Outreach recognized three books in their Apologetics category. You can see their list of books at http://tinyurl.com/yadbqoo. If you would like to add to, subtract from, or expand on their list, please do so in the comments section below the post.

The assignment: to develop an apologetic for scripture.

First thought: Despair—nothing we say matters if we can’t say “come and see.” If our lives, our churches, our fellowships don’t embody good news, no apologetic will be effective enough, nor can we call people to a conversion that is complete enough to be called “Christian.”

Ravi Zacharias once said that the apologetic problem that really keeps him up at night is the untransformed lives of so many Christians.

Too quickly and too frequently, we are transformed into self-righteous, morally superior versions of everybody else. “Welcome to Christendom, would you like to join the consumer demographic that replaces sexual indulgence with additional obligations on Sunday morning?”

How would this be for an apologetic? What if your campus fellowship committed together to join a local church and the local chapter of Amnesty International (or Habitat for Humanity etc.). Can you imagine if the people who lead Amnesty at your campus all of a sudden had 30 Christians at every meeting, writing letters, sending emails, making phone calls, sharing the work, and perhaps most of all affirming their leadership and encouraging them, all of whom would say when asked that they’re concerned because as Christians they believe in the Bible and Jesus doesn’t like oppression?

Unfortunately, there is intense suspicion (some of it quite well founded) that evangelical Christians want to impose their way if life on everyone else.

Second thought: This stuff will never work! If I could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumblin’ down or that Paul was clearly the author of Colossians, the students I’m interested in reaching would say they don’t care about the latter and the former only proves that Joshua’s god was a genocidal nationalistic maniac.

THAT is when THIS came to mind.

(slide) Tertullian’s Apologeticum 197 AD

Christians don’t eat babies, drink blood or engage in ritual incest.

Christians aren’t responsible for natural disasters.

Christians aren’t cannibals, but I was never taught how to defend against that accusation. Why not? Simple! To most people in America in my lifetime this is obvious. Some people might find the Eucharist creepy (Jesus contemporaries surely did) but they would know Christians aren’t cannibals. Still, this was a very important apologetic point to be made in the early centuries of the church because these were the critiques/suspicions of outsiders.

Every apologetic serves to meet the concerns and doubts of outsiders in its own time and place.

Growing up, when people taught me apologetics, they largely revolved around the historical reliability of the Bible, the scientific veracity of creationism, rational reasons to believe in Mosaic authorship, whether Joshua did in fact fit the battle of Jericho, the resurrection, Pauline authorship, existence of God and so on. Evidence that Demands a Verdict and More Evidence that Demands a Verdict.

In other words…

(slide) THE FACTS

I bounced some of my ideas about a new apologetic off Brian Walsh in a recent email and he wrote,

(slide) “Your parents’ apologetic was pretty ineffective anyway.”

(slide) 4 Difficulties with a FACT - based apologetic:

(slide) Problem 1 - Fact-based apologetics frequently end up with an intellectual power play that strives for irrefutable certainty. Even if this was possible, would it exemplify the foolish weakness of the gospel of the Jesus Christ?

1 Corinthians 1 “…God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe…Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of god is stronger than men…”

People frequently experience the sort of apologetics that strives for irrefutability as coercive/manipulative.

(slide) I Corinthians 8

1 Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. 3 But the man who loves God is known by God.

Salvation is primarily about acknowledging the one we are known BY, rather than what we think we know.

(slide) Problem 2 “In a world of Google, if I have a “fact” you can in 5 seconds come up with a counter-fact. Facts now are ubiquitous and free and therefore they don’t have much value.” (Daniel Pink, Radio Times Interview)

I’m sure I can find 2 books, of equally intimidating thickness, written by equally brilliant people about the historical reliability of the Hebrew scriptures. One will say they are very reliable and the other will say they are entirely impossible to substantiate. College students can easily be confused by the conflicting information offered to them by people they admire. The question will come down to which one do I, do you, do our college students want to believe (and perhaps which one they find most freeing or empowering)..

(slide) Problem 3

Historical veracity is not the main message/point of the biblical text. The message is

If we preach the inerrancy, infallibility, factual reliability etc. of the Bible, people still haven’t heard the gospel.

Story: A Bible Seminar at a staunchly evangelical inerrantist church. A middle-aged PhD, Old Testament scholar who has taught at Trinity Evangelical Div. School in Chicago , and has authored numerous books mostly published with Zondervan including 1 on Biblical archaeology.

