Seeking the truth...

In my last post we began our prolegomena by sketching a doctrine of Scripture. In today's post we will look at some issues regarding hermeneutics. As I concluded in the last post, our job is to listen to the Scriptures. That stresses both posture and effort. This post will be a little technical. I apologize for that, but it is a technical topic. I have learned a great deal from a variety of stances that could loosely be gathered under the heading of post-modern literary criticism. The biggest gain I see is the emphasis on voice and power. Whose voice are we hearing when we read a text? So often it's our own, or the voice of the tradition or social group we have aligned ourselves with. How, then, are these different voices using the text for their own ends? How do we think the author was using the text for his or her own end? The moment we begin to use Scripture for our own power plays we lose all hope of hearing God speak through it. Scripture is something to be listened to, ...

As I mentioned in the introduction last week, I intend to write a theology that is centered on Jesus, and I also took shots at the dominance of prolegomena in Christian theology. Among other things, prolegomena often includes discussion of hermeneutics and doctrine of Scripture. Hermeneutics is interesting but I don't see it as actually being a theological topic. Doctrine of Scripture is important, but I don't believe that the beginning is the place for full length treatment. At the same time, I do believe I need to inform my readers of how I approach Scripture at the start, as that will have an impact on the use of Scripture in developing theology. Part one of my prolegomena will lay out the basics of my doctrine of Scripture. Wednesday I will post part two, which will cover hermeneutics. When one reads Karl Barth there sometimes is some confusion. Is Scripture the word of God or isn't it? The answer depends on what you mean by the word of God. What is the word of God?...

As I mentioned previously , I am going to be starting work on the gospel of John soon. There seem to be a lot of very solid resources out there. For those of you who have done significant study, what commentaries would you recommend? Also what monographs should I read on important topics related to John? For commentaries, I own the following: Brown , Sloyan ,  Carson , Keener , McHugh , and Michaels . I will shortly be purchasing the just released translation of  Cyril of Alexander's commentary. I am strongly considering: Calvin , Bultmann , Moloney , and Lincoln . Any other suggestions? Any of these you think are a waste of time?

If you're on Google+ and know me personally you may have seen a couple of recent articles I linked to and made brief comments on. I have a fair amount of frustration with the predominate approach of conservative Evangelicals in heterosexual sexual ethics (I also have frustration with their homosexual sexual ethics too, but that's for another time). In this post I want to briefly outline what I view as problems and try to work toward some solutions. Often, conservative Evangelical sexual ethics are patriarchal and dehumanizing. When a man looks at a woman with desire, it's very easy to turn her into an object of sexual desire (I assume the same is true when women look at men, but of course I can't know for sure) and fail to see her as a person who should not be violated in that way. It's dehumanizing. He's guilty of two sins, lust and dehumanizing the woman. Typically, Evangelical sexual ethics only deals with one of the two sins, and honestly the less importan...