Seeking the truth...

You can read the text here . Paul continues to address issues that impact the health and well-being of the body and this time responding directly to a question from Corinth, eating food (mainly meat) that had been dedicated to an idol. However, knowledge that gives one a sense of superiority or status is not real knowledge in Paul's eyes because it lacks love, which is the critical thing as the goal is building the community. The knowledge that really counts is not what you know, but by whom you are known, namely God. Paul grants that idols don't have don't have an objective existence, for there is only one God and one Lord who created everything including the powers worshiped by the Gentiles. They are on a lower rung which if understood that way does seem to make eating food offered to them an non-issue. Not everyone has this understanding. They may have participated in idolatrous practices for so long that they cannot disassociate idol food from cultic worship. Seei...

For my first proper book review in nearly five years, I figured I'd try something of manageable length, recent vintage, and high popularity, so I selected Labor of God: The Agony of the Cross as the Birth of the Church  by Thomas Andrew Bennett. Including end notes it only stretches to 125 pages, but in that brief space Bennett clears the ground and then lays on us a novel metaphor for understanding the atonement. Bennett begins the book noting how the ironic it is that we have completely lost the scandal of the cross. Atonement metaphors began as an attempt to make sense of the scandal. Now, the metaphors have become so worn that they no longer make sense of the atonement, they have anesthetized the cross of its power. Bennett seeks to reinvigorate our theology, "to more faithfully reckon God's agency in the death of an innocent prophet...to rereckon its violence, to reinvestigate its purpose, to see it in a new logic, even a new telos " (p. 2 emphasis mine). The...

You can read the text here . Paul continues to give advice related to sex and marriage, now addressing the unmarried congregants. While he does not have a direct statement from the Lord to draw from, his advice is weighty given the position he has been granted by the Lord. If possible, he thought it better for single men among the Corinthians to remain that way for the time being. In all likelihood there was a recent or ongoing famine that made family life difficult, a famine which was a pointer to the end to which they were all awaiting.[1] Being overly concerned about familial concerns would detract from ones ability to be wholly devoted to the Lord, and during times of hardship that distraction is acute. There is nothing wrong with the decision to get married but staying single allows less divided devotion to the Lord. Paul applies this basic point to three categories of people: men engaged to previously unmarried women[2], previously unmarried women, and widows. In both circums...