He was saying that the historical events behind the text/ and the message and meaning of the text should be treated independently. He opened the floor and I shared some of what I just shared with you and he said:

“You’ve emboldened me to say something that I’ve never said in public before”

(slide) “We ought to teach the meaning and message of the Bible as if it didn’t matter whether it was true or not.”

I asked him if I could give his name when I quoted him and he refused.

The Bible is not primarily a collection of facts about events, it’s a message. The value of good historical work for me is its ability to clarify the message, not the facts. Ex. N.T. Wright’s massive book on the resurrection is mostly about clarifying what resurrection MEANT. He completely acknowledges that it doesn’t “prove” that resurrection is what happened, but if they said resurrection, they didn’t mean something other than physical/bodily recreation. If we expend all our energy defending scripture as a collection of facts we’re missing the point. Additionally, for people who want to believe (I’m thinking especially of young Christians who are shaken by college professors) it can be helpful to give evidence for scriptures reliability. Still, I think its worth asking how many minute “facts” of scripture are really important to try to “prove.”

Clarification for the troubled: In the quote above I would want to emphasize “as if.” I think that for many scriptural events (particularly the life, death and resurrection of Jesus) it really matters that these things happened. AND when I share these things I talk of them as events that happened. BUT, if I want to share the story of scripture with compelling abandon, I’m not going to spend much time talking about the happenedness of the story.

(slide) If the Bible is not primarily a collection of facts about events then what is it?

“It’s the family story… It’s absolutely essential – to give the family a sense of identity, so we know who we are and why we’re here and where we’re going.” (McLaren)

(slide) “In a world of Google, if I have a “fact” you can in 5 seconds come up with a counter-fact. Facts now are ubiquitous and free and therefore they don’t have much value. What becomes more valuable in the world of ubiquitous free information is the ability to put the facts in context and deliver them with emotional impact and that’s what a story does.” Daniel Pink – Radio Times Interview

(slide) Catherine Albanese in The Sons of the Fathers argues that the Patriots won the Revolution because they had a better story than the British.

“The Loyalists failed… because they had no story to match in cogency and inner truth the sacred story which the patriot leaders were noising abroad to the masses.”

Their story was the Exodus. King George = Pharoah England = Egypt

Colonists= Israelites George Washington = Moses America = Promised Land

(slide) Story authority, as Jesus knew only too well, is the authority that really works. Throw a rule book at people’s head, or offer them a list of doctrines, and they can duck or avoid it, or simply disagree and go away. Tell them a story, though, and you invite them to come into a different world; you invite them to share a world-view or better still a ‘God-view.’ That, actually, is what the parables are all about. They offer, as all genuine Christian story-telling the does, a world-view which, as someone comes into it and finds how compelling it is, quietly shatters the world-view that they were in already. Stories determine how people see themselves and how they see the world. Stories determine how they experience God, and the world, and themselves, and others. Great revolutionary movements have told stories about the past and present and future. They have invited people to see themselves in that light, and people’s lives have been changed. If that happens at a merely human level, how much more when it is God himself, the creator, breathing through his word. (N.T. Wright)

This is why testimony is frequently the best evangelistic tools. It doesn’t convince anyone, but I don’t think most people today want to be convinced, they want something compelling.

(slide) “I can only answer the question: What am I to do? If I can answer the prior question: Of what story do I find myself a part? (Alisdair MacIntyre, echoed by Newbigin, Wright, Hauerwas, Willimon, McLaren others)

(slide) Problem 4

The rationalist, historical and scientific doubts that emerged from the Modern era, are not the primary doubts of the latest generations. (Though they may smokescreen.)

Proving Christianity and establishing certainty is beyond most of us (any of us?) anyway. Luckily, I don’t think certainty is what today’s young people are after. I think that they would like to believe in a non-coercive god that they can trust, that can lend support to their concerns about the misuse of power in the world.

For people who do not want to believe , presenting some measure of historical reliability can remove that stumbling block to faith, but I do think that is secondary for most people.

Two Campolo stories that illustrate this:

Our friend Tony Campolo talks about being challenged by a young man at a speaking engagement. The challenge was essentially, “How can you, an intelligent human being, believe this stuff?” Campolo’s response was honest and direct, and it also invited honesty and directness. He said, “I decided to believe it a long time ago and ever since then I’ve been constructing arguments to shore up my beliefs. Isn’t that what we all do?” The young man had to concede. Notice that Tony’s arguments are secondary to his decision to believe.

