Call Answering

What do I do when my student calls and asks to come home for good? A:  First, don’t panic.  Many parents receive a call like this in the first year. Just listen! Most of the time students don’t want you to fix the problem but just want you to sympathetically listen. After listening, suggest that your student seek out resources available to them at Westmont. You can always suggest they see someone in the student life office or their resident director.  Try not to dwell on the call. Many times the student will feel much better after calling home and mom and dad will feel worse! Q:  I don’t want my student to make poor lifestyle

meaning of Jesus as specifically pertinent to Black people, as specifically the Christ of their liberation" (86). The result does look somewhat Abelardian, but it is not at all Anselmian. In a key passage, Jones repudiates a category basic to that theological tradition -- "redemptive suffering." He calls the cross "more burdensome example" of God's solidarity and identification with the oppressed, "than redemptive requirement" to satisfy God's wrath. It is neither expiatory nor propitiatory. Any "sacrificial" dimension is only in the sense that it is costly to Jesus himself. It cannot be the Son's sacrifice to

I am not sure I would call Wright a "traditionalist" as Camassia does ; he does not defer to tradition simply because it is tradition. Methodologically, he reminds me of Jim McClendon, the Baptist whom I read, cite, and assign often. Wright, like McClendon, is faithfully fearless in subjecting the faith itself to fair scrutiny. Yet at the level that really counts, I think he (like Jim) really is traditionalistic: his career is a long test from within of historic Christianity's bedrock conviction, that Jesus is Messiah and Lord: The more I find out about Jesus historically, the more I find that my faith-knowledge of him is supported and

of the Luke passage is basically the same: the "hate" is supposed to be a transitional state on the way to a higher love. Yes, with this little caveat: Not a higher love, but a proper love. Augustine calls sin "concupiscence." It is not lower love or lesser love, but disordered love. (Eve Tushnet asks an interesting question about this: what does this say about how you treat nonbelieving family and friends? Is Telford supposed to be hating me? If so, he's not doing a very good job of it!) To answer Eve (may I call you Eve, Ms. Tushnet? please call me Telford), I don't think Jesus distinguishes between believers and nonbelievers here

economy. I could try answering your question about the Church by frantically spinning Christian history towards the positive, and finding reasons to shrug off the failures. "Those aren't really Christians," I could say, and I could pull out 1 John 3:4-10 to give my claim a biblical veneer. (Or, if I taught at a madrasa, I could spin Muslim history the same way: "Terrorists aren't real Muslims.") If you are already predisposed to believe, it won't take much of this to reassure you, at least for a while. Then again, if you are already predisposed not to believe, then this is not likely to work, as your psychology is already

however, that we do not call its counterpart the Young Testament. Where was Jesus at eighteen? Blissfully silent. Working for Joseph. The only words we have of a Jesus under thirty are from a student asking and answering the questions of elders. Amen to that. But doesn’t the kingdom of heaven belong to children? Of course it does – because children are still at home obeying their parents. Teenagers, by contrast, are not children. Or if they are, they prefer to disclose this fact selectively, when they have crashed the car rather than when they want to borrow the keys. I have not found biblical evidence that anything at all belongs to

coming national restoration, calling all Israel back to the faith of Moses. He warned of God's judgment and called for repentance, "but too few had responded. Jesus then set out to promise inclusion to the most obvious outsiders." If Sanders is right, then Jesus' ministry endorses, presupposes, and furthers the Baptist's ministry: "Jesus thought of someone else, John, as having called all Israel to repent." Yet it distinguishes itself from earlier prophetic careers in its openness to sinners qua sinners. As an illustration of his argument Sanders offers the parable of the banquet (Matt. 22:1-10, Luke 14:15-24), in which outcasts replace

I am not sure I would call Wright a "traditionalist" as Camassia does ; he does not defer to tradition simply because it is tradition. Methodologically, he reminds me of Jim McClendon, the Baptist whom I read, cite, and assign often. Wright, like McClendon, is faithfully fearless in subjecting the faith itself to fair scrutiny. Yet at the level that really counts, I think he (like Jim) really is traditionalistic: his career is a long test from within of historic Christianity's bedrock conviction, that Jesus is Messiah and Lord: The more I find out about Jesus historically, the more I find that my faith-knowledge of him is supported and

to the ecclesial gifts and call of Jesus. So when bound to work in ways that violate Christian justice, any Christian in office must refuse on specifically Christian grounds . Even the President of the United States. We don't see that happen much, do we? Finally, a question. Do you ever find an air of unreality or romanticism pervading the assumptions of Christian pacifism? Sometimes – and in just-war advocacy, and in theologically naive anti-pacifism as well. But I don't think Christian pacifism is intrinsically unrealistic or romantic. Is there more than a hint of nature/grace dualism in which the politics of the church remain unwilling to

and Re-applicants please call the Housing Office at (805) 565-6037. Mail Where do I send things before school starts? You will be assigned your MS# (mail stop number) over the summer. You may find out your MS# after July 1 by consulting the student profile page . All of your mail must have this number on it, or it will be delayed. Please make sure you give this MS# to banks, doctors, parents, friends, magazines etc., as soon as possible. If you need to mail something before Orientation, please send it addressed as follows: Your name, Your MS#, 955 La Paz Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93108. If you need to send boxes, please wait to mail them