Table is full for the Sept. 24 blog dinner in Durham. Many thanks to all responded, and apologies to those who didn’t make it this time. There will definitely be a next time!
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2018
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August 9, 2018
Allow me to take advantage of this “time-out” to ask a pedagogical question. I am not an academic but I do conduct seminars and training in the IT field. My students are much older than yours but I am frequently flabbergasted by the thoughtlessness and outright rudeness of people when it comes to their personal technology in class. Soooo..what is your policy towards cell phones and tablets etc in class? Any advice?
Thanks!
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August 10, 2018
`”My strong conviction is that whether one is a believer or not, if one wants to discuss what probably happened in the past, it is never appropriate or even possible to say that miracles have happened. That is not – absolutely is not – because of a secular, anti-supernaturalist bias (as some apologists gleefully love to claim). I had the same view even when …” Bart
O, they happened Bart and still do.
As we discuss the history of early Christianity with anyone who refuses to acknowledge that the miracles as described in the N.T. could have happened, we have to conclude that he/she is not willing to examine all of the information it presents. Those persons are not capable of having a debate about its reliability, its accuracy, its fundamental message. They eliminate much of its contents right off the bat. Therefore, we are not even reviewing the same information.
To define them as Biblical scholars is a misnomer. Let me urge them to create their own separate volume with all references to the miraculous removed. Then, critique/study/examine that information. I do not say that as one who knows without a doubt that the miracles occurred as recorded, though the higher critics may smile condescendingly at me for saying so. I didn’t believe in miracles, either, B.C. The mere suggestion was ridiculous to me. A joke. Pitiful. Don’t waste your breath. Back off, Pal! I say that because the N.T. as we know it, and as it has been preserved for us over the centuries, obviously includes many, many miracles. Jesus, the Son of God, is the star of the show and He still performs miracles right this second. (Just ask Him) He lives in me and you. If you don’t believe that is possible, that’s fine. Write your own book. Just don’t say it is the N.T.
If the mysteries surrounding our existence, the universe and how everything got here are not sufficient reasons to cause you to consider the possibility that God exists, maybe you are too wise, and powerful and too good for God. Remember, God chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; the weak things of the world to shame the strong… the lowly and despised things of the world, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are,…
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August 10, 2018
What do you think about taking days off from the blog last week of August through Labor Day and 7 days off first week of January?
Keeping up with you is exhausting.
It would give some of us a chance to catch up by either reading more of your books or posts we didn’t have time to think about. -
August 10, 2018
If God is, He can supervise the writings about His Son and clearly He did in the records contained in the N.T.
In reality there were several people who helped to write it and God was their editor. It may be woven together chronologically–the Gospels–using everything in them to tell the complete story. Trying to unravel what they say individually and then trying to interpret each one as though it is a complete account of His life leads inevitably to a skewed view. They were intended to be used together. That’s why it makes no difference who wrote them. They are meant to be combined, which is exactly what most students of the N.T. do anyhow. Trying to make each one tell the complete story about Christ alone, separately, would be similar to isolating each chapter to try to understand the entire gospel through it.
Again, using each one on its own, is not what we do anyway. We take all four Gospels, the letters, Acts and Revelation, to see, to get the complete and total picture. At least most of us do and it is the reason we have a complete canon that includes all of them. We must compare verse with verse balancing what the N.T. describes with everything else it says (which is exactly what we do, anyway!)
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