This post is for a rather limited subset of what (I hope) my audience is here–those who have some knowledge of Biblical Greek, Hebrew, or both. Tragically, many seminary students learn a little bit of Greek or Hebrew but not enough to really put to use, and then they spend the rest of the career…
On my Threads blog I comment on Pastor Mark Driscoll’s theological basis for using the ESV at Mars Hill Church. In that article Driscoll makes a special point of the translation of the Hebrew “‘adam” in Genesis 1:27 by the NRSV and NLT: Translations such as the New Revised Standard accommodate this by wrongly translating…
Peter Kirk has weighed in on the subject of my previous post in his post Mars Hill Church: on a different Planet? He says: I have looked at the original text (well, a scholarly edition of the Greek text) of Romans 3:24 and cannot find the word “justification” there. There are no English words, only…
I have heard many good things about Mars Hill Church in Seattle, despite some theological disagreements (with whom do I not have such disagreements?) so I was disappointed to receive the following via e-mail from a friend: Theological reasons for why Mars Hill preaches out of the ESV. This isn’t intended as an attack on…
I have just added adventures in mercy to the Moderate Christian Blogroll and Aggregator. Stop by and say hello, comment, trackback, whatever. While you’re at it, check out the following posts that caught my eye: God is Masculine (Vision Forum on Male/Female, Part 1) God is Masculine? (Part Two, VF on Women) If God is…
One of the dividing lines in Christian churches today is over the gifts of the Holy Spirit. While speaking in tongues gets most of the attention, the gift of prophecy is a close second. In terms of its potential to tear a church apart, it comes out ahead of tongues, I think. Currently there seem…
I actually wrote this thing a couple of days ago because I was tired of all the hype about lobbying reform, which I expect will make much less difference to the way business is done than the hype about it suggests. Like pay as you go, it’s something that makes good headlines, but the question…
Bruce Alderman disagrees with some of the principles of interpretation from Trivium Pursuit, which I referenced earlier, and has started a series on the same topic. His first principle is: All this is a long way of introducing my first principle of biblical interpretation: “God, what are you trying to tell me through these scriptures?”…
In a fine example of political maneuvering, the new Democratic majority in congress is pushing a pay as you go policy on spending, to combine with greater transparency on pork barrel projects. Since it’s probably impossible to have federal building projects determined strictly by some neutral group on the basis of value in building infrastructure…
Laura at Pursuing Holiness is blogging about prayer and what keeps us from praying as much as we should. She has some excellent thoughts, and in particular she mentions what I think is the most important point: Another problem with prayer is that we so often, after a discussion where someone has shared a need…