Author: wilrens
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Anniversary Issue: Five Years Create a Learning Site
This month, it is five years since the first issue of Create a Learning Site (CALS) came out. That makes for a grand total of 60 issues. So this one, issue 61, will be a little different. I am not presenting a topic or wrestling with a Bible book. Instead, I revisit those months in…
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In Honour of Jesus: Objectivity Is Overrated (Eyewitnesses and the Gospel)
In January of last year, I did an issue on the authorship of John’s gospel, based on a book by Richard Bauckham (the answer, it turned out, is not as simple as that phrase, the author of John, might suggest). I finished with this statement, a mental note to myself: “On my reading list: Richard…
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Out of Egypt
Where did the Israelites cross the Red Sea? Or did they? Perhaps it would be better to ask: What did they cross? Questions like these have been a puzzle for biblical scholars. For many today, however, all of this belongs to the realm of legend and myth; none of it happened, and there is therefore…
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Ezra: What Is Its Message?
For last year December, I was asked to teach a week in Norway that included the book of Ezra. This offered me a rare opportunity. I don’t think I have ever taught this book before, so it gave me the chance to prepare a brand-new teaching on a book from scratch. Some months before, I…
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Jesus on Divorce
The teaching of Jesus on divorce has been misunderstood by the church virtually from the beginning. The traditional view is that divorce is only allowed in the case of adultery and of desertion by an unbeliever; remarriage is not permitted as long as the marriage partner is alive. Noticeably, this does not allow for divorce…
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Crucifying the Warrior God (Boyd Project 5)
It is time to wrap up. How does Boyd’s cruciform hermeneutic work when it is applied to actual Bible passages? In the first volume of The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Boyd posits the cross as the centre and foundation of Christian theology. From this, he derives, through deduction, what God can and cannot have…
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A Peculiar Blend of Cruciform (Boyd Project 4)
The previous issue dealt with chapter 1-6 of Greg Boyd’s monumental book, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. It presents Boyd’s general theory of interpretation, which can be summarized in one word: cruciform. The second half of volume 1, chapter 7-12, deals more specifically with the problem of violence in Scripture and discusses possible solutions.…
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A Cruciform Hermeneutic (Boyd Project 3)
In this third issue on Boyd’s monumental work, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, I begin to interact with the book itself. In the first six chapters, Boyd gives us his general theory of interpretation or, in one word, his hermeneutic. Before I dive into this, I need to vent a major frustration I have…
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War in Joshua (Boyd Project 2)
I continue my exploration of the conquest of Canaan; this issue is all about the book of Joshua. If taken at face value, Joshua may be the most violent book in the Old Testament (OT). What do we make of this book today? What did God command? And what does that highly peculiar Hebrew word…
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The Conquest of Canaan (Boyd Project 1)
I am launching a project that will take me several issues to complete. The subject is a big one: what some people refer to as the violence of God in the Old Testament (OT). Gregory Boyd has written a voluminously fat book about this: The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent…
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Narrative Criticism
The term is misleading. Narrative criticism is not about critiquing authors and their stories. As with all the various criticisms that are practised in biblical studies, it is a way to approach a biblical text and analyse (not critique of criticise) it from a chosen perspective. In the case of narrative criticism, it is about…
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The War of Art
This is not a mistake. I don’t mean the art of war, that is a different topic. The War of Art is the title of a book by Steven Pressfield. I did not like the book. But its main idea, reflected in the title, really helped me. You can also watch this content as a VIDEO…
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The Synoptic Problem
Matthew, Mark, and Luke have much in common, especially when compared with John. These three are therefore called the synoptic gospels (from Greek syn = together and opsis = view or seeing), since they provide a similar view of Jesus. The synoptic problem asks how this similarity can be explained. Biblical scholars have formulated numerous…
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The Seven Cities of Revelation
The book of Revelation begins with seven letters to seven churches in seven cities in the Roman province of Asia. You probably know this. The condition of each church and specific facts about each city are reflected in the content of each letter. This is likely not new to you either. What I aim to…
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Sennacherib
Probably no event in the Old Testament is as well documented as Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah in 701 BC. The Bible itself gives us three accounts: 2 Kings 18:13-19:36, Isaiah 36-37, and 2 Chronicles 32:1-23. In addition, we have several versions of Sennacherib’s own report on the event, plus reliefs carved out in stone that…
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Codex, Kingdom of Heaven, Rapture: Three Random Things
I regularly run into bits and pieces of insight or information that fascinate me but that seem too small to turn them into a full issue of Create a Learning Site. This month, I present three such pieces: codex, kingdom of heaven, and (the true meaning of) the rapture. You can also watch this content…
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Who Wrote the Fourth Gospel?
John’s gospel is not a book I have taught often. Without giving it much thought, I have usually assumed that the “John” of its title must be the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, one of the inner circle of Jesus’ 12 disciples. After all, this is what the Church Fathers, the early leaders and…
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Do You Love the Law (David Did)? (Part 2)
Last month, I formulated a New Testament understanding of the law. Paul is emphatic that Christians are not “under the law,” because they have died to the law – all of it, not merely certain sections. It is possible to come away from such an exercise believing that the Old Testament law is therefore just…
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Do You Love the Law (David Did)? (Part 1)
What, if anything, is our relationship with the Old Testament law? I was recently asked to teach an introduction to the Torah, the first five books of our Bible, in YWAM Heidebeek’s Bible for Life course. This gave me an opportunity to wrestle anew with this important question – important because it concerns a sizeable…
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Thinking about Thinking
There is enormous diversity among Christians in what we believe and in how we understand various passages in the Bible. This is a simple and straightforward observation; at least on this, we should be able to agree. But what causes it? Is it something about the Bible? Or is it something in us, humans? I…
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The Message of the Temple
It is with a mixture of excitement and relief that I come to the end of Greg Beale’s book, The Temple and the Church’s Mission. There is excitement because of its well-argued thesis, which I will try to summarize below. There is relief because I am done with immensely dense and heavy reading. This is…
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How to Boggle Your Mind: The Miracle of Language
Language is mind-bogglingly complex – as illustrated, in a small way, by the strange word “mind-bogglingly”! The Bible is written in human language. If we care about interpreting the Bible, it pays off to think about how language works. This month, therefore, I made an excursion into linguistics, the science that studies language. What I…
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Nine Ideas to Improve Your Learning
There is a reason why this site is called Create a Learning Site. The name combines two of my main passions, learning and creating. I love to learn, and I love to share what I am learning. I created the learning site as a platform to learn and to share. I was reminded of this…
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Expository Preaching: A Power Tool for God’s Church
I don’t preach very often. I am at heart (and by profession) a teacher, not a preacher. But I do believe that preaching is of the utmost importance. There is no greater power that materially resides in our world than the word of God as it has been written down in the Bible. It is…
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Luther and the Lament Psalms
Numerous evangelicals in the West have embraced a theology that denies many forms of suffering the right to exist: this ought not to be – not if we are a new creation in Christ! More than a few even go further and deny, ‘in faith,’ not just its right to be but its very existence:…