Results tagged “scripture”
Unleashing the Word (11/03/09 - 17 Comments)
When was the last time you read a book about reading? Maybe you have read Adler's How to Read a Book or another like it. When was the last time you read a book about reading Scripture? Maybe you have read a book about how to do better personal devotions and have found there some ideas about reading Scripture in a more effective way. But when was the last time you read a book about...
The God Who Answers Prayer (06/10/09 - 13 Comments)
I've always loved Acts 12. It is such a fascinating bit of writing--a little story in three acts, each of which fits so well with the others. I was reflecting on the chapter this morning and thought I'd share a little bit of that. The chapter begins by describing the beginning of Herodian persecution against the church. Herod, the king, presumably to please his Jewish subjects, has the disciple James arrested and killed and then...
Missing the Forest for all the Trees (04/15/09 - 170 Comments)
John MacArthur has kicked off a bit of controversy with his posts on Song of Solomon and, in particular, with his rationale for doing so--addressing pastors who, when preaching through the book, "employ extremely graphic descriptions of physical intimacy as a way of expounding on the euphemisms in Solomon's poem." In his first two articles he has singled out Mark Driscoll as one he considers a prime offender. This will be the last time the...
Memorizing Scripture Together (11/21/08 - 33 Comments)
The "Reading Classics Together" effort has taught me that blogs (even this blog) can offer a kind of excitement and accountability by community that helps me do things I wouldn't otherwise have the discipline to do. And from what I hear, it works for some of you, too. Many of us would never have read Owens or Edwards or Pink if we had not had the crowd accountability we've found here. This has been...
Every Word of God (07/07/08 - 60 Comments)
Imagine, for a moment. You wake up one morning and, as you stumble downstairs to grope for the coffee maker, you notice that the front door of your house is wide open, the brisk morning air blowing into the room and clearing your mind just a little bit. You stare at the door for a moment to process the fact that it is open. Your first thought, of course, is for your family. You race...
A Prayer for Scriptural Convictions (05/25/08 - 3 Comments)
Continuing my new habit of posting prayers on Sunday, here is a prayer for Scriptural convictions. It is once more drawn from The Valley of Vision. It seemed appropriate in a week I've been considering how I tend not to regard Scripture as the treasure it is. This is a prayer praising God for the gift of the Bible and asking forgiveness for regarding it so little and so lightly. O God of love, I...
Book Review - "God's Problem" by Bart Ehrman (03/18/08 - 45 Comments)
Bart Ehrman is a New Testament scholar who chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has both an M.Div. and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary where he studied under the renowned scholar Bruce Metzger. Though he formerly considered himself a Christian and even pastored a church, he is now an avowed agnostic. Much of Ehrman’s career has been dedicated to attempting to prove that history has...
The Beauty of a Good Translation (02/04/08 - 44 Comments)
I love language and the English language in particular. While I have always enjoyed using words and studying language, I found that my love of English was forged during the time I spent studying other languages, primarily those from which English is derived—Latin, Greek, and to some extent, French. I also studied linguistics and, of course, the English language itself. I came to love understanding how people use words to craft ideas. There is a...
What Does "Inerrant" Mean? (01/12/08 - 9 Comments)
Yesterday I began a short series on the inerrancy of Scripture, looking at whether there are errors and contradictions in the Bible. You can read the first article and the response to it here: Are There Errors in the Bible?. When I first began to develop and understanding of this doctrine, I found that the doctrines of Scripture cannot be neatly separated, one from the other, for they are intertwined and interrelated. So in the...
Is Scripture Study Required of Christians? (09/19/07 - 22 Comments)
Yesterday I received a question from a reader of this site. The question was simple: "Is Scripture study required of Christians? Is it actually discussed in the Bible?" As I wrote an answer I felt that it might be valuable to think it through carefully and even to share the answer. I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of Scripture is far less than encyclopedic. However, I am quite sure that if you...