Paul’s teaching on the role of wives and slaves in the Christian household are among the most (tragically!) misinterpreted passages in scripture. In this episode we examine the tension between ideals and reality, between what is ultimately true and how close (or not) we can approximate it at any particular moment in time. As...
Tag: interpreting the new testament
Understanding the Bible 40: The Early Church’s Struggle for Unity
What happens when you take people from different geographical regions, religious traditions, languages and cultures and tell them they are now “one in Christ” – the family of faith…? As anyone who has ever sat in a church committee meeting will tell you, the answer is: arguments! Since there has been church, there has been...
Understanding the Bible 39: Was Jesus Divine? – The Development of Trinitarian Theology
If confessing the full divinity of Jesus, or God who is simultaneously three Persons in one, strikes you as quite an intellectual stretch, know that you are in excellent company! After all, it is one thing to regard Jesus as a great religious teacher, a political leader or perhaps even some sort of (human) messianic figure....