Caitlin Corning (PhD, Leeds), Brooks Lampe (PhD, Catholic University of America), and Sue O’Donnell (PhD, University of Minnesota) join us to talk about lament and wisdom. In the Christian tradition, Jesus suffered badly, was crucified and humiliated, and actually died. That’s not the end of the story, but it happened—what does Scripture have to say about the experience of life’s darkest moments, and life’s end? How should it be morned, and how we turn to lament and wisdom at the right time?

This week we tackle the darkest aspects of Israel’s experienced, embodied in the words of the Creed, “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.” How did Israel deal with disorientation, death, and suffering? In this lecture we discuss how the books of Psalms and Lamentations engage with the category of “Lament” and how Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes offer a vision of “Wisdom” to Israel in response to suffering.

Abigail Favale (PhD, St. Andrews), Isaac Choi (PhD, Philosophy), and Steve Sherwood (DMin, George Fox University) join the panel to field a variety of questions about repentance, prophets, men and women and gender and God, the virgin Mary, and how Christians might think about the assurance or shakiness of salvation.

We continue with the prophets this week, focusing on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, while narrating Israel’s history down to the eventual destruction of Israel (the northern part of the country) around 720 BC and Judah (the southern part of the country, around Jerusalem) in 586 BC. What role does Jeremiah play in trying to warn the people of their fate in his so-called Temple Sermon, in Jeremiah ch. 7? And how does Ezekiel embody the pain of exile and sin and death through his words and actions and other imagery in his book? Do either of these prophets offer any hope for the future for Israel?

Rebecca Hernandez (PhD, Oregon State University), Gary Tandy (PhD, University of Tulsa), and Anderson Campbell (DMin, George Fox University) join the panel to talk about their favorite prophetic books and how to think about prophets today. Are “prophets” still speaking today, in the biblical style? How do we know who speaks for God? What kinds of issues might God care about today?

What is a prophet? And how did Israel’s prophetic tradition function? In this lecture, we take a look back at some earlier prophets we’ve met but didn’t discuss (Abraham, Moses, Miriam, Deborah) and talk about the characteristics of the prophet, including the dual ways prophets (a) confront kings and speak truth to power as well as (b) encourage the nation and support kings during times of national distress. We take a closer look at the context of Isaiah ch. 7, which narrates a famous scene that becomes very important for Christianity and the identity of Jesus in the New Testament.

Javier Garcia (PhD, Cambridge) and Tim Tsohantaridis (PhD, University of Athens) join the panel to field a barrage of questions about God’s gender, the meaning of the Trinity, seeing Jesus in the Old Testament, violence in Scriptures, and the challenge of seeing the same God across the whole of the Bible (as opposed to seeing the Old Testament God as mean and violent, against the New Testament God, who is loving and forgiving and kind).

The Creed now takes us to the figure of Jesus, and to the concept of Jesus as God’s “only son.” How can God have a son? The narrative in Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and 1–2 Samuel culminates in the possession of Israel as land and the spectacular promise to David as king in 2 Samuel ch. 7. This lecture takes a tour of this material, and asks about the meaning of terms like “king,” “son,” “land,” and “messiah” (Hebrew machiach) all by way of laying the groundwork for how Jesus would come to interact with these terms.

Davida Brown (PhD, Stanford), Todd Curtis (MS, University of Colorado Boulder), and Mark Terry (MFA, Azusa Pacific) sit down to talk about creation, science, and art. Are science and religion locked in a death match, for which there can be only one winner? Or are they compatible in some way? Is it crazy for scientists to believe the Bible’s creation account—and in what way? Are there analogies in the world of art for thinking about the here-and-now-ness of creation as a biblical motif?

When we call God a “Creator,” what exactly does that mean? Is creation imagery in the Bible about the past, or the present, or even the future? Is Genesis 1 the Bible’s only creation story? (Answer: no!) What about other creation stories from the Bible's ancient context? What about science? The professor provides “Seven Theses On Thinking About Creation in the Bible”…