Secondly, a young man comes into his office and says, “Dr. Campolo, I don’t really believe all this stuff in the Bible anymore.” Tony’s response was, “When did you start sleeping with your girlfriend?” (!!!!!) He was right. The student stopped believing because he no longer wanted to…

(slide) The problem (I think) is that real non-Christians don’t want to believe anymore. Why not? Why doesn’t the gospel sound like good news?

Lots of reasons, of course, but besides wanting sexual license, Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat in their Colossians commentary offer this critique (which is a specific critique of Colossians) as the basic postmodern problem with the Bible:

(slide) “You posit a divine authority that structures and orders the world in a certain way, attribute that authority to yourself as author of the letter, wipe out any opposition that suggests things might be looked at differently, put clear restrictions on personal and communal life, and then top it all off with a divine sanction for patriarchy and slavery. And you want a postmodern person at the beginning of the 21 st century to read this text, learn from it and maybe even receive it as divinely inspired Scripture? I don’t think so!”

(slide) Less Sophisticated

Less sophisticated version:
Christians are crazy! All the ones I know are always trying to control everyone’s behavior. Christian history is full of that and worse! The Crusades, Manifest Destiny, slavery, the current fervor over gay unions and abortion… And when you read the Bible it’s no wonder!

People often start out with a bad impression of Christians. They’ve been hurt, they’ve been badgered by an overly zealous friend, they’ve felt controlled or condemned or looked down on. Then maybe they start reading the Bible and before they get through the Pentateuch, among other things, God initiates a genocide, condones slavery and forbids the wearing of blended fabrics. Later, God’s favorite person, David looks the other way when a rape is committed under his nose. David’s son, the wisest man who ever lived, builds a lavish kingdom on the backs of his people while keeping hundreds of women in sexual bondage. Later, when God decides to correct His people He commissions a prophet and commands him to name one of his children “Not Wanted.”

Can you imagine the psychological trauma?!?! No wonder Christians are so power-mad! Why else would anyone want to believe in and serve such a being? The narrative can potentially confirm people’s pre-existing suspicions about Christianity, and Christians. It, rather than wayward humans, becomes the focus of blame for crusades, slavery and all kinds of bigotry.

(slide) The Bible needs an apologetic. Non-Christians would rather believe any argument against the hard-to-like Christians’ Bible and its hard-to-like god, than a strong argument proving Biblical facts.

The real power of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code is not his basic argument, nor his pseudo-facts, but the way it confirms people’s gut-level suspicions that Christians have always wanted to dominate everyone else, eliminate the good fun-loving, woman-affirming religions and rob us of sensual pleasure. People love a good conspiracy theory, especially if it points somewhere that they already have suspicions.

Knowing what you do about human pride and sin, what would you expect people to go for? A really strong argument about the historical veracity of Scripture or a story about the continual Christian repression of sexually liberating truth?

(slide) How can we craft our tellings of the Biblical Story so that it can be good news, its own apologetic?

We have to craft our tellings of the Story. This is not scandalous. It is what we always do.

In Matthew 7:7, Jesus says “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

We could argue, “Jesus, that’s kind of reductionist, isn’t it? What about all the smiting?” We do have to deal with the smiting, we can’t ignore it but we want to craft our narrative around good news, the way Jesus does. If we can’t find and draw out of scripture Jesus summation, then we aren’t doing it justice.

ACTS: Stephen’s crafting of the Biblical story is fascinating and compelling.

(slide) The Power and the Story: How the Crafted Presidential Narrative Has Determined Political Success from George Washington to George Bush by Evan Cornog

There is actually very little interest here in investigating the factual accuracy of the narratives candidates construct about themselves. Cornog acknowledges that for both journalists and their readers, “well-crafted and familiar narratives often provide a convenient substitute for truth.” A good story, he writes, trumps a true story almost any day. ( By James D. Fairbanks, Houston Chronicle )

At the heart of the issue are two inter-related points about the Biblical narrative that should shape the Christian Community and make the narrative the apologetic.

(slide) The god whose story is the Bible, made the ultimate self-revelation in a 1st century Jewish carpenter who opted to die rather than to exploit power the way humans do all the time. The god of the Bible would rather die than coerce. This point requires a fundamental theological shift. Instead of getting people to believe in God and some things about God and then telling them that that’s who Jesus is, we look at who Jesus is and tell them that this is what the invisible God is like!! (N.T. Wright)

If we can’t say it about the one who is God’s fullest most perfect self-revelation, can we say it about God?

