Regnum Caelorum

Mike Erre I finished this book a little while ago, but for some reason, I'm just getting around to blogging about it. The subtitle of this book asks the question, "Have we tamed the Son of God to fit our lifestyle?" I doubt a single book published on the subject has answered "no" to that question, so it's not surprising that the theme of this book is that we have taken the Jesus of the Scriptures and conformed him into the image of a nice, happy Jesus that fits into the values of suburban culture. There's really nothing ground breaking or revolutionary about this book. The ideas contained in it have been written by others for years, and many are common critiques of evangelicalism even from its staunchest defenders. For instance, the chapter entitled "The Danger of Theology" gives the same distinction between knowing God and knowing about God that has been explained by J. I. Packer and countless others within evangelicalism. At the same time...

Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scripture Richard B. Hays R. B. Hays has written a book detailing the narrative substructure of Paul's letters. He argues with convincing clarity that when Paul quotes or cites Old Testament texts, he is not just prooftexting his own arguments. Rather, he is drawing them in, often quite subtly, to the narrative context of the Old Testament quotation. He may only cite one verse, but he will continue to use vocabulary from the Old Testament narrative to situate his readers within that narrative and give his audiences both identity and exhortation on the ground of their place in Israel's story. Hays has done a remarkable job, and reading this book ought to cause us to have our own imaginations "converted" as we read both Paul and the New Testament. Hays notes that Paul does not quote the Law to command his readers, even when those laws would seem applicable. Rather, he draws them in to Israel's story, situates them in their pr...

I woke up this morning to the Today Show telling me that they found the tomb of Jesus, his wife and son. Wow. I waited for the historian or archaeologist who made this discovery and found out it was James Cameron, the movie director who made Titanic . This "new" discovery has been around since 1980, and never was thought to amount to anything until Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici got their hands on it. Here's my take on it: Suppose I'm looking for a guy by the name of John. I know he died a few decades ago, but I can't find his body. I know him to be a poor, unmarried man from Baltimore with no children. In my search I happen to find a family tomb in Washington D.C. where there's a casket with John's first name (I can barely make it out, but I think it's "John") and also the first name of his father. Then I find in the tomb another casket with his mother's first name on it as well as a casket with the name of one of his siblings. But the...