Derek Ouellette Comments on the Gungor Controversy
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You can comment to Derek at YouTube: Gungor: 3 Concerts Cancelled over Unorthodoxy? What! (re)News. You can see more of his videos here: Bible Floss.
MORE ON THIS CONTROVERSY:
From Dave Wainscott (mostly links): Gungorgate: banned for agreeing with C.S. Lewis (and having Rob Bell and Rachel Held Evans help with their CD). And Stephen Mattson reminds us that some of the historic hymn writers were controversial in their day: The Problem With Christian Worship Wars. And, at the BioLogos web site: Faith after Literalism: An Interview with Michael Gungor.
Brueggemann: To the Forsaken – Isaiah 42:15,16
“I will lay waste mountains and hills,
and dry up all their herbage;
I will turn the rivers into islands,
and dry up the pools.
“I will lead the blind
by a road they do not know,
by paths they have not known
I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light,
the rough places into level ground.
These are the things I will do,
and I will not forsake them.” (Isaiah 42: 15, 16 NRSV)
Walter Brueggemann
This is a powerful, irresistible, transformative resolve, to be undertaken with a high level of emotional intensity. It is a burst of generativity that is going to change everything and create a newness. This is a God who will not forsake: “I will not forsake them” (42:16); “You shall no more be termed Forsaken” (62:4). In this resolve to new creation, YHWH promises to overcome all forsakenness and abandonment known in Israel and in the world. When creation is abandoned by YHWH, it readily reverts to chaos. Here it is in YHWH’s resolve, and in YHWH’s very character, not to abandon, but to embrace. The very future of the world, so Israel attests, depends on this resolve of YHWH. It is a resolve that is powerful. More than that, it is a resolve that wells up precisely in tohu wabohu and permits the reality of the world to begin again, in blessedness.
— Walter Brueggemann, An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible.
Note: The phrase “tohu wabohu” is a reference to the Hebrew phase used in Genesis 1:2, where before God’s creative action, the world is spoken of as being “formless and empty” (NIV). I have highlighted the phase in bold in the text below:
וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם
John Walton Comments on the “Ham on Nye” Debate
Here are some comments from John Walton on the Creation vs. Evolution debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye.
John Walton is a professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College in Illinois and an editor and writer of Old Testament comparative studies and commentaries. Throughout his research, Walton has focused his attention on comparing the culture and literature of the Bible and the ancient Near East. He has published dozens of books, articles and translations, both as writer and editor, including his widely-read book The Lost World of Genesis One. (more…)