Monday, February 22, 2016

NZATS conf and call for papers



If you love a good acronym, then this is the conference for you!
NZATS Conference

Keynote speakers will be Murray Rae, Tim Meadowcroft and Rebecca Dudley.

Conference Announcement And Call For Papers


New Zealand Association of Theological Schools (NZATS) and it’s member institutions are coming together for a combined conference in 2016.


– Aotearoa-New Zealand Association of Biblical Studies (ANZABS)


– Aotearoa-New Zealand Association of Mission Studies (ANZAMS)


– Systematic Theology Association of Aotearoa-New Zealand (STAANZ) and


– Religious History Association of Aotearoa-New Zealand (RHAANZ)


– Network for Pastoral/Practical Theology in Aotearoa New Zealand (NPPTANZ)


Conference organiser on behalf of NZATS: Dr Myk Habets (myk.habets@carey.ac.nz)


All scholars and students involved in theological education or Christian ministry are invited to attend.


The 2016 NZATS Combined Conference will be hosted by Carey Baptist College, 473 Great South Road, Auckland, NZ

Just watch out for the NPPTANZ vs ANZAMS volley ball match, things could get bloody.




For more click here

Monday, February 15, 2016

Yes They Are The Same God

All the kerfuffle over that poor professor, it really is remarkable that intelligent people can find it so hard to understand.

Yes. Yahweh, Allah and the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ are all intending to refer to the same object - the creator and soveriegn of the Universe, the one true God.

Nick Norelli (PBUH) makes the usual mistake of thinking that just because someone is wrong about an aspect of the object they are therefore referring to a different object altogether.

Here's the thing, saying we mean the same God is not the same as saying that we are all correct in our beliefs about that one God just as the Flat Earth Society live on the same Earth that we all do they are just wrong on the subject of its basic shape. And thank God for that else we'd all be unable to pray to or talk about the Most High on account of the smallest imperfections in our theology.

Put this another way, some people think I am a really cool guy, other think I'm a complete moron. Whether they are right or wrong (or the answer is a bit of both) they still refer to the same chap when they talk about me, even if they are fundamentally wrong about my character.

Don't they?


Where Does All Our Time Go?

Came across a fascinating (if slightly hyperbolic) article the other week. Well worth a read

If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the – universally reviled – unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) – and particularly its financial avatars – but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value. Clearly, the system was never consciously designed. It emerged from almost a century of trial and error. But it is the only explanation for why, despite our technological capacities, we are not all working 3-4 hour days.

Let me know what you think :-)

The Honest Christian Worship Album


Though this was pretty funny, if also a little painfully accurate? (source)

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Liberalism has Started to Eat Itself: Jacob Williams on Free Speech

So this is an interesting discussion affecting Oxford University at the moment.

Here's one side of the story


And here's another.

What do you think?

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Bauckham on "Deliberate Hindsight"

"If God crucified introduces radical novelty into the identity of God, wherein lies the consistency of identity? The first point to make is . . . that Jewish monotheism did not characterize the uniqueness of God in such a way as to make the early Christian inclusion of Jesus in the unique identity of God inconceivable . . . However, this - so to speak - negative consistency was clearly not sufficient for the early Christians . . . they developed their fresh understanding of the Christological identity of God through creative exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures . . . Precisely at points where they appreciate most fully the new identity of God in Jesus, they are engaged in exegesis, the process of bringing the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures and the history of Jesus into mutually interpretive interplay. We misunderstand this process if we see it as an attempt, by reading Christology back into the texts, to pretend that actually nothing at all was unexpected . . . With deliberate hindsight they understand the identity of the God of Israel afresh in the light of his new identity as the God of Jesus Christ."

Richard Bauckham, "God Crucified," Jesus and the God of Israel, 2008: pp53-54

Jesus treats the Syrophoenecian Woman as a Disciple

[This is an extract from my essay "Breaking Bread: The Power of Hospitality in the Gospel of Mark" which you can read in full and ...