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Merry Christmas!
Hoping you all have a blessed Christmas.
Love, Greg and Shelley and the grandkids
Related Reading

Jesus Came to Bring a Sword?
Jesus said: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt 10:34). Some, both modern scholars along with church leaders since the fourth century, have used this passage as evidence to argue that Jesus is not altogether non-violent. When we…

Change That Is Real
With the coming of Christ, which we celebrate during the Advent season, the Father, Son, and Spirit made a way for us to be incorporated into the triune fellowship. We are placed in Christ through the power of the Spirit. This doesn’t just change how God views us and relates to us. It changes who…

God is Different Than You Think
The revelation of “[a] God humiliated even unto the cross,” as Pascal put it, flies in the face of what most Jews of Jesus’ time, and of what most people throughout history, have expected God to be. In this light, we can discern the thematic centrality of the cross in Jesus’ many teachings that reverse…

What About the Contradictions Found in the Gospels?
It’s quite common for people to question the veracity of the Gospels because there are contradictions between them. In fact, an interaction between Steven Colbert and Bart Erhman, a scholar who makes a big deal of these contradictions, has become quite popular. While Colbert’s comedic response is entertaining, we must say more. And Greg has done…

How to Produce the Fruit of the Spirit
When the New Testament tells us to be loving, joyful, peaceful, kind and so on, it is not giving us a new set of behaviors that we are to strive to accomplish. Striving to attain them means nothing if they are sought as ethical ideals or to meet a set of religious rules. They have…

Gospel “Contradictions” and Orality Studies
* This essay has been adopted from G. Boyd and Paul Eddy, Lord or Legend? (Baker, 2007). One of the standard tests historians put to ancient documents to assess their veracity is self-consistency. Generally speaking, fabricated accounts tend to include more inconsistencies than truthful accounts. Hence, the absence of inner contradictions contributes to a positive…