Posts tagged ‘Old Testament’

Jun 3

‘Our Story’ – Talks from Grace Conference 2012

In this series of talks for women, Tamie Davis brings together her passion for the Old Testament with her background in literature and her care for women in the Church. Tamie is a creative and engaging speaker, a wise teacher and a discerning reader of Scripture. As her husband, I’m biased — but I reckon you’ll find these encouraging!

The talks cover three early chapters from the Book of Deuteronomy, part of the ancient Bible story that should continue to shape our story as God’s people today.

Some of the issues that come up include: What does it actually look like to live for God every day? Why and how do we rest? How do we play our part in inspiring the next generation?

Download the audio from the Grace Conference website. Grace Conference runs each year in Adelaide, Australia.

Jan 25

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Tamar’s Tears: Intro

Arthur happened to be sitting next to me as I read the introduction to Tamar’s Tears. He was regularly interrupted from his own reading by my excited exclamations. Here are two notable quotables. Long-time readers of our blog will recognise my own sentiments here, though the authors are much more eloquent than I!

Sometimes [evangelicals] do find ourselves embattled, defending the truth… But not all the time; at times, a more irenic, a more conversational approach is appropriate. … Of course, many evangelicals and many feminist biblical scholars would see this interface [between evangelical and feminist approaches] as a skirmish zone in a key conflict over the nature and use of the Bible. We beg to differ, seeking a more excellent way, a friendlier path through this territory that might prove fruitful for both evangelical and feminist scholars.

What then are the key issues that feminist OT hermeneutics raises for evangelical interpreters? Here are some: is the text as a whole, or are particular texts, inherently oppressive? … How do we wrestle with the historical and cultural particularity of the text/s while maintaining that it is the word of a God of freedom and fidelity, a God of love and justice? What do we do with texts that seem to deny women the dignity we believe is rightly theirs – and which have been used in such ways?

Oct 25

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God and the nations in the psalms: Conclusion

Missiologists love to talk about the parts of the Psalms that call on the nations to praise God and there are a lot of them. But there are even more references to their defeat! On top of that, it seems to be God’s glory that is the focus, not the nations. So what can we say about God’s attitude to the nations? Read more

Oct 19

God and the nations in the Psalms: the nations’ defeat

We saw a link between God’s preference for Israel and the nations’ praise in Psalm 96 and 67 but what about God’s punishment of the nations and their defeat? Psalms 47 and 87 help us to address this. Read more

Oct 15

God and the nations in the Psalms: Israel’s praise

So far in this series we’ve seen 4 themes about the nations in the Psalms:

God rules the nations
Defeat of the nations
Calls for the nations to praise God
Israel among the nations

Just because the defeat of the nations is the most common reference doesn’t make it God’s primary attitude to the nations though. Actually, there’s no single psalm which has the nations’ defeat on view without also calling for them to praise God. So how does that work? Read more

Oct 11

God and the nations in the Psalms: framework

If we assume that the Psalter has been put together with purpose rather than just randomly, we can expect that its shape will help us to understand its theology, including what God’s attitude to the nations is. One way to do that is by looking at how the Psalter starts and ends. Read more