Category Archives: Biblical Studies

The Gospel According to Gupta

Posted on October 23, 2012 by hessd

The question that has been on my mind for the last several weeks is this: “What do we mean when we say that a story is true?”  Is it just an old-fashioned way of saying that it is accurate?  I … Continue reading →

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Inside Accounts and Outside Accounts

Posted on May 19, 2012 by hessd

It strikes me now as odd that when I saw the title—Systematic Theology: A Historicist Perspective—on the shelf as I pushed the dust mop by it during my first year of doctoral study, the word that really caught my attention … Continue reading →

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The Good Samaritan

Posted on April 13, 2012 by hessd

I come from a religious culture in which the value of the questions to be asked is assumed and the Bible is taken to be the source of the answer.  I haven’t lived in that culture for a long time, … Continue reading →

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Explaining Matthew’s Advent Story to Children

Posted on December 26, 2011 by hessd

The story of Herod’s anger at having missed his chance to kill the Christ Child has been around for a long time, assuming that the Gospel of Matthew dates from the 80s AD.  In the charged political atmosphere of the … Continue reading →

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Matthew’s Story and Really Smart People

Posted on December 5, 2011 by hessd

Nobody ever said that the story of Jesus’s birth was about what you know.  The story is, like everything else in Christianity, about Who you know.[1]  I get that and I’m fine with it.  Mostly.  But the truth is that … Continue reading →

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Does God Love Unconditionally?

Posted on November 3, 2011 by hessd

The theological argument I have heard that Christians ought to be unconditionally loving is that God is unconditionally loving.  I’m not sure that’s true.  And if it is true, I think we wouldn’t be able to tell. Today, I am … Continue reading →

Posted in Biblical Studies, Theology | Tagged , | 4 Comments

How Man Looketh

Posted on November 3, 2011 by hessd

My text today is 1 Samuel 16:7a, which, for the purposes of today’s blog, I will render as, “A man looketh on the outward appearance.”  My sense is that men who look only on the outward appearance are probably jerks, … Continue reading →

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Servants and Stewards and Unconditional Love

Posted on October 24, 2011 by hessd

We just don’t have the stuff for unconditional love.    The “we” I had in mind in that sentence is us humans and that’s the conclusion I came to at the end of Adam and Eve and Unconditional Love.  I’d like … Continue reading →

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Adam, Eve, and Unconditional Love

Posted on October 22, 2011 by hessd

I am beginning today a set of thought experiments bearing on the notion of “unconditional” or “non-contingent” love.  I am beginning with the position that it is a bad idea.  It asks more discernment of us than we can reliably … Continue reading →

Posted in Biblical Studies, Political Psychology | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Love and Savvy

Posted on September 17, 2011 by hessd

I haven’t actually read the book Women Who Love Too Much, but when I saw it on the shelf, I knew I didn’t want to.  The person who made up that title—I understand that it might not have been the … Continue reading →

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