Bible and Mission

  Texas Democrat candidate for the senate, James Talarico, has ventured into theological territory meant to challenge orthodox views about God and human sexuality. [1]   Trying to challenge the Christian understanding of gender and sexuality, he alleged that God is ‘nonbinary’.   Clarifying his comment, he averred that God is ‘beyond gender’.   These are contradictory claims. To suggest that God is nonbinary is to locate Him in the created order.  When people claim to be ‘nonbinary’, they are making a claim about their sexuality.  Sex, as we should know but also can see from Genesis 1.26ff, has to do with procreation and multiplying the species on the earth.  Those claiming to be nonbinary are claiming sexuality, whatever ‘nonbinary’ sexual identity means to them. Talarico’s second statement is correct: God is beyond gender.  This is because He is beyond the created order.  God is not both male and female.  He has no sexual identity....

  Preaching, I would say, needs to accomplish five tasks. First, preaching must make disciples of us all.   It must be Biblical interpretation.   It is about explaining what the passage meant in its context and how this message speaks authoritatively to us today.   The minister and the congregation sit under the authority of God’s Word.   We dare not distort it through ignorance or our own imaginations or desires.   The posture of good listeners is to sit quietly, hear, and honour the Bible’s message.   Listening to it interpreted leads us back to read it for ourselves. The Jews who listened to Paul in Berea ‘received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so’ (Acts 17.11).   Preaching is not about a preacher encapsulating the big idea of a passage and repackaging it in some more easily grasped form, as enticing as this might be, for to do so is to reduce it to some chosen part, like the child wh...

  Theological study in South Africa is mostly by denomination or theological tradition.   This is true of several of the seminaries listed below, but they all accept students from various theological backgrounds that are Evangelical, that is, orthodox.   A few are intentional about having a broader Evangelical ethos. The tendency of theological colleges to offer online education is a factor throughout the world for various reasons.   Most, I believe, would rather have campus institutions.   Finances often force students and institutions toward online opportunities.   Some of the colleges or universities, below, are entirely online, while some others, even though offering online education, hold on to the goal of in-person education.   I have attempted to provide a list of Evangelical institutions from various theological traditions that provide students in South Africa interested opportunities to study.   With the exception of Global University...

  Introduction: Galatians 2.15-21 and 3.1-4.31 Galatians 2.15-21 is something of a tightly packed paragraph that captures the essence of Paul’s theology.   In it, we hear the Paul who spoke regularly on this subject, in synagogues, before Gentiles, and to his churches.   We hear themes such as justification by faith not works, justification through faith in Jesus Christ not the Law, the justification of sinners, dying to the Law and living to God, the crucifixion of Jesus as loving and life-giving and God’s grace, and participating in Jesus’ crucifixion and life.   These inter-related theological themes come at us in this paragraph like a tidal wave.   In chapters 3 and 4 of Galatians, Paul unpacks these themes.   In this lesson, I want to approach what Paul says by asking, ‘What part of this theology should Jews who knew nothing of Jesus have already expected by reading the Old Testament?’   Imagine Jews in a synagogue in Galatia being told that a J...