What Happens in the End
I think Fareed Zakaria is right on point with his Newsweek commentary We Might ‘Win’ But Still Lose. He notes: If the 20,000 additional American troops being sent to the Iraqi capital focus primarily on Sunni insurgents, there’s a chance the Shiite militias might get bolder. Colonel Duke puts it bluntly: “[The Mahdi Army] is…
Paraphrasing as a Study Method
Via a link from Wayne Leman, I found this post from Greg Lamm’s blog STAYINGTHECOURSE. I think this is an exceptional idea to aid with serious study of a passage. It relates well to both the reading and sharing phases. Of course under sharing I would include sharing your paraphrase with others and even challenging…
Gender Accurate Translation and Interpretation
Wayne Leman has an exceptional post on women and Bible translation. We talk a great deal about gender accurate (or I still like gender-inclusive) language, but it’s men that are doing most of the talking. That’s because there are more men than women involved in translation. I’m in full agreement with what Wayne says in…
Comprehending Divine Inspiration
I’ve been discussing translation in its relationship to inspiration over the last couple of days, and I just wanted to present a couple of thoughts on how we think about inspiration, especially in practical terms. By “thinking in practical terms” I mean the way in which we apply our understanding of inspiration in our application…
John Webb Winter Golf Tournament 2007
This morning I want to get a bit personal, which I don’t usually do on this blog, but this is something important and close to my heart. Many of my readers already know that my son James Webb (step-son for you people who get technical) passed away in 2004 after a five year battle with…
Christian Carnival CLVI Posted
Christian Carnival CLVI has been posted at Parableman. It looks like a rich list again, and as I have for weeks and weeks and weeks, I hope to manage to post some responses, links, and comments to a number of these posts. Reality being what it is, however, I probably will do a miserable job…
Theodicy: Taking a Stab at Natural Evil
Theodicy is a big subject, but for many people it relates closely to acceptance by Christians of the theory of evolution. I recall conversing with one friend who commented that while he could understand my acceptance of evolution, he just had a terribly hard time accepting a loving God who could, at the same time,…
A Short Note on Theistic Evolution and Frontloading
I know, none of you readers believe I am capable of being brief, but I’m going to try! This post was triggered by my reading of Richard B. Hoppe’s post Dissent Out of Bounds on Uncommon Dissent (Oops, make that “Descent”), which is largely about Uncommon Descent’s comment censorship (because of which I do not…
Translation and Inspiration
In posting recently on translation I’ve noticed that many people connect one’s idea of inspiration with one’s approach to translation. The assumption seems to be that a person who believes in some form of verbal inspiration, especially verbal plenary inspiration, will necessarily favor a formal, word-by-word, or literal translaltion. Of these terms I prefer formal,…
Building Your Knowledge of Greek Grammar
When I took second year Greek, the grammar to use in getting beyond basic introductory material was Dana and Mantey’s Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament which is very hard to get. But as a replacement, and also a considerable improvement, we now have Daniel B. Wallace’s Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. For those…
Another Set of Posts on Principles of Interpretation
Since I responsded to a post on principles of interpretation, and Bruce Alderman also weighed in on that topic, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for more interesting discussion. Today I found a couple of posts by way of a trackback to my threads blog, in which the author notes that he recommends my article…
Being United Methodist: Identity and Purpose
One of the problems with having a sign in front of your church, and particularly a denominational identity, is that it produces certain expectations in people who may considering entering your property and visiting your church for an event or a worship service. Now some of you may not think this is a problem–you want…
Biblical Languages: Balancing Fast Reading and Slow Study
Continuing my suggestions for maintaining Biblical languages skills, I want to discuss briefly the balance between fast reading and the more serious, detailed, grammatical study. Most students who make an effort to maintain their Biblical languages skill–and unfortunately small percentage in my experience–set out on each passage of scripture to study the text as though…
Rick Mansfield on the ESV
Rick Mansfield has made an excellent post on the controversy with the ESV. He makes a number of excellent points, but I’d like to quote one paragraph from near the end: My contention is not with the ESV. But I do have great problems with the inaccurate rhetoric that I often hear from proponents and…
Rounding Up the Moderate Christian Blogroll
Well, here I go again. These are a bit irregular, but I do like to call attention to particular post. As usual the blogs are listed in the order they appears on the aggregator when I displayed it, except that my own blogs are listed at the end. Most blogs have only one post listed,…
Maintaining and Improving Biblical Languages Skills
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…
Man, Mankind, or People – Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 6:5-8
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…
Mars Hill or Planet Mars
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…
The Impossibility of Verbal Plenary Translation
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…
Welcome Newest Moderate Christian Blogroll Member
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…
Pat Robertson and the Meaning of Prophetic
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…
Back to Elections
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…
More on Principles of Biblical Interpretation
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?”…
Pay as You Go – But Will They Do It?
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…