The Greek word twice translat...

The Greek word twice translated ‘accursed‘ is anathema. It was used in the Greek Old Testament for the divine ban, the curse of God resting upon anything or anyone devoted by Him to destruction. The story of Achan provides an example of this. God said that the spoil of the Canaanites was under His ban-it was devoted to destruction. But Achan stole and kept for himself what should have been destroyed.
So the apostle Paul desires that these false teachers should come under the divine ban, curse or anathema. - P24

The distinctions, indeed anta...

The distinctions, indeed antagonisms, of the ancient world were not about race in our sense of ethnic or colour distinctions; they were about culture and tradition and religion. The only kind of discrimination which we find in the Old Testament is cultural and religious, not racial. In fact the Deuteronomic prohibition about intermarriage which we quoted a moment ago goes on to give a reason for the law: it was not a concern about race but about religion. Intermarriage is forbidden, ‘for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Furthermore, the reasons underlying the strong line taken by Nehemiah after the exile were precisely the same: that marrying ‘foreign women‘ would be likely - as with Solomon - to entice the people of Yahweh to the worship of other gods. It is not aprohibition of inter-race marriage, it is rather a strong prohibition against inter-religious marriage. - P67

In the Bible, responsibility is attributed to persons made as God‘s image, and it carries the sense of ‘response to theCreator, who holds us accountable. Our Christian understanding of human fallenness, in which sin disorders all aspects of our personalityand relationships, means that a fully restored human responsibility must be linked to our full restoration as persons, as we are gradually made more like Christ. So -as with every aspect of Christian life -there is an ambiguity in the exercise of our responsibility between the
‘now‘ of today and the ‘not yet‘ of the coming Day of the Lord.
Responsibility is therefore both an assumption and a goal. We must bealert to the debilitating effect of the sins of others and ourselves on theexercise of our responsibility, but we are not at liberty to dissolve ourmoral accountability away into any sort of determinism. Our whole life is under what Barth somewhere called the ‘global mandate of responsible freedom‘. To be responsible is to live as accountable to God and as caring for others, within the limits of the freedom which is ours in this world. - P71

Prayer is, as it were, the fl...

Prayer is, as it were, the flip side to the doctrine of providence. Prayer is the acknowledgment, not of the psychological benefit ofsome mythological exercise, but of the fact that we believe that God isthere, God cares, God rules and God provides, and believe it in such away that we are ready to do something on that basis, namely speak tohim. Providence reminds us of our creatureliness and dependence onGod, and that together with all men, we stand under God‘s lordship;prayer is an activity by which we acknowledge that we cannot be ourown lord. Providence reminds us that everything is not ultimatelyabsurd or meaningless; prayer is our way of expressing our ‘yes‘ to theconviction that God is working his purposes out in nature, in men, inhistory. Providence is a reminder that the Lord is a God of grace andgenerosity; prayer is our way of responding to his invitation to be amember of his covenant family, his son or daughter, his co-worker inthis world. Providence reminds us that the living God is not anirresistible fate before whom we can only keep silent and passive;prayer is our response to God‘s invitation to share fellowship withhim,
an expression of our union with him. - P43

Covenant love

Kindly (verse 8) translates the great word at the centre of God‘scovenant relationship with his people: hesed, steadfast love and faithfulness. It is a word which ‘combines the warmth of God‘s fellowshipwith the security of God‘s faithfulness‘. - P44

[오늘의 한문장] Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

All these effects that continental differences in area, population, ease of diffusion, and onset of food production exerted on the rise of technology became exaggerated, because technology catalyzes itself. - P252

마가가 설교에 집중하고 마태가 가르침에 집중한다면, ...

마가가 설교에 집중하고 마태가 가르침에 집중한다면, 누가는 일상에서 일어나는 일들 속에서 격의없이 주고받는 언어에 집중한다. - P29

비유(parable)는 문자 그대로 ‘-의 곁에 던져진 무엇‘ 즉 para(곁에)와 bole(던져진)이합성된 것인데, 그것을 본 우리의 첫 반응은 "이게 여기에 왜 있는 거야?" 이다. 우리는 질문을 던지고, 생각하고, 상상한다. "비유는 재빠르고 정확한 일격을 던지며 등장한다. 비유는 약하다. 거의 모든 힘이 그것을 듣는 자에게 가 있다. "우리는 그것이 어떻게 연결되는지, 어떤 관계인지를 보면서 이해하기 시작한다. - P38

예수님을 따른다는 것이 무엇이며 그것이 얼마나 긴박한일인지를 더 많이 인식할수록 더 강렬한 언어를 사용하는 것이 보통이다. 그러나 언어 자체가 강렬하기 - P41

때문에 우리가 이야기하고 있는 사람들에 대한 관심은 오히려 줄어들 수 있다. 그들은 더 이상 인격이 아니라 목적인 것이다. 메시지를 전달하는 데 조급해서 우리는 자신이 만나고 있는 사람은상관하지 않고 우리가 전해야 하는 말을 기계화된 문구나 프로그램화된 공식으로 비인격화한다. 하나님의 말씀을 전하고자 하는긴박성이 커질수록 사람의 말을 듣고자 하는 관계성은 줄어든다.
결국에는 살이 없는 말들만 마른 뼈처럼 쌓이게 된다. 그것이 바로 종교적 언어다. - P42