In 2012, Dan Wallace dropped a bombshell during a debate with Bart Ehrman. Ehrman had pointed out that our earliest copy of Mark’s Gospel is dated 140 years after the gospel was first written. It’s a point often made by critics to show the unreliability of the New Testament. Wallace then revealed that he had knowledge that a first century copy of Mark’s Gospel had been discovered. He also revealed that the document would be published in a forthcoming volume by E. J. Brill. It was all very cryptic at the time, and Ehrman later complained that Wallace should not have brought it up in the debate. Ehrman argued that…
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Michael Kruger’s Christmas Eve take-down of Newsweek’s preposterous cover story attacking the Bible
Three cheers for Michael Kruger for exposing the outlandish Newsweek cover story attacking the integrity of the Bible. Released just two days before Christmas, the Newsweek article is riddled with basic historical errors and the author’s own prejudice against Christianity. I don’t know how this tendentious rubbish got into Newsweek, but there it is. Thanks to Kruger for taking time on Christmas Eve to expose this farce for what it is. He writes: Of course, this is not the first media article critiquing the Bible that has been short on the facts. However, what is stunning about this particular article is that Kurt Eichenwald begins by scolding evangelical Christians for…
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A plan to read the Greek New Testament in a year
Several years ago, I created a plan to read through the Greek New Testament in a year. For the most part, it tracks pretty closely with Lee Irons’ excellent schedule for reading the Greek New Testament in a year. My plan, however, varies a little bit. Because John’s writing is simpler Greek, my schedule goes through John’s Gospel at a faster pace than Irons’. As a result, there are no readings scheduled at the end of the year from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve. These open dates at the end can be used as catch-up days. The schedule is given in two formats below. DOC – Read the Greek…
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A plan to read through the Bible in 2015
In years past, my customary mode for reading the Bible through every year involved starting in Genesis and reading right through to Revelation. I estimated that about four chapters per day would get me through in under a year’s time. The method worked reasonably well, but it wasn’t without its problems. Sometimes I would miss a day (or days) and get behind, and I had no way to keep up with my progress. I needed a schedule so that I could keep myself accountable for finishing in a year.
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Mary’s crisis-pregnancy and noble Joseph
Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her, desired to put her away secretly. –Matthew 1:18-19 The key thing to note about Joseph’s character is in verse 19. The text says that Joseph was “a righteous man.” A righteous person in Matthew’s gospel is one who has an obedient trust in the promises of God revealed in the Old Testament. A righteous person cares about what God says. He trusts what…
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A friendly response to Wesley Hill’s “thought-experiment”
I am really grateful that evangelicals seem to be moving toward a serious conversation about homosexuality. Two articles in particular seem to be driving some recent online discussions. One is a piece in World magazine profiling a lesbian chaplain at Wheaton College. Another is a piece by Michelle Boorstein in The Washington Post about the “celibate gay Christian” movement. Both of these articles have provoked disagreement and spirited discussion about what it means to be a same-sex attracted Christian. I am not going to try and rehash all that has been said up to this point. I invite you do to take a look at the links in this post…
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Does the Bible teach that women can be deacons?
I have been preaching through the Pastoral Epistles at my church, and a few Sundays ago I delivered a message on deacons from 1 Timothy 3:8-16. You can listen to the sermon below or download it here. The second point of the sermon focuses on verse 11 and deals with whether Paul intends for women to serve as deacons. This is a controversial question, and I obviously don’t treat it exhaustively in this sermon. Nevertheless, here’s where I came down.
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Is same-sex attraction sinful? Charles Hodge sheds biblical light.
A few weeks ago, I sat on a panel at the Evangelical Theological Society discussing the question “Is Same-Sex Orientation Sinful?” Owen Strachan moderated the discussion among three of us who presented papers on the subject: Wesley Hill, Preston Sprinkle, and yours truly. Both Wesley and Preston have posted on the session. Craig Sanders has written a report as well. I am currently working on a book about sexual orientation, and much of what I presented to the panel was a rough version of what will appear in that book. So I will hold back on rehashing the entire argument here. If you want to read my paper, send me…
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Doug Wilson’s gut-punch to theistic evolutionists
Doug Wilson delivers a gut-punch to the theistic evolutionary group Biologos. You should read the whole thing, but here is an excerpt: The clear tendency of the BioLogos outlook is to consider young earth creationism as the ultimate academic faux pas. Young earth creationists are not just in error, they are embarrassing. But students in our schools are being taught any number of embarrassing things — like marriage consisting of one man and one woman, for example. An essential part of our training is to show our students how scholarly tongue clucking is not an argument. So learning how to resist the academic cool shame on this point is a…
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Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith square-off over Ferguson and New York
Two days ago, I mentioned Charles Barkley’s recent remarks affirming the Ferguson grand jury’s non-indictment. Since then, fellow commentator Kenny Smith has penned an open-letter that sharply disagrees with Barkley’s strident tone. Yesterday, Barkley and Smith faced each other on the set of TNT’s “Inside the NBA.” Instead of discussing basketball in the opening segment, they spent about ten minutes talking out their differences. Shaq made some comments as well. Be warned that Barkley has some salty language near the end, so you might not want to watch this one with your kiddos around. Nevertheless, I think it’s helpful to hear conversations like this one.