Category: Reflections
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A Wide Open Canon
Biblical Particularity, Transcendence, and Diversity The Bible is a particular book for a particular people at a particular time in a particular place. The timeless wisdom latent within its pages, however, also transcends its particularity so that it can stand the test of time, bearing upon various diverse sociocultural contexts wherein it might breathe afresh…
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American Evangelical Politics and the Politics of Jesus
American evangelical politics seems to be a movement about establishing the kingdom of God on earth right here and right now, especially with the current presidential administration. While heavily publicized as a predominantly White movement of various hues and shades across the spectrum from White nationalists to White “fragilists,” there are apparently some nonWhite individuals…
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Service, Humility, and Self-Care
Service is one of those admirable actions that individuals across cultures and people groups take to be of a highest good. It is the greatest way in which to demonstrate love, care, compassion. It is the greatest way in which to honor and elevate another. It is the greatest way in which to establish the…
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Jesus’ Joke at the Empty Tomb
Imagine you are there, as Mary Magdalene, at the empty tomb of Jesus, looking for the body of Jesus. The very one you had been following for so long, who was only crucified, killed, and entombed some three days prior, is now nowhere to be found. To be sure, a number of keen observations and…
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The Tearing of the Veil
“The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Mark 15:38, NIV). I have heard many a preacher proclaim that the rending of the temple curtain in the Gospels at the moment when Jesus dies is a declaration of the movement of the presence of God’s Spirit from hiddenness behind the…
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How to Interpret the Bible
The Bible is a really hard book to read. Reading the Bible is no small feat. To think otherwise, in fact, is to fail to account for the vast array of literature held therein, which was written over the span of hundreds of years by many authors on various countries and places, translated multitudes of…
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Intertestamental Intertextual Dialectics
NT Use of the OT In dealing with the OT, NT scholars face a particularly particular issue particular to NT studies, namely, the NT use of the OT. It does seem strange and seemingly unsightly to read some of the text of the NT, wherein it cites or quotes the OT. The manner in which…
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The First Century Church and the Church Today
Who founded the Church? Depending on who you ask and how you look at it, there may be many various answers to the question of who founded the Church. To be sure, without Jesus, there would be no Church. It seems, however, that without the Apostle Paul, the Church would not have spread or developed…
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Jesus: An Early First Century Jew
Rediscovering the early first century Jewish roots of Christianity There were no Christians following Jesus Christianity in the early first century was a rather homogeneous community of powerless, underprivileged, and disadvantaged Jews. It was not made up of well-to-do, powerful Gentiles, non-Jews, let alone White Evangelical Americans. It would not be until Constantine the Great…
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Living “As If”
The Serenity Prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,” is as simple and yet profound a prayer as any. Learning “to accept the things I cannot change” is much like living “as if.” The…
NathanAnthonyBarstad 