Category: Biblical Studies
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What is Forgiveness?
Read more: What is Forgiveness?In a couple of weeks I will be giving a short sermon on the subject of forgiveness. I knew from the outset that this was not a “safe” topic for me. Forgiveness does not come easy for me, especially in the places that it really matters, that is, in the places where the perceived wrongs…
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Tradition, Scripture, History
Read more: Tradition, Scripture, HistoryAs a good Protestant I was always taught to be grateful for, but suspicious of the first, fiercely devoted to the second, and un-threatened by the third. When Tradition is found wanting it can be remolded; it is malleable where the other two are not. Scripture is cast in stone. It does not change and…
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Top Galatians Commentaries
Read more: Top Galatians CommentariesI’m nearly halfway through the first college course I’ve ever taught at Lincoln Christian University (the Las Vegas extension). Since the course is on Galatians, which is what my PhD research at the University of St Andrews under Prof. N. T. Wright focuses on, I thought it might be a good idea to provide a…
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Going to Heaven with Jesus
Read more: Going to Heaven with JesusAs a student of the New Testament, I am one of those odd characters who enjoys the minutia of grammatical details in the original languages and especially their interpretative significance. Yet what motivates me in working through the details is primarily a genuine application of discipleship to Jesus. Today’s post comes primarily as a review/summary…
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Theologian Trading Cards!
Read more: Theologian Trading Cards!First there was Baseball cards. Then there was Pokémon. Now, thanks to Norman Jeune III and Zondervan, we have Theologian Trading Cards! Functioning more as a dictionary than as a true “trading card” set – there isn’t actually any ‘trading’ involved – the full set includes three hundred key figures from Church History (with more…
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My First Twitter Battle: Jesus = Apollonius of Tyana
Read more: My First Twitter Battle: Jesus = Apollonius of TyanaI recently got into my first Twitter battle – and it was epic. Sometimes, when I am done pouring through old books and ancient citations, I do searches in Twitter for various subjects that I had been reading about. A few days ago that subject was Apollonius of Tyana. I quickly found a tweet that…
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St. Augustine’s Institute for Biblical Hermeneutics (Part I)
Read more: St. Augustine’s Institute for Biblical Hermeneutics (Part I)The Bible bursts the bonds of our hermeneutical strategies. The Scriptures as the medium of divine communication are what Karl Barth called a “free Bible”. This is good news: the canon imposes itself upon us readers, transgressing the procrustean bed we inevitably bring to the table as interpreters. For Barth this fact necessitates the development…
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The Beauty of Christmas Carnage
Read more: The Beauty of Christmas CarnageChristmas is about destruction. It’s about crushing. It’s about the elimination of God’s enemies. Intrigued? Let’s see what Matthew says. And as we do, remember: there is more than one way to eliminate and enemy… In Mathew 2:2, we see Magi, likely Babylonian scientists and astronomers familiar with the Jewish scriptures from Judah’s exile, have…
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BibleMesh Interview
Read more: BibleMesh InterviewIt’s always good to talk to the person next to you on an airplane flight. You never know, you just may end up sitting next to the developer of a new state-of-the-art Bible software. This very thing happened to me on my flight to Milwaukee for this year’s annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society.…
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My Research Arsenal
Read more: My Research ArsenalI have been in a research program now for about two months. It has been both a rewarding and overwhelming experience. I imagine that most people who are involved in some sort of enormous research project spend a good amount of their time (often too much) figuring out not the actual problems of their project,…