(slide) The biblical story presents a God who cares about the entire world and especially about the abuse of power to which His people are so prone. God’s vulnerable incarnation in Jesus is the divine “you can trust me.” If the Bible is what shapes us, we must embody that vulnerability and trust-worthiness in our story-telling. Non-Christians need not fear us or view us with suspicion.
Christians still aren’t cannibals! (Philippians 2, John 3)

(slide) 3 themes that I think we need to emphasize when we deal with scripture with non-Christians. Walsh and Middleton’s Truth is Stranger than It Used to Be, especially the chapter (5) on the Biblical Metanarrative.

(slide) God’s Radical Concern for Suffering and an ethic of empathy

Elaine Storkey remarked: “It’s amazing how willing people are to listen to your gospel when you stand up for justice and against oppression.”

(slide) Radical suggestion about telling the biblical story: Don’t begin with Creation. Begin with Exodus, the story of Liberation. (Historically appropriate, apologetically useful, see Brueggemann’s The Bible Makes Sense and don’t get hung up on the creation debate.)

Exodus: the story of God liberating a people from slavery and oppression in order to create an alternative non-exploitative community. Their election was election for service, their compelling new way of life was supposed to be transformative and attractive. Their experience of suffering was supposed to make them sensitive to the suffering of others and immune to the oppressive impulse.

Exodus 23:9 “Do not oppress and alien, you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt .” NIV

ESV 9 “You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt .

Exodus 22:22-23

22 “Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. 23 If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.”

As you are crafting your telling of the story, emphasize the parts of the story that reveal God’s radical concern for the suffering, the poor, the downtrodden.

Remember this when you have to deal with the smiting passages.

(slide) Smiting

Sodom and Gommorah—2 Smiting Principles

the total absence of righteousness and justice
the oppression of the poor and vulnerable by the rich and strong
(Ezekiel 16:49)

Same principles are applied to God’s own people—no favoritism.

(slide) Jeremiah 5

1 “Roam to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem ,
And look now and take note
And seek in her open squares,
If you can find a man,
If there is one who does justice, who seeks truth,
Then I will pardon her.

25 Your iniquities have turned these away,
and your sins have kept good from you.
26 For wicked men are found among my people;
they lurk like fowlers lying in wait. [ a ]
They set a trap;
they catch men.
27 Like a cage full of birds,
their houses are full of deceit;
therefore they have become great and rich;
28 they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no bounds in deeds of evil;
they judge not with justice
the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper,
and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
29 Shall I not punish them for these things?
declares the LORD,
and shall I not avenge myself
on a nation such as this?”

(slide) Part of God’s attempt to deal with suffering and prevent Israel from becoming oppressive like Egypt is the way God addresses kingship.

Deuteronomy 17 presents 3 big limitations on kingship (Horses, gold and wives). Military advantage, economic advantage, idolatry and?) and 1 Samuel 8 offers harsh warnings that the result of Kingship is a reversal of God’s intent to create an alternative community. These limitations are explicitly rejected by Solomon and his successors (I Kings 11, 2 Chronicles 12) so that by the time Isaiah comes on the scene he condemns Israel explicitly for rejecting these limitations in 2:7f and for their ill-treatment of the poor in 3:13f. Resulting in their exile (even herem Is. 43:28). The false prophets were the ones who declared that god was on their side.

Herem is the word associated with “the ban” or total annihilation of an enemy. It essentially means “devoted (to God)” and is used with reference to other offerings and sacrifices. A troubling question is whether God in the OT appears to desire human sacrifice when God calls for Israels enemies to be herem. Apologetically speaking, I would want to say that they are herem (devoted to God) in contrast to becoming Israel’s slaves, plunder etc. Therefore, these battles cannot be for that sort of selfish gain. Still, they are deeply troubling and we should acknowledge this.

(slide) Jesus ministry of healing demonstrates God’s continued concern for suffering. His teachings aim to empower suffering people and motivate all to follow God’s compassionate example. His death shows his willingness to suffer herem with and for humanity and removes all doubt regarding God’s empathy (2nd Apologia for God’s violence). His resurrection promises an end to suffering.

(slide) God’s Universal Creational Intent

Focus on God’s inclusive interest.

Plants — Genesis — Adam is to cultivate and keep (guard) the garden.

