Great opening line from an Amazon.com book review of former evangelical Christian Frank Schaeffer’s book Patience with God

Former evangelical Christian political agitator Schaeffer has been born yet again.

From a book review at Undeception.com

But the simple fact is that these people who are the quickest to demand scriptural support can point to no scriptural basis for this belief [in biblical inerrancy as opposed to biblical inspiration]. No passage speaks of the entire canon in which it has become enclosed, much less claiming inspiration or inerrancy for it. Instead, their belief comes down to “logic”, falsely so-called: if the Bible is inspired from start to finish — as surely it ought to be — than it will be inerrant — for surely, it ought to be.

Punctuation help from Sussex University

Adding more dots and squiggles to this perfectly clear sentence would do absolutely nothing to improve it. No punctuation mark should be used if it is not necessary.

One of their example sentences is too good to not pass along:

Mae West had one golden rule for handling men: “Tell the pretty ones they’re smart, and tell the smart ones they’re pretty.”

I like this quote about Bible interpretation from the blog Confessions of a Doubting Thomas

I’m not sure I was ever of the opinion: “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it”, but I’m now a bit further from that opinion. I’m now more like: “The Bible says it, that shows us something of what the person who wrote that bit of the bible believed, that opens up a whole heap of interesting questions…”

A quote from George Murphy about Adam, Eve, and the first sin:

The latter view, in which humanity was created in an immature condition and expected to grow, corresponds best to our scientific picture. The earliest human sin was not a fall from perfection but a start along a path that led away from God.

The first humans would have inherited tendencies for selfish behaviors that injured their fellows. Sin has to do with our relationship with God, and didn’t exist before God revealed his will to our ancestors. But when God told them not to harm others, they would have been tempted to ignore him.

Humanity could theoretically have obeyed God, for our behaviors are not hardwired. Sin wasn’t “necessary” but was “inevitable.” Refusing to obey God, humanity turned from God’s intended goal and started on a road to perdition. Science of course supplies further details about early humanity, but we’re concerned here with theology rather than history.

This corresponds to the picture we get from Genesis.

I really liked this comment by Bob MacDonald on Christian marriage.

The wife and the husband have gifts for each other that no one else can – and not even God – will supply.

The blog post commented upon is about whether the Apostle Paul knew the first thing about marriage and whether we should trust his opinions when he writes about it in the Bible. The article itself was interesting — tho not wholly convincing to me — and set the stage perfectly for someone like MacDonald to come along and distill the modern Christian understanding of marriage into the quote above.