One cannot study the gospels without the idea of harmony coming to the fore. Specifically, in the synoptic gospels, the idea of laying one gospel alongside the other two has a very long history. Beginning with Tatian’s Diatessaron in the 2nd Century, putting the gospel records side by side to see both similarities and differences can show you an awful lot. Tatian intended to highlight the fact that the gospels are one story. He reduced…
I’m a programmer by trade and so the idea of recursion or looping is something I use all the time. It’s the technique of repeatedly passing through a set of data, usually doing some process on each bit of data as you read it; counting, summing or sorting. The thought of applying that to the Bible isn’t immediately apparent, but there are some parallels. Many Christians set of goal of reading through the entire Bible in a…
A question that is logically posed by readers of Scripture is, why are there four gospels? The question becomes more interesting when one begins to read the four evangelists; a striking feature is both their similarity and dissimilarity. Are these biographies of Jesus? If the Holy Spirit inspired these records, surely there should be one story, one official biography? These questions can sometimes trouble new believers, and unsettle them when they encounter the differences. They…
Probably a dozen years ago, I received a review copy of a book called Goodbye Gutenberg that purported to be the future of communicating ideas. The book claimed that the future would not be one of reliance on words and letters so much as a combination of picture and symbols that would replace the “old” system of letters, words, and sentences. I didn’t find the book compelling, and in hindsight, I wonder if it was partly…
The recent conversion of Hank Hanegraaf to Orthodoxy has caused a stir in evangelical circles, but only because of Hanegraaf’s prior ministry. As the so-called “Bible Answer Man” one would think he of all people would base his views and teaching on the Scriptures. Perhaps not. The reasons for such conversions still fall into the same sort of categories that Scot McKnight wrote about in From Wheaton to Rome: Why Evangelicals Become Roman Catholic. The…
I’m not a fan of red letter Bibles, because I think they promote a view of inspiration and the canon that is inconsistent and unsustainable. The words recorded by the apostles as well as those of Jesus are equally the product of the Holy Spirit. The idea of some parts of the New Testament as more inspired than others is an impoverished view of the Scriptures. But another view of inspiration has crept into the church, and it…
Nothing will show you a generation gap like the media one uses to read the Bible. Roughly stated, the older crowd reads in print, younger Christians in electronic format. The benefits of a Bible app are many; portability, and having the Bible always at the ready, for example. Plus, the possibility of having several versions, and perhaps study tools along with that are also advantages. On the other hand, the advantages of print Bibles are…
IT’S NOT THE NUMBERS THAT ARE IMPORTANT FOR THE FUTURE. An article at Religion News Service on the Future of Evangelicalism in America examines (once again) the questions of what lies ahead for an admittedly amorphous movement. The article is really just a teaser for the book the same name, and I say once again because this has been a topic of discussion and research in the recent past. Molly Worthen’s Apostle’s of Reason: the Crisis of…
GROWING ONE’S FAITH APART FROM SCRIPTURE IS NOT POSSIBLE. The new year is a typical time for resolutions, and new beginnings. One of those that Christians often take up is to read through the entire Bible in a year. I’m struck at times by the number of Christians who have not done this. It is simply impossible to learn more about God, his truth, his plan of redemption, the person of Jesus Christ – any…
THE SUBSTANCE OF DOCTRINE IS VITAL It isn’t news that mainline Protestant congregations are numerically shrinking, but once again, research confirms that it’s the underlying theology of these churches that is the reason for the lack of growth. I say once again, because these observations are not new. the Barna Group has on several occasions highlighted this. Ross Douthat’s 2012 book, Bad Religion also profiled this trend. Further evidence of this is found David Millard Haskell’s…