Sometimes Christians treat Genesis 1-3 as a kind of prolegomenon to the biblical narrative. These chapters are important, it is thought, primarily to set the stage for the real business of Christian theology—those issues involved in the doctrine of redemption. Moreover, when we do engage the theology of creation more directly, our interest tends to…

Martin Luther, so the conventional wisdom says, was a “Pauline” theologian, the doctor of justification by grace through faith alone. It comes as something of a surprise, then, to learn that his work as professor of Bible was not centered in Paul, nor even in the New Testament. Instead, he lectured mostly on the Old…

Learning from missteps is often just as important as having exemplars to emulate. The Venerable Bede offers contemporary readers some of both when it comes to interpreting Genesis 1. Relatively little is known about Bede’s life in Northrumbia at the Wearmouth-Jarrow monastery; we don’t even have a monastic rule from Bede’s time. While some have…

The current conversation about science and Christianity – particularly how to read Genesis in light of scientific advance – did not fall from the sky, but developed out of a historical stream of thinking, discovery, and intellectual inquiry. Our generation is not the first to ponder these issues, and a storehouse of insight awaits those who are willing…

This post continues the thoughts from my previous post on Discussing the Church. It is the second in a series of posts that will consider how the church has thought about its role and membership in history. Throughout the history of the Christian church, there have been several ways in which the church has understood…