Dr Paul Allen

In a secular age, when the transcendent and eternal have drifted out of centre view, immanent things like human cultures take on central, hallowed significance.  Preserving the tangible customs and traditions of indigenous cultures in this life, therefore, becomes a far greater good than evangelizing indigenous people to preserve their souls for an intangible afterlife.  Indeed, the latter is seen as a threat to the former.  For sceptics prone to seeing the Christian mission in a “more harm than good” way, it was confirmed when I read two PhDs (Alice Springs Library) regarding ministry in the Outback that confirm this bias.

By Michael Brown Have you ever heard the claim that David and Jonathan, of biblical fame, were “gay lovers”? This is a blatant falsehood, as numerous Bible scholars have demonstrated over the years. After all, the biblical text is quite clear. Jonathan became a married man with children. And, much more significantly, David married numerous women, almost destroying his whole life because he lusted for a married woman named Bathsheba. He committed adultery with her, got her pregnant, and then killed her husband (see 2 Samuel 11). This is not what gay men do! Other biblical scholars have pointed out that the whole testimony of the Hebrew Bible is exclusively heterosexual — meaning, only heterosexual relationships are countenanced, let alone blessed — while any references to homosexual behaviour are highly harmful. This Bible would not paint an openly gay picture of one of its heroes. But of course!  Obviously, all this public kissing was not in the least bit sexual! That’s why there a...

Israel is full of ancient ruins, but who destroyed what and when? Earth’s magnetic field is helping researchers identify remains of wars described in the Bible. According to the Bible, the Holy Land was a frequent target for conquering empires: from the ancient Egyptians to the Arameans, from the Assyrians to the Babylonians. Of course, the good book interprets these tragedies from a religious standpoint, usually as divine retribution for the sins of the ancient Israelites. But many of the wars mentioned in the biblical text were historical events. Settlements were often burnt down and, in some cases, were rebuilt only to be sacked again a century or so later – leaving archaeologists today puzzling over multiple layers of destruction and struggling to figure out who destroyed what and when. Questions about the dating of ancient sites in the Levant are not purely academic. They lie at the heart of the longstanding debate over fact and fiction in the Bible. Now a new scientific technique...

Radical liberal theologians such as Rudolph Bultmann maintain that Scripture is not revelation—that neither words nor nature reveal God. We must look to wordless “encounters” or mystical experiences. God reveals himself in many ways. First, let us focus on the necessary relationship between God’s acts and God’s words. Perhaps the best illustration of this relationship is the crucifixion of Christ, which surely is the central event of history. But what do we know about this event? What does it mean? Here is a Jew being crucified outside Jerusalem. How would you interpret this event? How does the Man on the center cross differ from those crucified on either side of him? Does his death differ from theirs? The Roman interpretation is that this man has been charged, probably falsely, with insurrection. To prevent trouble, however, they will play along with the Jewish leaders. The Jewish Sanhedrin is partly concerned that this Man’s teaching will bring down Roman wrath upon Israel. The...

One form of neo-Marcionism exists now in some British and American scholarly circles, and it dominates German New Testament scholarship. Rudolph Bultmann and his followers maintain that the gospel comes shrouded in myth and needs to be demythologized. In particular, say these men, we need to rid ourselves of the idea that salvation results from the verifiable actions of God in history. The essential characteristic of a myth is that it is a “religious truth” not grounded in real history. Therefore, salvation is punctiliar—it happens in a moment of personal existential encounter with God. Salvation, for Bultmann, has no connection to the Old Testament kingdom of God that reaches its climax in the revelation and work of Jesus Christ. All this Old Testament background is “myth.” The core of gospel must be stripped from its Old Testament context and worldview. Orthodox Christian scholars maintain against Bultmann that God prepared the history of the world by his sovereign providence. Th...