Clik here to view.
Nailed To The Cross
“And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Law and Grace, Faith and Works
Last week we were looking at some unhealthy attitudes toward the Old Testament (and the Gospels, along the way). But it’s not just about the attitudes toward that (huge) section of Scripture. It’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Form versus function, revisited
OK, let’s get back to the discussion of men and women in the church… soon. This weekend I downloaded Jay Guin’s e-book Buried Talents, and I’d like to at least familiarize myself with Jay’s work before...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Elders, families, and law keeping
Recently I was discussing some topics about elders with some friends on the Internet. Specifically, they were questioning the need for an elder to be married and to have children. In his Declaration...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Just how clueless were the biblical writers?
The title to this post reflects a question that’s been growing in my mind as I read what many are writing about the Bible these days. Seemingly, the biblical writers were pretty clueless. You know,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Bible and inspiration
Yesterday’s post reflects a concern I have, the observation that the church is increasingly de-emphasizing the role of the Bible and proportionately giving more weight to the voice of experience....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Replacing biblical authority with that of experience
Let me get back to a topic from last week. I was talking about Christians and churches accepting an additional authority in spiritual matters, that being the authority of experience. Jay Guin is doing...
View ArticleRemember that “The Message” isn’t Scripture
There are a number of things that I find disturbing about The Message, though much of that concern goes away if people will acknowledge it’s not a presentation of Scripture but a commentated retelling...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Teaching someone to interpret the Bible.
I was reading a discussion about how we teach people to interpret the Bible. That came at an interesting time, for I’m dealing with some of the same in a video course I’m preparing. Here are some...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Where to start reading the Bible
Last week I began sharing some thoughts about what to teach a newcomer about how to read the Bible. I made some suggestions about some broad themes; let me mention a few specific ideas. I don’t like...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New Bible readers don’t need a concordance
I’ve mentioned that when I was growing up, I thought the epistles were compilations of proverbs, short sayings basically unconnected to one another. I had always heard a verse quoted from here and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book. Chapter. Verse.
Book. Chapter. Verse. That’s one of the basic concepts I like to teach to Bible readers. To help them think about context, I encourage them to think book -> chapter -> verse. I’ll admit upfront...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New readers need to be able to tell Jonah from John
There’s plenty more to be said about context, but the concept of Book->Chapter->Verse is sufficient to get a new reader thinking about the topic. The next thing I’d want to mention is literary...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Looking for major themes in the Bible
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been looking at concepts that new Bible readers need as they begin to read Scripture. Let me say that I don’t dump all of this on someone at once; these are things...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cultural or supra-cultural?
Another consideration for new Bible readers is the question of cultural vs supra-cultural; that is, readers need to see that some commands have an application that was limited to a specific situation...
View ArticleClik here to view.
We need God’s help to understand God’s Word
I’ve often said that many in the church fear post-modernism without realizing that modernity was no friend to Christianity. Like a fish in water, many of us have swum in the river of modernity so long...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Experience and Scripture
I’ve been reminded again about the struggles between Scripture and our experience. Today we see a tension between two major schools of thought: one which interprets Scripture based on human...
View ArticleClik here to view.
You can’t understand the Bible without interpreting it
I hadn’t heard the phrase in a while, but saw it again on Facebook this week: “We don’t interpret the Bible, we merely understand it.” I’m sure the person saying it had good intentions, but it’s a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How do we learn from what was done in Bible times?
As I hope a lot of us do, I’ve been thinking about how we read and interpret the Bible. Too often we spend our time debating issues without looking at the underlying principles behind our differing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Form, function, and determining motives
It was pointed out to me yesterday that a discussion about form and function, like what I wrote yesterday, hinges on us being able to properly identify the motives behind the form we see in the Bible....
View Article
