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Poetry

Ruth Pregnant

I bask beneath this eye, sun roving our marriage bed, sheets bunched together like gathered wheat. Your side empty and cool now, already you work the fields. I take more than my portion, I turn slow as the moon in daylight hours. You, husband, have always given me more than I can carry, such weight I’ve not known (only, before, a dead husband’s hand, an old woman weeping). Even good things have weight—a harvest, a child turning his slow discoveries…
September 1, 2015
Essays

Not Counting Women and Children

In Matthew’s telling of the feeding of the five thousand, he relates that after the crowd has eaten and were satisfied, the disciples gathered up the leftover loaves and fishes in baskets. The account concludes, “And those who ate were five thousand men, not counting women and children” (Matt 14: 21). Mark and Luke note that five thousand men were fed (Mark 6:44, Luke 9:14). Matthew’s is the only gospel to notice that women and children are not included in…
Christiana de Groot
September 1, 2015
Inside Out

Getting Bro-propriated

A woman says something in a meeting. It is barely acknowledged. Later in the meeting, a man says the exact same thing, whereupon everyone agrees that it is, indeed, the solution to every problem. There’s a word for that: “Bro” + appropriation = Bro-propriation. All of which brings me to the Easter story. The account of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is told four times: in Mark 16, Matthew 28, Luke 24 and John 20. Scholars generally agree that Mark…
September 1, 2015
Poetry

Consumed

Ruth and Boaz Dine Grapes, sweet and cool, ornament the table. Blue-veined cheeses on wooden slats, rosemary and garlic. Bread with gold-toasted crust, a soft-melt inside. Olive oil pooling in bowls, gleaming eyes. She bites a pear, breaks the skin. She tears the bread, dips and dips again. I would like to be the bread in her hands: warm, broken for her, sustaining. Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collection Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing, 2014). Her…
September 1, 2015
Reviews

A Cure for Flinging Scripture Around

GOD AND THE GAY CHRISTIAN GOD AND THE GAY CHRISTIAN: THE BIBLICAL CASE IN SUPPORT OF SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS MATTHEW VINES CONVERGENT BOOKS, 2014 $17.97 224 PAGES THE BIBLE’S YES TO SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: AN EVANGELICAL’S CHANGE OF HEART MARK ACHTEMEIER WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2014 $13.83 144 PAGES THE BIBLE'S YES TO SAME-SEX MARRIAGE In 2010 I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Stanley Hauerwas at Duke University. During the meeting, Hauerwas spoke of the need for the church to…
July 1, 2015
Reviews

Fighting Gendercide from within the Church

THE CROSS AND GENDERCIDE THE CROSS AND GENDERCIDE: A THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE TO GLOBAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS ELIZABETH GERHARDT IVP ACADEMIC, 2014 $16.28 185 PAGES At the conclusion of my recent class The Global Politics of Human Rights, a student made the observation that when we discuss the basis for human rights or discuss the nature of human-rights problems, we try to understand them through the lens of faith. But when we talk about solutions to human-rights problems, we…
July 1, 2015
The Adoration of the Shepherds/Geroges de la Tour
Essays

Desiring the End(s) of Salvation

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. –C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses…
July 1, 2015
The garden of Eden with the fall of man
Essays

Deification: A Truly Ecumenical Concept

Since the 2nd century, Christians have described the telos of God’s creation and redemption of humanity in terms of deification, or divinization. Even though it is one of the oldest entries in the church’s theological lexicon, deification sounds exotic when first encountered. Some people are immediately disconcerted. Unfamiliar with the word in a Christian context, they associate deification with ancient Greek hero myths, the apotheosis of Roman emperors, forms of mysticism in which humans are thought to merge into God…
July 1, 2015
As We See It

Taking Another Look at Deification

The essays in this issue of Perspectives tackle a topic that might seem strange to readers habituated in the Reformed tradition. The word “deification,” if it rings a bell at all, is commonly associated with Eastern Orthodoxy or with Mormonism. Todd Billings, in his essay in this issue, notes that when students are first exposed to one of the ways that early Christian theologians thought about salvation – salvation as deification – they are taken aback. I often experience this…
July 1, 2015