N T Wright on Hell
I while ago I posted a video of N T Wright on Heaven. Time to redress the balance…
Ancient Rome in 3D
The Roman Empire is clearly an important background to not only the New Testament but also Early Christianity. Google Earth have added a new Ancient Rome layer, and it’s good!
Go find out more by looking here and here.
Bultmann and the Jesus Seminar
For Dan:
You can find out more about the Jesus Seminar on their site and there is a site dedicated to the output of N T Wright called, unsurprisingly, the N T Wright Page. For more on Marcus Borg visit A Portrait of Jesus.
The ‘morphing’ Jesus is here.
Dante’s Inferno
“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. This famous phrase is written above the gate of Hell in a 14th century poem by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. The poem is called the Divine Comedy and Hell is known as Dante’s Inferno.
The warning is well made, for beyond it is a panoply of horror – severed heads, talking trees, demons, monsters and punishments both cruel and unusual.
But the Inferno is more than just a journey into the macabre – it is a map of medieval spirituality, a treasure-house of classical learning and an acute study of human psychology. It is also one of the greatest poems ever written.
Well worth a listen for a medieval perspective on hell.
The Watcher Narrative
I feel that the events of Genesis 6 (especially the Nephilim) is probably best understood against the background of the Watcher Narrative. This can be found in the Book of Enoch, chapters 1 to 36 and you can read it online here.
For some more information on the Enoch literature in general, have a look at the lecture from James C. VanderKam of University of Notre Dame on the St Andrews site.
(image from the Library of Congress)
Revelation in Far Too Little Detail
As promised, here is my brief rush through Revelation from a socio-political perspective: enjoy.
Theological Perspectives Day One
For Dan:
The existentialist philosopher I mentioned yesterday is Søren Kierkegaard, and much of his writing is available online.
You can view the Roman Catholic Catechism here and the section dealing with the role of tradition is here. An Eastern Orthodox perspective can be found on the Greek Orthodox Achdiocese of America’s website.
You might (or might not!) be interested in this article on the enlightenment from Kant’s perspective.
If there’s anything I’ve forgotten, please remind me in the comments.
Sola Scriptura?
We spent some time on Monday discussing the authority of scripture and the development of the canon in the early church. You’ll find all sorts of websites on this issues, most of them from a Protestant or Roman Catholic point of view, but I’d like to steer you towards an Orthodox viewpoint.
Our Life in Christ is an excellent podcast which tackles plenty of the points of tension between Orthodox and Evangelical Christianity. They had a series of podcasts on the issue of Sola Scriptura and posted some notes online which can be found here. They have taken an argument from an evangelical site (CRI) and put their response in blue (OLIC).
As always, this represents only one point of view but it is a good way of getting a feel for the arguments.
N T Wright on Heaven
Harps and clouds?
Free Lectures
Ok, I acknowledge that the thought of more lectures might not be the most pressing issue for you at the moment, but bear with me!
There are a number of universities who are putting their lecture series online. These are recordings made of undergraduate lectures and are therefore well within the scope of things you should be engaging with. I tend to listen to these whilst driving the 100 minutes from my house to Bristol and it is surprising how much you can get through. I’ve mentioned some on Dante’s Divine Comedy, but there are others:
University of California, Berkeley
- History 106B The Roman Empire
- History 5 The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present
- History 4A The Ancient Mediterranean World
Yale
For the following, you’ll need iTunes:
Stanford
This is a classic piece of scholarship of the New Quest for the Historical Jesus school.
Reformed Theological Seminary
- History of Philosophy and Christian Thought
- Church History Courses
- New Testament Courses
- Old Testament Courses
Also look at Concordia Seminary