Dueteronomy 20:19f — God’s concern for trees in warfare (agent orange is explicitly unbiblical)

Animals — Noahic covenant is with all creatures. Decalogue — Sabbath rest is for animals too. End of Jonah.

The Earth — Leviticus 25, the ground, the land should get a rest.

Every aspect of creation in the Genesis, the Psalms and elsewhere are ascribed purpose and value.

(slide) Foreigners — Isaiah 19 (Assyrians and Egyptians)

18 In that day five cities in Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the LORD Almighty. One of them will be called the City of Destruction . [ b ]

19 In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the heart of Egypt , and a monument to the LORD at its border. 20 It will be a sign and witness to the LORD Almighty in the land of Egypt . When they cry out to the LORD because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and he will rescue them. 21 So the LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the LORD. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings; they will make vows to the LORD and keep them. 22 The LORD will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the LORD, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them.

23 In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria . The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria . The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. 24 In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria , a blessing on the earth. 25 The LORD Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

Note that is this period Egypt was Israels impotent ally and Assyria was the hated, brutal military threat. This word is incredibly risky and radically inclusive.

(slide) Amos 9:7 “Are you not like the Cushites to me,
O people of Israel ?” declares the LORD.
“Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt ,
and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?

There are stories of God’s work in the lives of other people groups about which we have no clue.

(slide) Open-endedness of the text: Inner-biblical critique of oppressive, exclusionary and absolutist elements of the text. Moderations, Reversals & (gasp!) Contradictions. Thank God!!

(slide) Animal Sacrifice

Appears unambiguous in the Pentateuch

Jeremiah 7: 22f “…For I did not speak to your fathers or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this is what I commanded them, saying ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God and you will be my people…’

Amos 5:21-26 & Acts 7:42-43

(slide) Ex/Inclusion of Eunuchs & Foreigners

Deut 23

1 ” No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD.

2 ” No one born of a forbidden union may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation , none of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD.

3 “No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever , 4 because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you.

(slide) Isaiah 56

3 Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the LORD say,
“The LORD will surely exclude me from his people.”
And let not any eunuch complain,
“I am only a dry tree.”

4 For this is what the LORD says:
“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose what pleases me
and hold fast to my covenant-

5 to them I will give within my temple and its walls
a memorial and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that will not be cut off.

6 And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD
to serve him,
to love the name of the LORD,
and to worship him,
all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it
and who hold fast to my covenant-

7 these I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations .”

8 The Sovereign LORD declares—
he who gathers the exiles of Israel:
“I will gather still others to them
besides those already gathered.”

ACTS 8 – Phillip converts an Ethiopian (foreign) Eunuch (male organ “disabled”)

(slide) The genealogy of Jesus (Know any famous Moabites?)

Ruth — (always “The Moabite” — not too many greats removed from Solomon)

Rehab, Tamar, Bathsheba

(slide) Matthew 13-16 interpretation of Canaanite inclusion

Grant LeMarquand at Trinity Episcopal Seminary has developed a radical and liberating interpretation of the story of the Canaanite woman in Matt. 15.21-28 that gives deep exegetical basis for arguing that in Jesus the story of Joshua is reversed. Here are the main points: 1. she is called a Canaanite — which is historically anachronistic - there were no Canaanites at that time, so Matt. is signalling something here. 2. she asks for mercy and in the end, gets it. 3. in Deut 7.1-6 seven nations, including the Canaanites are to receive ‘no mercy’ and are to be totally destroyed. 4. the broader context of Matthew: a) 14.13-21 — feeding of the 5000 — 12 baskets left over — universally recognized as referring to the 12 tribes of Israel — so we have here a new exodus and a new Moses feeding Israel in the wilderness, thereby reconstituting the New Israel. b)14.22-36 — (miraculous) crossing of the water into pagan/Gentile territory – following the pattern of the OT narrative this parallels the crossing of the Jordan c) 15.1-20 — in a land of defilement the Pharisees come up to confront Jesus on the nature of defilement and he turns all of their categories on their heads d) Canaanite woman — who according to Deut, and following the narrative structure of the wilderness/Jordan/Canaan trajectory should be killed and receive no mercy, confronts Jesus with a life and death matter of mercy and — in reversal of Joshua/Deuteronomy — receives mercy! — and she is identified as a woman of faith! … but there’s more … e) 15.29-31 - more folks in that pagan land are healed f) 15.32-39 - the feeding of the 4000, still in pagan territory - and how many baskets left over? - seven - why seven? - there were seven tribes that were to be destroyed (including the Canaanites) according to Deut 7. So what is Matthew saying? Joshua is reversed in Jesus! (slide) God changes his mind —
Sorrows of creating humans Gen. 6, Sorrows of destroying the earth (Gen 9) reverses Babel (Gen. 11) at Pentecost, Acts 2, discusses his plans with Abraham in Gen. 19, repents in Exodus 32

