Well, it has been a long time since my last posting.  For a number of reasons.    However, I am pleased to say that there are nine world religion video summaries that are now available on iTunes U!   They are a part of the RELS201 Introduction to World Religions course that I teach at APUS.  I hope that you find them to be useful.

For those of you who have been following the development of the Certificate of Christian Studies at UNBC the last couple of years, you may be interested in knowing about the future.  No, not the whole “future”, just the future of Christian Studies.    The course offering will be expanding from six courses to seven, which will reflect a modification to the Church History course(s) and the Old/New Testament courses, and the addition of a new course called

Just a quick posting today.  Did you know that there are about a zillion books that are freely available/downloadable online?  Of course you knew that.  But … did you know that over 30,000 of them are nicely categorized and searchable at Project Gutenberg?  Check it out, and also look at their list of the top 100 books.

Here is a test – does the subject line above strike you as intriguing or uninteresting?  Well, believe it or not, if you identify yourself as either Jewish or Christian, you should find it interesting.  Monotheism and monolatry both have to do with how the people of the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible (and also today) viewed God.  How many gods are there?  What is his (their) nature?  How should he be worshipped?  Those are pretty big questions!

I reviewed a great book a couple of months ago called Jesus and the God of Israel, in which the author (Richard Bauckham) described the similarities, differences and relationship between monotheism (the belief in the existence of one God) and monolatry (the exclusive worship of one God).  Fascinating book.  In Bauckham’s opinion (which I agree with), the Old Testament reflects both, and somehow, the two wind their way together in both Judaism and early Christianity, and they influenced how Jesus was understood and responded to in the first century.  If you like to “think deeply” about the nature of God and Jesus, you may enjoy this book!

Interesting question, isn’t it?  I was asked that question a few days ago, and I pointed the person to one verse and then made one observation (just a summary of our discussion!).  The practice of cremation is not specifically mentioned in the Bible.  However, a section in the Bible that talks about how a Christian’s “eternal” body will be different than his/her “physical” body is 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 (make sure you read it in context).  The eternal does not seem to be limited by the physical.  Also, the physical body starts to decay the moment the person dies, so whether the process takes a few minutes (eg, cremation) or a few years (eg, burial), the end result would seem to be the same, wouldn’t it?

What do think about cremation?

Have you ever wanted to look at a 1,600 year old manuscript of the Bible?  If so, you can now go to Codex Sinaiticus and view digital images of the actual pages of the ancient codex.  It is pretty impressive, especially since the actual pages themselves are stored in various locations around the world and are not easily accessible.

The hand-written Greek text contains both the Septuagint and the New Testament, and you can zoom in/out, and view both transcriptions and translations of the codex.  Check it out!

Mixed in with all of the useless stuff on the Internet, there are occasionally some great resources.  And Covenant Theological Seminary’s Worldwide Classroom is definitely one of the good ones!  They provide FREE lecture manuscripts, study guides and mp3’s for twenty courses in spirituality, Biblical studies, theology, ministry, etc.  If you are looking to deepen and expand your Christian worldview, why don’t you take some time and explore the Worldwide Classroom.

Well, believe it or not, I am now on iTunes U!  Crazy.  As part of our ongoing e-learning initiatives at AMU, I have been creating and incorporating video summaries into some of my online classes.  Within the classes, the target group has been current students.  As a next step, the university is expanding its reach outside of its digital “walls”, and has now started to provide a selection of course videos as free podcasts through iTunes U.

So … if you are interested in watching some of my weekly Introduction to the Bible video summaries, you can subscribe to this video podcast.  Let me know what you think!

As a result of last Sunday’s teaching time, I have had a few people ask me about the section of Ephesians that I re-wrote by exchanging/inserting the term “future spouse”.  It was a pretty effective way of making the Biblical text immediately applicable to a pre-marriage (and marriage) relationship.  So, here it is again:

Be completely humble and gentle with your future spouse; be patient, bearing with him/her in love.

Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to and about your future spouse.

In your anger do not sin against your future spouse: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry with your future spouse, and do not give the devil a foothold.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth toward your future spouse, but only what is helpful for building him/her up according to his/her needs.

A few of you have been inquiring about the reading requirements for the Christian Spirituality course at UNBC this September.  Well it is your lucky day – the course textbooks are listed here, and the weekly readings are listed below.