Suppose you find an ancient manuscript that purports to be, not a scatalogical poem or potboiler novel or polished piece of classical literature, but a serious biography of at least 11,000 words. The man who is the subject of the manuscript is revealed to be divine, the Son of God, who tells people what God … [Read more…]
The three scientists in this video interview recently posted on National Review Online are philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, mathematician John Lennox, and chemist James Tour. The interview is summarized this way: Moving from the Big Bang and the discovery of cosmic beginnings, to the fine-tuning of the physical constants that make life possible, to … [Read more…]
I’ll start the month with this: Genealogies would have been practically very important to ancient Jews, since tribal membership determined land rights, among other things. So we would expect there to have been great demand for their scrupulous accuracy in Scripture. Now, would we expect the scribes to switch casually from that mindset in one … [Read more…]
For anyone looking for reading material for pre-teens/young teens, I want to recommend the four books (totaling about a thousand pages) in the Wingfeather Saga. It’s fantasy along the lines of the Narnia books and Lord of the Rings, with Christian themes but also allusions and similarities to classical and Norse mythology. The plot is … [Read more…]
Our pastor has used the arresting metaphor of a man lost in an airport, who has misplaced his itinerary and is now trying desperately to find the right gate to board his plane home. The pastor then asks the congregation, How helpful is it if he is told, “Don’t worry about it: Any of the … [Read more…]
He is risen! Happy Easter! And to sweeten your celebration, here is a six-minute clip from Gary Habermas on the historicity of the Resurrection. For more on Dr. Habermas’s “minimal facts” approach, see my blogpost here. That blogpost reviews a book coauthored by him, which I summarize this way (thus, this is also a fair … [Read more…]
First, Richard Bauckham — the amazing scholar and author of, among other things, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses — has an interesting lecture here. In brief, he discusses how the supposed geographical “errors” in Mark can be explained by the facts that (1) Mark is relying on the recollections of Peter, and (2) Peter himself was … [Read more…]
The pastor at our church recently preached on John the Baptist — specifically, his words and actions in John 3:22-36 — and observed in the course of the sermon that John 3 and Romans 8 are, for Christian theology, perhaps the top texts. So this led to a discussion in our small group the next … [Read more…]
Jesus was always conscious of His audience and of time and timing in His ministry. So consider the setting of His meeting with Nicodemus, recounted in John 3:1-21. It is at the very beginning of His ministry, and He is meeting with one of the top Jewish religious leaders. What would Jesus want to say … [Read more…]
I had two Scripture-related thoughts recently — one during Sunday worship, the other at our small group meeting the following day — that turn out to be rather complementary, I think. The first was that, even if you don’t agree with what the preacher is saying about a particular Bible passage, it is good to … [Read more…]