Christ and Culture Revisited: Carson’s Summary of Niebuhr’s Taxonomy (2)
2. The Christ of Culture Summary: Christians who take this view "seek to maintain community with all believers. Yet they seem equally at home in the community of culture" (Niebuhr, 83). Exemplars (some partial): Gnostics, Abélard, culture-Protestantism, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson, Schleiermacher, Emerson, F.D. Maurice, Albert Ritschl, Protestant liberalism. Example: "Formally, Abélard merely quarrels with the church's way of stating the faith; in reality, 'he reduces it to...
Christ and Culture Revisited: Carson’s Summary of Niebuhr’s Taxonomy (1)
Here is a summary of Carson's summary of what is, in sum, the most influential taxonomy of relationships Christians take to culture. I'm speaking, of course, of H. Richard Niebuhr's book Christ and Culture. And Carson's book is, of course, Christ and Culture Revisited. Note: Some exemplars are such only partially, and some are added by Carson to Niebuhr's list. 1. Christ against Culture Summary: This view "uncompromisingly affirms the sole authority of Christ over the Christian and resolutely...
How Can We Know That We Know What We Know?
Here is a quick summary of some of N.T. Wright's epistemological proposal in his 1992 The New Testament and the People of God. The excerpts below are fairly standard stuff in evangelicalism now, I'd say, but I found all of it quite helpful. After this material Wright gets a little more controversial with his proposals about the importance of story. This is all part of Part 2, "Tools for the Task": “A fresh examination of what a contemporary Christian literary, historical, and theological...
Proverbs 20:11
Legend: "PN:" = "Personal Note" Proverbs 20:11 reads in the KJV, Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right. But translations can differ widely in their rendering of this verse. It seems like the NET and HCSB are safe in rendering נער ("child" in the KJV) if you look at how the word is used not just in Proverbs but in the rest of the Bible—though the word has an even broader range (from baby Moses to 13-year-old Ishmael to 17-year-old Joseph and...
Reader’s Hebrew Bible from Zondervan
If you know Hebrew (or are learning), you've got to check this out. I know the author—he's a few feet from me at this moment! He asked me to help a bit with production of the volume, but I was studying for comps... Anyway, check it out.