February 2010
17 posts
Lynda's Brief but Beautiful Life →
A Great Prayer - from Where?
Read this prayer and see if someone from my faithful readers will be able to tell me from where it came. I will give a prize - a book, what else? - to the first person to guess the source. Even if you don’t want to guess, enjoy the theology and depth of this profound supplication.
“Grant us, Lord, to hope on your name, which is the primal source of all creation, and open the eyes of...
January 2010
20 posts
1 tag
Baptism in the Earliest Church
I am a bit hesitant about this post because I don’t really enjoy doctrinal fights between believers, and baptism is not a subject I want to fight about with anyone. But a recent book on baptism is so significant for the discussion about the practice of this Christian ordinance that I just can’t keep silent.
Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology and Liturgy in the First Five...
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Internet Problems and Grace to Help
Today I am encountering major Internet connectivity problems so my blog almost took a break. Hopefully I will be back online at home after a Road Runner technician delivers a new modem.
Hanging now at Panera Bread, connected to the world outside through their WIFI and thinking about Hebrews 4:14-16 for our Bible Study tonight. I don’t want to sound overly pious but I am just so much in...
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A Description of the Early Christians (2)
Yesterday I posted a chapter from a second century document called the Letter to Diognetus. It is probably the least known of those writings we refer to as the Apostolic Fathers. This expression refers to books that were written during the lives of the apostles or their immediate successors. We don’t know the author of Diognetus, although Justin Martyr is as good a candidate as any. It is...
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A Description of the Early Christians
The second century document called The Letter to Diognetus offers one of the most powerful and eloquent apologies for the Christian faith in its description of the early Christians. THIS was what drew pagans to their faith, not their rationalistic arguments.
5:1-17 ¶ “For Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom. For nowhere do they live...
Odysseus and Jason/Orpheus - Parables for...
As he closes his excellent book on the meeting of Scripture with real life, Michael Emlet refers to two tales from Greek mythology to illustrate his main point that Biblical counseling and preaching consists of far more than throwing a barrage of verses toward the hearer. It is the Spirit empowered effect of the redemptive Story that empowers lives.
Homer tells the story of Odysseus who had to...
Christ Centered Interpretation and Application
What is the Bible? In one word, it is a Story. Recognizing and understanding that will lead to a better reading and application of the Bible to lives. Michael Emlet in CrossTalk (see earlier posts below) builds on the thought of writers like Ben Witherington, NT Wright, and Graeme Goldsworthy, and references specifically the great book by Bartholomew and Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding...
What the Bible Is Not (Primarily)
Michael Emlet’s book, CrossTalk: Where Life and Scripture Meet, will step on your toes. Emlet wants us to read and apply the Bible in correct ways. That means that we often read and apply the Bible in wrong ways.
We need to recognize that the Bible is made up of many different types of literature and we should read each accordingly. We do this all the time when we encounter a text. We...
A Book to Help Us Apply the Scriptures to Life
CrossTalk is a new book by Michael Emlet of the Christian Counselors Educational Foundation that is neither a hermeneutics manual nor a book on studying the Bible nor a book on the Christian life - and yet is all three! Nouthetic Counseling (or “Biblical Counseling” as it has been referred to in recent years) has sometimes been accused of a simplistic attempt to throw individual...
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Mary Magdalene at the Last Supper?
In The DaVinci Code novelist Dan Brown presented his fanciful reconstruction of the Gospel accounts. According to the explanation given by the professor in the movie, Jesus’ physical descendants through his union with Mary Magdalene have continued as an identifiable group down through history, guarding this secret union that was suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church. Among the people who...
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Did Josephus Really Write About Jesus?
Yesterday I posted the famous passage about Jesus in Josephus’ Antiquities. I asked if some of the statements sounded strange if they were written by a non-believer in the Messiahship of Jesus. Josephus nowhere else gives any indication that he was a Jesus-follower. How could he write then, “He was the Christ (Messiah)”? Some believe that the entire passage was imported into...
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Josephus on Jesus
Why is the first century Jewish historian, Josephus, so important for Christians? There are many reasons, but one of the main ones is that he describes such NT people as the four generations of Herods, the ministry of John the Baptist, the death of James the brother of Jesus, and even Jesus Himself! In the 18th Book of his Antiquities of the Jews, he is discussing Jewish affairs that took place...
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The Song of the Sea
The first poetry in the Bible appears in Genesis. See, e.g., Gen. 4:23-24; 9:25-27, 49:1-27. But the first reference in the Bible to a song and singing is in Exodus 15:1-18, 21. Moses and his sister Miriam lead the children of Israel in what has been called “The Song of the Sea.” This is to distinguish it from another poetic passage that is called “The Song of Moses” (Deut....
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Auctor's Focus on "Jesus" in Hebrews
In the last 6 months I have discovered two special ways in which Auctor (my name for the author of the Letter to the Hebrews) calls us to face the main issue in his book - Jesus. Twice in the book he calls particular attention to the One who is the real answer to his readers’ problems - Jesus. In 3:1 he writes: ‘Holy brothers, partakers of a heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on the Apostle and...
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Review of The Meaning of the Pentateuch
The Meaning of the Pentateuch by John Sailhamer (IVP, 2009, 632 pp.) is the most stimulating and insightful book on the Bible that I have read in the last decade. Sailhamer boldly goes where some fear to tread in his proposal about the textual composition of the Pentateuch and the entire Hebrew Bible - as well as their implications for a theology of the OT. He argues for a two stage composition of...
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Praying Scripture Back to God
My last few posts have been more academic - reviews of two recent and very important books. Today I want to turn my attention to prayer, especially praying Scripture. For the last five years I have used a guide to my daily prayers, often in the form of one of the well known prayer books, either the Book of Common Prayer or the Divine Hours. Most of these prayers are adapted from the Psalms....
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The Trellis and the Vine - Conclusion
This is the fourth and final part to my review of The Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne. If you are new to this blog, it is important that you read the earlier three parts below.
The heart of this book’s proposal for moving church ministry back to a NT model and forward to a fruitful future is to commit ourselves to growing the “vine” and not just...