CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

James C. Schaap's blog

Ten years ago maybe, my in-laws, then in their seventies, told us that they told the pastor that once in awhile they'd like to sing the old songs, too. They're not pushy people, believe me. The church had gone wholesale to the new and fresh "praise 'n worship" genre, and they simply got a little tired of being left out.

The pastor's patronizing response to the old folks was that, well, sometimes it was simply necessary to change with the times.

I'm sure my father-in-law never spit right there--after all the pastor was the dominie--but when we came around the next time, he unloaded. "Change?" he said. "I started farming with horses, didn't have indoor plumbing until the late 50s. He's telling me about change?"... READ MORE.

James McGrath's blog

Academic discussions of the subject of the place of Jesus' birth has been spreading Christmas cheer throughout the biblioblogosphere. Mark Goodacre's podcast started it off, and Doug Chaplin, +Wrong and I all responded in different ways. The +Wrong discussion is particularly interesting since it offered examples of individuals who became known as "NAME 0f PLACE" where the place was not where they were born; to which Steph responded by pointing out that in such cases the place they were associated with was a place they became famous, and it is not clear that "Jesus of Nazareth" fits that category. (An example that comes to mind from a later time is Rumi).

Historians are understandably skeptical and must consider the possibility that Jesus was associated with Bethlehem later. Because of the joint convictions that (a) Jesus was the Messiah, and (b) the Messiah has to come from Bethlehem, some Christians could well have drawn the conclusion that Jesus must have been from Bethlehem.... READ MORE.

Adam Copeland's blog

When I was in high school and chatting with a teacher about our churches, he said “I don’t think I could ever respect a pastor who didn’t know Greek and Hebrew.” That statement stuck with me. Heck, it probably kept me going through some rather challenging times in both my Greek and Hebrew courses.

For a few years now, however, I’ve been wondering how much credence my teacher’s comment really has. I preached about forty sermons in Scotland two years ago without my Greek or Hebrew resources over there (I opted to take golf clubs, not books ;) ). I didn’t get too many complaints from church members about my lack of declining Greek nouns or parsing Hebrew verbs.

Now, though, I have my Greek and Hebrew books on my new pastor’s study bookshelf, but I haven’t been inclined to pull them out. Sure, I could check out a perplexing phrase in a text if I really wanted to, but I just rarely ever want to. So I wonder, what’s the rub: am I a sermon writing slacker or reality claiming time-manager? .... READ MORE.

Allan R. Bevere's blog

Some are getting rather worked up one way or another over the decision to discontinue the publication of the TNIV Bible. Scot McKnight has some great thoughts on "translation tribalism" (parts 1 & 2). In one respect I suppose all the emotion is understandable; we are after all talking about the Bible and people want to read a translation they can trust, but, as Scot notes, we tend to divide up into camps and each camp over-states why translations other than their favorites are deficient.

As I traverse the worlds of scholarship and pastoral ministry, I have a dual concern when it comes to Bible translations and reading the Bible in general. As one who works in the biblical languages, I have a concern that Bible study is based on competent versions of the Bible. To say that a Bible is a version or a translation-- and there is a difference; a version is always a translation but a translation is not necessarily a version-- is to affirm that it is rendered from the biblical languages, but translators also have other things in mind as well.... READ MORE.