proper for them to support capital punishment. Invariably, someone trots out Romans 13 as a proof-text for the pro-death penalty side of the argument: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there…
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Reporting from the road
I’m in Atlanta, traveling for work, which, ironically, gives me more time to blog since I’m sitting here in a hotel room by myself with nothing to do. Interestingly, I seem to be here at the same time that this is going on, so my hotel is full of well-scrubbed Baptist kids walking around with…
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Prayer as remembrance
Liturgical scholar Paul F. Bradshaw’s Two Ways of Praying argues for a reconnection between liturgy and spirituality which he contends have been separated in the Christian West. One of the reasons for this, he thinks, is that Christians have often been unclear about what exactly they’re doing when they pray. This is partly because there…
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Jesus the Jew and Christian practice
UPDATE: Welcome, readers of Theolog! I have responded to Jason Byassee’s comments here. Lutheran Zephyr and Derek the Ænglican already have good comments on this article by Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Professor Levine argues for a stronger recognition of the essential Jewishness of Jesus by the Christian community,…
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Just what I always wanted!
An Archbishop of Canterbury Christmas tree ornament! One of our cooler Christmas gifts, courtesy of my brother-in-law and his wife, who took a trip to Merry ole England this fall.
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The year in book blogging
Inspired by a post from Elliot, I thought it might be neat to collect in one post the year’s book blogging here at VI. January: Keith Ward, What the Bible Really Teaches (here, here and here) Rowan Greer, Christian Hope and Christian Life (here and here) Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (here and here) February:…
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Animal cloning and "granting things their space"
I don’t suppose it’ll come as a surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I think that cloning animals for meat and milk is a bad idea. Leaving aside the health considerations, what bothers me is that it’s one more step in reducing animals (and, by implication, the rest of nature) to the status…
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A uniter, not a divider
Gerald Ford, R.I.P. I’d say the pardoning of Nixon is outweighed by the fact that he presided over my birth, surely a great boon to the Republic. More substantively, he doesn’t seem to have done nearly as much active harm during my lifetime as a number other presidents I can think of. For one thing,…
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Against keeping Christmas to ourselves
Two worthy Christmas posts. First, from Siris: And so we see the significance of Christmas. Annunciation is the Feast of the Incarnation, the Word made flesh; Epiphany is the Feast of His manifestation to the world as flesh. But Christmas grabs us, seizes us, because it is the Feast of His Humility, that he did…
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Will the last Christians to leave the Middle East turn out the lights?
Christians in the Middle East are being put at risk by the “short-sighted” and “ignorant” policy on Iraq of Britain and its allies, the leader of the world’s Anglicans has said. Doctor Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warned Saturday that Christians could be chased out of the region due the hostility created by the…
