Flotsam and jetsam (7/7)

• Ben Myers offers an excerpt from an upcoming paper on “Prayer as Theological Method.” This particular section focuses on one of George Herbert’s sonnets and the way that Herbert uses poetry to create a space for prayer.
• Evangel discusses some of the difficulties inherent in the idea of a soteriological “age of accountability“.
• Larry Hurtado briefly reviews Jimmy Dunn’s Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?: The New Testament Evidence, noting a few points of minor disagreement. James McGrath offers a brief response to Hurtado’s claim that the early Christians did not participate in any sacrificial practices.
• Phil Sumpter continues his discussion of Brevard Childs’ exegesis, this time looking at the development of two distinct traditions regarding the origin of Moses’ office among the Israelites.
• Mike Bird offers a very nice summary of the events leading to the “Incident at Antioch” (Gal. 2:11-14).
• And, if you feel like you need to protect your children from the nefarious influence of religious rhetoric, you can now install GodBlock, a web filter that is “is targeted at parents and schools who wish to protect their kids from the often violent, sexual, and psychologically harmful material in many holy texts, and from being indoctrinated into any religion before they are of the age to make such decisions.” That’s fabulous. (HT Jim West)

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Flotsam and jetsam (5/28)

• Andrew Perriman addresses the issue of whether Jesus saw himself as God. He walks through a number of NT texts, arguing in each case that they show Jesus as one who had a special status before God, but not necessarily as actually being God. (HT James McGrath)
• You’ve probably heard by now that Belgian authorities raided Catholic church properties searching for evidence of a cover-up in the sex abuse scandal. Yesterday, Pope Benedict issued a harsh criticism of the raids and their “deplorable” methods. (Seriously, what could they have been hiding in the tomb of a dead bishop?) What I found most interesting, though, was the Pope’s continued claim of some “autonomy” for the church in investigating these scandals. Isn’t that what got the church into this problem in the first place?
• C. Michael Patton has posted a number of graphs that illustrate the relative sizes of major world religions and Christian denominations.
• Getting tired of American Idol? Try Young Imam, a Malaysian reality TV show where hopeful, young muslim scholars compete for a scholarship, a job, and a trip to Mecca. Globalization at its finest.
• If you haven’t heard about Horseboy, Daily Mail has an interesting article on him and other interesting people who have appeared in Google Streetview images.
• Here’s an article on brands that could disappear in 2011. No shock to find BP on the list, but Reader’s Digest and T-Mobile were a bit more surprising.