Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from all of us (read: both of us) here at BBG!  We hope and pray that this season marks a time of joy and awe as you consider the gracious miracle of God becoming man in the person of Jesus Christ.

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Book Review: The Shack, Part I

In his preface to the 1961 edition of the The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis laments that his book is unbalanced.  Screwtape tells the one-sided tale of two demons seeking to keep an individual from God.  He wishes there could have also been written an account of angelic responses to the lies of the demons, but [...]

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5 Favorite New Reads of 2008

I set out this year to read some books from outside my normal genre, biblical studies (especially commentaries), in order to broaden my horizons a bit.  I read a number of books I thought were excellent, some of which have been reviewed (click our “Book Reviews” tab and check them out).  But, I thought I’d [...]

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Colson’s Commentary

Chuck Colson has written a commentary about the recent corruption charges against Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.  Check it out here.

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Happy Winter Solstice from the Humanists!

The advertisement above is part of a controversial campaign sponsored by the American Humanist Association (AHA hereafter).  Signs like the one above will appear on busses and at bus stations around Washington, DC this winter. Humanism, per the AHA, ”is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and [...]

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Book Review, Part 3: An Old Testament Theology

Thanks to Chris at Zondervan for a review copy of this book.   In this portion of the review, I’ve opted to focus specifically on Waltke’s treatment of the Abrahamic & Davidic covenants.  I did this for two main reasons: 1) since Waltke’s book is, in part, a biblical theology, I wanted to know how [...]

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Crafting a Crazy King

As I’ve taught through portions of 1-2 Samuel (I generally just refer to it as “Samuel”, indicating the unity of the 2 books), I’ve become more and more convinced of the need to read this book as a narrative.  I’m certainly not discounting the historical veracity of it; I’m simply trying to acknowledge that this [...]

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Rearraging Suffering, Part II

As promised in part I, here are some further reflections on suffering, with a specific eye to some categories.  After having a weekend to think this post over, the word “categories” might overstate my true intentions.  I really have a distinction in mind, since categorically speaking, all suffering is the result of sin, be it mine, [...]

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Rearranging Suffering, Part I

This week, the Marchionni household has experienced a number of light and momentary afflictions, each of which have conspired to keep us from getting a good night of sleep for nearly a week.  “A good night” here means “more than 4 hours.”  One source of this sleep deprivation, which will come as no surprise to [...]

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Harry Potter and the Resurrected Posts

The following is an edited combination of two posts I put up on my personal blog almost a year ago. After a conversation of sorts with a commenter on my Maher-ulous post, I thought these were germane to the discussion (tangentially, at least). I’ll begin with a scene from a Simpsons episode: Flanders:(reading softly to Rod [...]

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