There is nothing that brings out quite so much strangeness as discussion of the end-times. Nonetheless, I consider it fun. It has been commercialized in books, movies, and a video game, and now there is a special web site, You’ve Been Left Behind, which offers to allow you to send e-mails and files to unsaved…
Last Saturday I attended church with my mother, who is a Seventh-day Adventist. I was visiting for her 90th birthday. During Sabbath School (the SDA version of Sunday School), there were a number of questionable “facts” brought out by various members of the class. Amongst these was “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as…
In a comment to a previous post, someone brought up the case of Saul and the seer. In this passage we have the parenthetical note following the reference by one of the characters to a seer, indicating that a prophet was formerly called a seer. This was provided as an example of how to handle…
In working on YouTube recently, and particularly on this response to a KJV Only presentation, I’ve noticed that many people think that there is great virtue in independence when it comes to Bible study. Statements like “I didn’t depend on any scholars in coming to this view” or “I didn’t read any commentaries, just the…
Pardon me for using “types” where “genre” would be more precise, but I frequently do so in teaching in order to avoid having to explain details. Further, “genre” doesn’t maintain the same meaning across all critical disciplines. In my previous post on the historicity of Genesis 1-11, I wrote as though one could establish a…
Gavin has his rather useful sounding notes here. There are many aspects of postmodernism, especially as it looks when it gets to where I live, but there’s also a great deal of good in it. This is some of the good.
This is via a summary by Adrian Warnock, but I doubt Adrian would get a whole section wrong. There are a large number of things in this message that are right on target, and a few also with which I disagree. But the reason I’m posting a brief response is this: As has become standard…
In 2005 Peter Enns, a professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, published a book titled Inspiration and Incarnation, and it is likely going to cost him his tenured position. I’m writing about this on this blog because of the implications of his incarnational view of inspiration for Biblical interpretation. I have not yet…
In a post on Complegalitarian, Molly Alley discusses how reasonable it is to hold a doctrine that assumes that women will never mature, as in men where once boys who needed the guidance of a parent, but eventually they become mature and are considered ready for leadership. But what about women? Of course, as an…
Lingamish made an excellent comment on my previous post, which I want to promote into a post of its own along with a few comments of my own. There are a lot of variables to fiddle with on this subject. We tend to assume that reading out loud while a room full of people listen…