Helpful synopsis of individual books of the Bible

One of the many amazing things about the books of the Bible is how each one is crafted to tell a coherent, fascinating and powerful story with a clear theological message.  However, when one first reads many of them, particularly in the Old Testament, that Big Picture is easily lost or not seen. One can get lost in geneologies and obscure place names...

In light of this, I have found the short videos produced by The Bible Project very helpful. Now whenever I start to study a new book, whether individually or in a small group, I first watch the relevant video. They are quite dense and so I often find it helpful to watch one more than once.

A balanced perspective on science and Christianity

The Australian TV show Compass recently had a good episode, Can a scientist believe?.
It was refreshingly balanced, featuring interviews with scientists who are atheists and scientists who are Christian. It also included some content from the COSAC conference that I was recently involved in.

Talk on Genesis 1-3

This morning I gave a talk on the first three chapters of Genesis to a women's group from my church. My wife introduced me! Here are the slides.

For background, I recommend comparing and contrasting Genesis with the Babylonian creation myth the Enuma Elish, which is nicely summarised in this short video.

Another helpful short video is Science and Genesis, featuring John Polkinghorne, Alister McGrath, N.T. Wright, and others.

I have found helpful the book How to Read Genesis  by Tremper Longman.
An excellent introductory book that puts my talk in context is Exploring Science and Belief by Michael Poole.

Learning from the church fathers

I am really enjoying the reading group that is working through Historical Theology by Alister McGrath. Here are some thoughts on chapter 1 which looks at the early church fathers (Patristic Period, c. 100-450). The video below gives a brief overview of the corresponding chapter in McGrath's Introduction to Christian Theology.



Theological debates occurred in the context of Greek philosophy. 
Ideas about the Trinity and the personhood of Christ were heavily influenced by Greek ideas about the perfection of God. (p. 12-13)
God is infinite and unchanging. How then can God suffer?
Theology has to be logically self-consistent.

But, what if we compare these Greek ideal of intellectual "perfection" to the teachings of Jesus? He did not present truth as a set of logical propositions. He told stories. Furthermore, he seemed to like paradoxes and “contradictions”. For example, “the first will be last and the last will be first.”

Same old same old.
Some of the issues of the past are the same today. For example, how is theology related to secular academic disciplines?
Tertullian asked “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem”?
i.e,, what do Greek intellectual ideas have to do with the church?
Augustine said Christians should “plunder the Egyptians”, i.e. freely make use of non-Christian ideas, such as Greek philosophy, in order to advance their cause.

Other questions theologians wrestled with include the following.
Can one find God in popular culture? How far does “common grace” extend?
What are the qualifications of church leaders?
Who can be a member of a church?
Is the ministry of a “fallen” church leader valid?
What is the role of analogical thinking