This year for the first time I assigned the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (Zondervan, 2019, eds. Craig S. Keener and John H. Walton) for my New Testament class. I’ve been extremely pleased with it, and I even use it for my devotional reading at home. Why do I like it so much? The answer is…
Many Christians today simply have no functional doctrine of Scripture. We may affirm that Scripture is “inspired” or “the word of God,” but we don’t fill these terms up with very much content. Some Protestant traditions affirm biblical inerrancy. Roman Catholics have a well-developed set of doctrinal statements on Scripture. For many of us in…
Baylor University Press has just released the Baylor Annotated Study Bible, edited by W. H. Bellinger, Jr., and Todd D. Still. From the back cover: The Baylor Annotated Study Bible represents a monumental collaborative effort, bringing together nearly seventy biblical scholars–Baylor faculty, graduates, affiliates, and friends–to refresh our view of the sacred texts. A reliable…
I recently read through Scott J. Jones’s excellent book, John Wesley’s Conception and Use of Scripture (Kingswood, 1995). I’d read parts of it before, but I’d never made my way through it cover to cover. It’s a very informative work. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in Wesley and Scripture. Especially since the emergence of…
It’s always fun when Bible passages make it into the news cycle. This time we have Jeff Sessions to thank. As Winston Churchill once quipped, we should never waste a good crisis. I’d like to take the opportunity, then, to make a few remarks about Romans 13, though to do so, I’ll have to back up to…
There has been no small amount of dialogue among North American Protestants as of late on the contributions of women in ministry and the challenges they face. Beth Moore’s “A Letter to My Brothers,” for example, is a painful reality check from an evangelical icon: I am a laugher. I can take jokes and make…
I recently attended a conference called Voice of the Prophets where I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Randy Clark and Dr. Mark Chironna. I asked them to speak about the topic of prophecy. We’ve included this interview, followed by some of our own reflections, in our newest podcast. You can listen to…
Recently on the Plain Truth Podcast we tackled the question: Is the Bible sexist? As the tag line to the title suggests, “An answer(sort of) for Susanna.” We didn’t really come to a concise conclusion. Personally, I might be tempted to joke it’s because asking three academics to come to a concise conclusion about anything…
Christians have long discussed and debated the best way to approach the Bible. In my own tradition, United Methodism, there is considerable ongoing debate about how best to interpret Scripture. I often hear claims that seem to have no relationship to our stated positions as a church. The debate, moreover, tends to devolve into whether…
Okay… so the title is a little ambitious… And yes, we mix up forth-telling and foretelling, BUT COME ON THEY SOUND JUST ALIKE! Anyway, in this episode, we take on prophecy, both biblical and contemporary. Let us know what you think. You can find the podcast here on iTunes, and here on Player F.M. And…