Posts Tagged 'God'

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

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!

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.

For those of you who are participating in the Creating Space for God course at Westwood Church, and who remember me mentioning the writings of Brother Lawrence, here are two links:

• The Practice of the Presence of God (text only)
• The Practice of the Presence of God (text and audio)

Enjoy!

I am doing some research about how and when God spoke to people in the Old Testament.  It has been facinating on number of levels, but one thing that has really intrigued me is the frequency and location of either “God said …” or “the Lord said …” throughout the text (based on Hebrew, not English – you can contact me if you want to know the details).  Anyway … have a look at this graph (click to enlarge it):

Here are a few of my observations:

I’ve been doing some reading about “mission” this week, as I prepare for a teaching time about one of the core elements of a Christian’s “call” to follow God.  What is our purpose, our mission, our calling, etc?  At a high level, it seems threefold – all followers of God are called to holiness, to community, and to mission (which, not surprisingly, is also how our series is unfolding!).  But what is “mission”?

This is where my reading comes in.    Over at Christianity Today, there is a brief article called “The Greatest Social Need” that explores various social needs and concerns, but does so by asking the question of what the root problem is.  The author concludes, and I would agree, that the greatest social problem is