The leaders in Jerusalem killed Jesus with the support of the mob. You would think that the Apostles would be rather upset about this, and sometimes they show they were. But they also do something quite different:
And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.
Brothers, brothers, sometimes [...]
OK, here’s a question for all the Bible scholars out there: First, look at this text preferably using the option of stripping out chapter and verse.
How would you describe the relationship between 1.19-23, 2.1-7, and 2.11-22?
We could say it simply describes teh death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ three times:
DRA 1
DRA 2
DRA 3
Or we [...]
Here is Titus 1.1 in the ASV (precursor to the NASB):
Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, and the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness.
The ESV’s interpretation of this is quite commonplace
Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus [...]
You say truly, young sir, that God’s Church is now an anvil, but remember for your consolation that it is an anvil which has worn out many hammers.”
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I notice that the Pastor of Trinity PCA in Rye, NY has published a paper on baptism.
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So the other day I walk into Shop & Save and see an elderly frail gentleman pulling a grocery cart and simultaneously pushing a wheelchair with an elderly women wearing an oxygen tube under her nose–his wife, I assume. They weren’t making good time with him using only one hand for the wheelchair. [...]
It has been an exhausting weekend with two days spent travelling and lecturing and then another road trip yesterday with the family to do pulpit supply. I loved my time speaking, listening, and leading worship, but it adds up to a rather weary Monday. Next weekend will even be busier for me, and [...]
Here are two quotations. One is from the Bible and the other is uninspired Jewish literature that was widely read in Second Temple Judaism. Can you tell which is which?
Wine is unrighteous, the king is unrighteous, women are unrighteous, all the sons of men are unrighteous, all their works are unrighteous, and [...]
In Nineteen-EIGHTY-seven, or thereabouts, my hair was longer than Mark’s (in 77 I was barely ten, so I couldn’t compete then).
I’m not posting pictures. Bad enough I have to explain to my children why Daddy’s left ear has a couple of holes in it.
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One of the frustrating things about some writings within the so-called “New Perspective on Paul” is the mistake that justification by general good works can simply be equated with Pelagianism. The claim is made that Paul’s contemporaries were not Pelagians and, therefore, they were not guilty of “legalism” as Evangelicals understand it. What [...]
Here are some quotations I gleaned from Martin Bucer’s works:
Performative signs & what it means to receive in faith
And therefore, when the faithful, believing theses words and not doubting that they are addressed by the Lord to themselves (that they were in fact spoken only to them is proved by phrases in the context such [...]
Peter Leithart writes:
My point in the paragraph from which that citation is taken is to challenge the “reification and abstraction” that plagues theology. Positively, I am arguing that Christian theology is pervasively personal (a point stressed by Van Til and John Frame), not only in the sense that we should strive to employ personal categories [...]
And the gates opened. I didn’t even have to push.
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Not only is what follows a good response to those who want to revise history and claim there was no real conflict between Jesus and his proto-rabbinic contemporaries (Sanders, Vermes), but it has plenty of application to the temptations that beset Christian denominations.
Here again Sanders is justified in reacting against overstatements by too many New [...]
Here is Paul telling his readers that he is praying they will be brought to understand God’s omnipotence:
…the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and [...]
Daniel Kirk reports the publication of a new Presbyterian journal.
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I’ve been reading Faith, obedience, and perseverance : aspects of Paul’s Letter to the Romans by Don Garlington. Even though I barely have time to think about it, I still am getting a lot out of it.
Consider the transition to the practical/ethical (I’m oversimplifying) in Romans 12.1, 2:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by [...]
Stolen from Peter Leithart:
David Bentley Hart contests Thomas Oden’s claim that Kierkegaard is the most humorous of Western philosophers, offering Hamann as an alternative. In challenging Oden’s nomination, Hart has this important comment about Kierkegaard’s attack on Christendom, particularly K’s complaint about Christian “whoremongers”:
Yes, in fact there are “Christian” whorehouses, and whoremongers, and whores, and [...]
The fact that not all children of believers are saved does not alter the truth that all of them are in the covenant of grace. Scripture speaks of the unbelieving children of believers as covenant-breakers (e.g., Jeremiah 31:32). They could hardly break the covenant if they were not in any sense in the [...]
Not many people seem to be aware that Frank Thielman published a widely acclaimed book, Paul & the Law, which deals with the so-called “New Perspective.” Dr. Thielman is a scholar in the PCA who has attracted positive attention from such people as Richard Hays of Duke University.
So why haven’t more people [...]
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