Leadingchurch.com

http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/10/the-problem-of-self-loathing-at-evangelical-colleges

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/hillsong-evangelicalisms-future/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hillsong-evangelicalisms-future

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/magazine/the-revelations-of-marilynne-robinson.html

“Being and human beings,” Robinson told me, “are invested with a degree of value that we can’t honor appropriately. An overabundance that is magical.” Honoring that overabundance has taken many forms in Robinson’s writing. Each of her novels, though formally unique, is focused on the movements of a single consciousness; most of her essays, despite their intellectual reach, are devoted to a single historical figure. The essays often express unvarnished frustration over how inaccurately we remember the writers and thinkers she admires most — theologians like John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards — reframing what we thought was important about them. “It’s interesting that people systematically misrepresent these pillars,” Robinson said, with astonishment. Calvin is not, as we are taught, a cold creature who claimed we were born preordained to heaven or hell. “Calvin has a strange reputation that is based very solidly on the fact that nobody reads him,” Robinson has said. “I was, and continue to be, struck by the power of the metaphysics and the visionary quality of his theology. . . . [H]e’s terrifically admiring of what the human mind does.”

The Dish

I’ve spent most of my adult life challenging the notion that the distinction between a homosexual person and “homosexual acts” makes sense – but I am not omniscient, and I respect those who sincerely disagree with me. I certainly don’t want them penalized for such religious convictions. This is something called “liberalism” – the toleration of different faiths in a civil society, and the conviction that the best long-term way to discern the truth is not to suppress such faiths but to allow them to flourish (or not) in the free marketplace of ideas and beliefs. You don’t have to agree with Rod Dreher that this is about “hatred” of Christianity, just as you don’t have to agree that all difference of opinion on homosexuality is about “hatred” of gays. But Damon Linker is onto something:

http://mhec.humanists.net/HUMNISM.HTM

On Faith

1. The Bible doesn’t answer all — or even most — of our questions.
2. The Bible isn’t like God’s version of Apple’s “Terms and Conditions” agreement.
3. The Bible isn’t a sourcebook for fighting culture wars.
4. The Bible doesn’t guarantee “success in life.”
5. The Bible is open to multiple interpretations, not just one meaning.
6. The Bible invites debate.
7. The Bible doesn’t “record” history objectively but interprets it.
8. The Bible was written by Jews (and at least one Gentile in the New Testament) in ancient times.
9. The Bible isn’t the center of the Christian faith.
10. The Bible doesn’t give us permission to speak for God.

Andrew Root’s book via JesusCreed

HT the Dish

Her.meneutics