No matter where one stands in the debate regarding "biblical feminisim," 1 Timothy 2, especially verse 15, is problematic.  Here is a good essay, which is worthy of deep consideration.

Ed Clowney wrote an article on prayer some time ago entitled A Biblical Theology of Prayer.  This is a great article.  You can read the pdf. from www.beginningwithmoses.org.

Here is a great quote from the article:
We dare not address the Father without awareness of the Son. To do so would be to fail to pray in the name of Jesus. Nor should we pray without recognising that the Lord is present to help us, present in the abiding reality of the Holy Spirit. To be sure, in our weakness and finitude, we may think now of the Father, now of the Son, now of the Spirit. Yet we do sense that our prayer is to the Trinity. The Spirit who makes intercession for us guides our praying, for he witnesses to the Father and to the Son.

Here, too, the Scripture gives sure guidance. Clearly prayer in the New Testament is addressed to the Father. In the teaching of Jesus, in the record of Acts, in the Epistles, Christian believers bow to the Father from whom the whole family in heaven and on earth is named (Eph. 3:14). Does this uniform practice ignore or replace prayer to the Trinity? Not at all; rather, it is in addressing the Father that we can best respond to the full revelation of the Trinity. It would be foolish (indeed, blasphemous) to imagine a kind of jealousy within the Trinity, as though the Son would feel slighted by our appeal to the Father. Indeed, such a travesty is in no way possible. We cannot turn our backs to the Son in order to address the Father. The Father will not hear such prayer. Only as we come in the name of the Son can we pray to the Father.

Prayer to the Father is not a limitation of our prayer. It does not exclude Christ, but confesses the purpose for which he gave his life. He came, not only to claim those that the Father had given him, but to bring them to the Father, losing none of them (John 17:12). The triumph of the work of the Son is to make us acceptable to the Father through him (John 16:27).

Prayer to the Father exhibits the consciousness of sonship that crowns prayer in Christ. The total submission of prayer, its utter trust, looks to Jesus Christ. He is Lord; we come to him with our burden of sin and receive forgiveness and life. Yet when Jesus receives us to himself and unites us to himself we are more than delivered from sin, more than made heirs of eternal life: we are brought into a relation with God the Father that can exist only because Jesus is the divine Son. We are made sons of God. Yes, children by the new birth, but, in a sense, more than children. In Christ there is no longer male and female: we are sons in the Son.

The lessons of prayer all hinge on this incredible reality; we bring to the Father the dedication of our new obedience (Rom. 12:1, 2); we recognise his discipline (Heb. 12:5-7); we seek his will, his plan, his kingdom. In the urgency of our helpless need, we come to him with importunity, knowing that our Father will not give us a stone for bread (Luke 11:11-13).

The prayer of sonship to the Father breathes assurance as well as dependence. We realise that the love of the heavenly Father is all our hope. Surprisingly, Paul writes, 'But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us' (Rom. 5:8). Since Paul was speaking of the willingness of a man to give his life for a friend, we should have expected him to write, 'But Christ demonstrates his own love . . .' Calvary displays not only the love of the Son who gave himself for us, it demonstrates the love of the Father, who gave his only Son.

All the delight of heaven itself begins in prayer as the Spirit of the Father and of the Son draws us into communion with the triune God. We pray, 'Abba, Father!' and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3).

From the epilogue to his essay on Fairy Stories, Tolkien writes,
"I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels-peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: "mythical" in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the "inner consistency of reality." There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.

It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be "primarily" true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significancethat it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the "turn" in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

But in God's kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the "happy ending." The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliabion and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know."

Read the whole essay here.

http://www.hornes.org/theologia/content/rich_lusk/what_is_biblical_theology.htm

Here is an interesting review of a new book by Guy Waters entitled Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul.



http://www.rabbisaul.com/watersreview.htm

Here's an interesting article on a Christian view of sex in art.

http://www.cornerstonemag.com/pages/show_page.asp?153

I have heard much about Franky Schaeffer, but I have not read anything from him until now.  I am currently reading Addicted to Mediocrity, and I like it a great deal.  Maybe soon I will write a review, but until now, here is a great quote, which speaks to my heart.

 

Over the weekend I rented the The Village (I just don't go to too many movies in the theater), and for the most part I liked it.  In my view it was not as good as Sixth Sense, simply because Sixth Sense totally caught me off guard.  I loved the surprise in the last five minutes of the movie. 

The Village though was a bit more predictable, though still enjoyable.  One thing that has captured my mind since my viewing was how the publicity for The Village shaped how I watched the movie.  That is, the movie is marketed as a horror movie, but it is not at all a horror movie.  In fact the movie is not really that scary, at least in an of itself.  What makes the movie scary is the marketing.  That is, because of the marketing one watches a non-scary movie expecting it to be scary, though the movie in and of itself is not scary, and because of aspects of the movie, one believes the movie to be scary.

In other words, what I am seeing is that the possibility exists that the movie was marketed in a way that corresponds to the theme of The Village, which is about social constructed reality.  That is, all those who belong to the village, except for the elders, believe that they are living in a valley surrounded by woods, which are inhabited by the creatures of which they will not speak.  But there are no creatures, the creatures are constructed by the elders.  Also, they may live in a valley, but the valley is really in the midst of a wildlife preserve.  The elders of the village constructed the whole reality.

So as the theme of the movie is about social construction of reality, so the marketing of the movie corresponds to this, so that we watch The Village looking for a scary movie, but the movie really isn't a horror movie.

Just some thoughts...