Tag Archives: Christianity

“Was Paul crucified for you?”

Dr. Andrew Jackson of Smart Christian is concerned that bloggers need to be reminded of 1 Corinthians 1:10-16.

"I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, ‘I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Cephas,’ or ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)"

Andrew writes,

"As much as we would all like to declare ‘we aren’t like the Corinthians,’ unfortunately, I do not think much has changed in the church, and yes it is often reflected in the Christian blogosphere."

"We all need to allow Paul’s words to the Corinthians help us reevaluate how we blog. If we are not careful, it is very easy for Christian bloggers to become identified by which Christian leaders or preachers or teachers they declare their allegiance."

"Does your blog loudly and publicly declare ‘I follow John Piper, Brian McLaren, Jim Wallis, John MacArthur, or R.C. Sproul?’ I could easily name others. "

I can’t say run into that problem much (if at all) on Catholic blogs, but I’ve definitely seen Charles Spurgeon get a lot of hero worship on Protestant blogs. It amuses me that some of the same people who spout Spurgeon quotes as if they were Scripture are allergic to the deutercanonical (aka apocrypal) books of the Bible.

Anyhow, Andrew’s concern casts Adrian Warnock’s recent request in an interesting light. I wonder how he’ll respond.

Favorite Living Preachers

Adrian Warnock has put out a call for Christian bloggers to name their favorite
living preachers.

“My proposal is that people link [and trackback] to this post and share on their blogs up to five preachers (in no order of priority) that are well known to many who have blessed them and why.”

His reason?

“I am determined to learn the secret of seeking the good in all my Christian brothers and sisters.”

“For too long we have lived in our denominational silos, and many of the names people are suggesting I have not even heard of. Please, if you have commented with a list of names, tell me about them and what they mean to you. If you have a blog, do it on yours with a link to here as it would be great to get a sense of who are the preachers with influence over the Christian blogopshere”.

“If they have influence among christian bloggers, I am sure that each of these preachers have something to offer each of us, even if we might disagree with some of their theology. Bloggers have become good at respecting what other bloggers from different traditions have to offer. Now what about preachers from different circles?”

That sounds like a pretty good reason to me. 🙂

Most Rev. Joseph Ratzinger – Pope Benedict XVI: [details to come]

Father John Corapi, SOLT: [details to come]

Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput, OFM Cap. – Archbishop of Denver: [details to come]

Update 11/09/06: Obviously I still haven’t added details to this post. Perhaps I’ll eventually write a new post to provide the details I promised.

My First ESV Review: Psalm 51

I
haven’t received my free
ESV Bible
yet, but I thought I’d get the review ball rolling
anyhow. I’ll start off with something easy – Psalm 51. It’s my favorite
psalm and may even be my favorite bit of Scripture. I’ll review the
lexical and grammatical choices made in translating this chapter. Below
is the psalm from the RSV (my favorite translation), the ESV, and the
NAB (the officially endorsed Catholic translation in the U.S. and a
example of banality raised to an artform).
Continue reading

“Watson, come here; I want you.”

I just had a nice conversation (via Skype)
about Doctor Who with UK blogger Richard
Hall
(connexions). 🙂

If you’d like to chat, my Skype handle is FunkyDung (all one word). I can’t promise
I’ll be around to answer, though.

BTW, UK blogger Adrian
Warnock
is also using Skype. As are Dr.
Andrew Jackson
(Smart Christian) and Rob
Carr
(UnSpace).