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/repent.html

16 places where God repents, 6 places where God is declared to be unchanging

(slide) Stories of Dissent — Moses, Tamar, Ruth, Job, Hezekiah,

Voices of dissent/lament — Habbakuk, Psalmist, Lamentations

The absence/neglect of God is a biblical theme

Jeremiah 2 — God invites critique/accusation and asks the people why they didn’t ask “Where is God?

Usefulness — invite skeptics, questioners to become insiders. Show them that questioning/challenging/ debating with God is insider activity, biblical.

The people of Israel are the “God wrestlers”

(slide) Ambiguity of Absolute Authority

1 Corinthians 7—

10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11 But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.

12 To the rest I say this ( I, not the Lord ): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.

25 Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord , but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. 26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for you to remain as you are.

How are we to interpret God inspiring Paul to write (I, not the Lord) AND the following sentence. Because this is the only explicit disclaimer, does that mean that the same principle is not true elsewhere (i.e. that God inspires people to write trustworthy words that may not be intended to bear the full weight of “Thus sayeth the Lord…”)

If we believe that God inspired all scripture we can’t get rid of any of it, but frequently its much more ambiguous than “God said it, I believe it and that settles it.”

What does it mean that God inspired disclaimers, reversals and contradictions?

If we are afraid of ambiguity I’m going to venture to say that its because we’re afraid of losing control. We aren’t called to control but to proclamation.

(slide) The story:

God liberates a people from suffering to create a liberating servant community.

As the nation succumbs to oppressive imperial tendencies God judges their failure and further reveals his universal creational intent.

God comes in the flesh to demonstrate power in weakness, to suffer with and for humanity, and to recreate His servant community.

God passes this sort of ambassadorship to the new community.

God returns to dwell among us in fullness, to fully and permanently establish His alternative kingdom of liberation, joy, and peace.

(slide) GET INTO THE STORY

What It Means To Know God

What is Christianity? Some say it is a philosophy, others say it is an ethical stance, while still others claim it is actually an experience. None of these things really gets to the heart of the matter, however. Each is something a Christian has, but not one of them serves as a definition of what a Christian is. Christianity has at its core a transaction between a person and God. A person who becomes a Christian moves from knowing about God distantly to knowing about him directly and intimately. Christianity is knowing God.

“Now this is eternal life; that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” ~John 17:3

To read the complete article click here…

This study was evangelistic in nature, and was used to identify the level of faith of freshman women students on my residence hall floor. Other purposes of the study were to help these women get to know each other better and to set the stage for longer-term relationships between me and these women. In this case, all of the women turned out to have some sort of Christian faith commitment.

What developed from this study is now a three-year-long discipleship group with most of these same women. I have found that the “basics” taught here were a good foundation for future studies of The Transforming Vision, Out of the Saltshaker and Into the World, semester-long studies on doing evangelism and other topics.

Please keep in mind that this study was given several years ago; my teaching style and level of learning have changed, and so if used again I would update the studies as well as the handouts. The participatory exercises vary according to your audience: I was working with ten freshman women, and so these exercises worked with them—and they remember many of the exercises due to their often silly nature. Use this information only as a guide to help you in condensing CFR information into a six-week format. Let me know if I can fill in the details for you.

Finally, you should know that the major “visual” that I used was an old, ugly, crusty chair that I found in the trash. Throughout the study, we used this chair to demonstrate CFR. You could also re-do a rocking chair or some other item, showing how value can be found where no value was seen before. You will note references to this chair throughout the study.

Week One: Introduction

Week Two: Worldviews

Week Three: Creation

Week Four: Fall

Week Five: Redemption

Week Six: Putting it all Together

Bob Robinson a Area Director for the CCO, Northern Ohio.

Some Good News for a Change

by Robin Capcara

This article challenges Campus Ministers to examine their call to evangelism. It is thoughtful and provoking. Written by Princeton Alumnus Jennifer Kwong. It also includes a Bible Study on the book of Colossians.