Mark Driscoll's false claim that when Jesus taught people to pray to God as Father it was revolutionary, a short look at the problem Aratus presents to a claim in Pray Like Jesus

Pray Like Jesus: Learn to Pray to God as Father

Mark Driscoll and Ashley Chase

Copyright © 2021 by Mark Driscoll and Ashley Chase

Charisma House

ISBN 978-1-62999-926-5

ISBN 978-1-62999-927-2 (ebook)

 

When God is called Father in the first three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), the word is always on the lips of Jesus. Again, this is not commonplace in ancient religions but rather a revolutionary understanding of the nature of God that Jesus taught us, starting with his first disciples. Page 92

 

The book of Acts itself demolishes this canard in chapter 17:28 by describing the Apostle Paul’s invocation of the Stoic poet Aratus in his address to the Athenians at Mars Hill. You might think that a preacher who named the first church he planted after the Mars Hill mentioned in Acts would get this basic point right, but now we have to do a little excavation on the Stoic poet named Aratus.

Jennifer McKinney's Making Christianity Manly Again: Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church and American evangelicalism, Oxford University Press just came out--a brief list of the small list of books WtH actually recommends on the history of MH so far

Jennifer McKinney's book is called Making Christianity Manly Again: Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church, and American Evangelicalism

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/making-christianity-manly-again-9780197655795?cc=us&lang=en&

I've picked it up and will start reading it.  I must confess that, having written as much as I have about Mars Hill since maybe 2008 or so, I am not sure I'm going to see anything new in McKinney's book.  What's more I attended the little school by the canal and got a journalism degree there.  

I must confess I'm not holding my breath thinking there's going to be anything new in this book.  In fact I find the likelihood that it will have anything new to say compared to earlier works to be somewhere close to zero.  

I do want to take a moment to mention it because I'll be reading it and because I've got a list of stuff I've already that is thematically or directly related to Mars Hill Church that i do recommend.  I don't anticipate McKinney's book being a bad book but I'm about to share a list of books or dissertations I've read so far that touch on Mars Hill that will explain, I trust, why I don't anticipate any surprises in the new OUP volume. Books and thoughts on them after the break: