Kevin Bauder recently wrote a series of articles for his "In the Nick of Time" column "Fundamentalism and Scholarship." This paragraph stood out to me as one of the key areas of my own weakness: If we want to produce theological scholars, then we must provide training in the skills that scholars require. This is the role of academic institutions and Ph.D. programs. During graduate and especially postgraduate education, would-be scholars must learn to navigate the literature within their...

The largest Anglican church in Canada has pulled out of the national church and put itself under the authority of a parallel conservative body. The "tipping point" was their diocese's support of same-sex blessings, but I was very pleased with this National Post article for letting the putative dissidents explain their rationale: they left because of their view of Scripture and not because of homophobia. In that light, this quotation from a liberal partisan really struck me: Paul Feheley,...

In my previous post on Textual Optimism: A Critique of the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament by Kent W. Clarke (part of the JSNT monograph series now edited by Stanley Porter), I summarized some of Clarke's statistics on the general upgrade from D to C, C to B, and B to A in the variant rating system. In my subsequent reading, Clarke has charged that the overall upgrade in textual quality is made even more stark because the letter rating definitions themselves were upgraded from...

What is the Catholic view of salvation? Not all Catholics agree, and, sadly, the great majority of Catholics I have met simply do not know what their church's (official) view is. But Avery Dulles, S.J., a cardinal and a professor of religion at (Jesuit) Fordham University, is as authoritative a voice as any but the pope, I would think. Dulles has this to say about salvation in a recent First Things article: “Catholics can be saved if they believe the Word of God as taught by the Church and if...