Category: Biblical Studies
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Haggai and the Expectation of the Experience of God’s Presence: Part 2
Read more: Haggai and the Expectation of the Experience of God’s Presence: Part 2In a previous blog post on Haggai, I discussed one of the expectations the people of Israel held concerning Yahweh’s (the personal name of God) powerful action on their behalf, an expectation that included their current state of economic affairs. Upon the obedience of his command to rebuild the Temple, they expected to participate, once again,…
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Faith and Love: The Inconvenient Truth About a “Personal Relationship With God”
Read more: Faith and Love: The Inconvenient Truth About a “Personal Relationship With God”How’s your relationship with God? It’s a question many Christians and religious people ask of each other. When I answer this question over the years, I typically work my way through the same cluster of questions—am I praying and spending private time with God, am I avoiding certain sins, am I maturing in my likeness to…
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Haggai and the Expectation of the Experience of God’s Presence: Part 1
Read more: Haggai and the Expectation of the Experience of God’s Presence: Part 1The Book of Haggai tells a story of expectation, confusion, and reorientation. In this book, written by one of the 12 Old Testament minor prophets, the people of Israel, just recently returned from their Babylonian enforced exile, are admonished by Yahweh (the personal name of the God of the OT) for their complacency and misplaced…
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Towards a figural reading of… To Kill a Mockingbird?
Read more: Towards a figural reading of… To Kill a Mockingbird?This summer, I got to read through Ephraim Radner’s Time and the Word: Figural Reading of the Christian Scriptures. When we flipped the calendar to August, and I traded theology for middle school literature, sharpening the transition from student to teacher, I was surprised to discover how theologically rewarding my experience would be. I want to tell…
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Baptism and a Circumcision without Hands
Read more: Baptism and a Circumcision without HandsA few weeks ago, I was asked to write a supplemental reading for our Life Group curriculum here at Fellowship Dallas. It was an awesome week at our church where we baptized over 25 people who had made a profession of faith and had decided to follow Jesus. Being the nerd that I am, I…
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How to Argue from the Bible Poorly
Read more: How to Argue from the Bible PoorlyLately, I have noticed a particular bent in conservative evangelical circles toward a special type of biblicism. This biblicism is characterized by a style of argumentation that loosely takes after the preaching of early modern preachers in their common (or plain) sense hermeneutic. The arguer cites chapter and verse as a premise in the argument…
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Why is the bush not burned?
Read more: Why is the bush not burned?Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it saved Israel. As he unwittingly proto-typed Jesus, the Good Shepherd, Moses was distracted by a curious phenomenon: “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” (Ex. 3:3) Read the rest of the story here. Why is the bush not burned?…
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Our Evil God
Read more: Our Evil GodEvil things happen in this world, and yet God is still somehow sovereign. This is perhaps the hardest part of Christian theology to accept and understand. How is God sovereign over the persecution of Christians around the world, over the acts of ISIS, over world hunger and poverty, or over smaller evils like my own depression,…
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The Art of Translation: An Example from Luke 2.49
Read more: The Art of Translation: An Example from Luke 2.49The Text that Started It All I received this text message from a friend: “Quick…need a translation/explanation of Luke 2:49.” I found the necessity of a hurried response to be a bit peculiar. Who would need a translation of a verse so promptly? Nevertheless, I supplied my quick, and rather ‘wooden’, translation from the Greek…
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The Word and Their Words: How to Listen to Speeches Theologically
Read more: The Word and Their Words: How to Listen to Speeches TheologicallyTheology and language are inseparable. Theology is speech about God, and this speech is linguistic and therefore culturally defined. Languages, particularly those of civilizations with imperial and colonial histories, are the words of the most affluent and well-to-do. (This is why words like ‘suwanne’ and ‘purdy’ are not found in the OED). Words of conquered…