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Mark D. Roberts

This weekend Laity Lodge is hosting a retreat that is co-sponsored by Seattle Pacific University and the Laity Leadership Institute. National and international leaders in business, the academy, and the church have gathered to think about business from the vantage point of Christian faith. One of the keynote speakers was Jeff Van Duzer, Dean of…

In my last post I laid out a popular theory among some scholars for how the early Christians came to think of Jesus as divine. Let me review it briefly. According to this theory, the first followers of Jesus didn’t consider him to be divine, but only an inspired man. The earliest Christians were, after…

In my last two posts in this series, I examined two theories that seek to explain why the earliest Christians regarded Jesus as divine. I found both of these to be lacking, though both point in a direction that will ultimately lead to a plausible theory. Today I want to examine a common theory that…

In the last two days I’ve surveyed Paul’s teaching about prophecy as found in 1 Corinthians. Let me summarize what we have discovered. Prophesying was a common activity in the gatherings of Corinthian Christians (or at least that seems to be the case). Both men and women prophesied in these gatherings (11:4-5). This would be…

In yesterday’s post I began considering the nature and function of prophecy in 1 Corinthians, focusing especially on chapters 12 and 13. Today I’ll pick up the conversation by examining chapter 14, which provides more data about prophesying in the early church than any other chapter of the New Testament. On the basis of 1…

Preface If you’ve been following my blog recently, you know that I’ve just begun a series on the divinity of Jesus. I’ll get back to that series soon. But I’d like to take a short break to put up a couple of posts on prophecy in 1 Corinthians. If that seems to you like a…

READ Psalm 6:1-10 I am worn out from sobbing.     All night I flood my bed with weeping,     drenching it with my tears. Psalm 6:6 I grew up in a culture, church, and family that didn’t have much room for sadness. If ever people in my life were feeling sad, it was my responsibility to “cheer them…

In a couple of months, we’ll be decorating our homes for Christmas. In the meanwhile, many Americans choose to decorate their front yards with political signs. Check out these options from my town of Boerne, Texas. Actually, this isn’t a home, but rather the local Republican headquarters. I guess they’re rather into the political signage…

In my last post, I began considering popular theories about why the early Christians considered Jesus to be divine. The first theory pointed to the fact that they thought of Jesus as Messiah and therefore Son of God. But I showed that, in the thought world of first-century Judaism – the world of the earliest…

There are many popular theories about why the earliest Christians considered to Jesus to be divine. You can find these regularly espoused by preachers, teachers, professors of religion, or debunkers of Christianity. As you might be able to tell already, I do not find these theories to be persuasive. But because they are so common,…
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