Sep
8
2011
For skeptics like Bart Ehrman, the key to undermining the Christian faith is to undermine the Christian text. After all, faith “comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”[1] But what if we are not really hearing the word of Christ? What if we are really hearing the word of power-hungry men who conspired to give us their particular spin on the person and nature of Jesus Christ?
Peter famously confessed that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”[2] Christians make that same confession today. In the greater context of the New Testament, we come to understand that Christ’s sonship is tied inextricably to His deity.[3] God the Father sent His Son into the world so that we could believe what Peter and the rest of the apostles believed.[4] But what, exactly, did Peter believe?
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no comments | tags: attributes of God, church history, inspiration, postmodernism | posted in Think
May
5
2011
The King James Version of the Bible is the epitome of staid, conservative traditionalism – that, at least, is how it often looks to us precisely 400 years after its publication. In fact, the KJV capped a sequence of social upheavals that took the English Bible from the dark and secret underground of a persecuted reform movement to the bright light of official and popular acceptance.
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no comments | tags: church history, inspiration | posted in Think
Aug
27
2010
A Date for Life
A Date for Life
Radiocarbon is by far the most common dating method in use today. Carbon-14 has a half-life of “only” 5,730 years, which lends itself to dating relatively recent material – the sort of material that might be uncovered by an archaeologist, for instance.
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no comments | tags: archaeology, inspiration, radiometric dating | posted in Think
Mar
5
2009
In 1945, several leather-bound codices were recovered from an earthen jar at the base of Jebel al-Tarif, across the Nile from the town of Nag Hammadi. The “library,” as it came to be called, was a treasure trove of Gnostic writings.
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2 comments | tags: gnosticism, inspiration | posted in Think
Sep
3
2008
The Text
The Text
As we sat down to study Plato’s Republic, the professor raised no questions about our text’s essential reliability and integrity. Alternate translations were mentioned, but briefly. There was never any doubt as to the book’s unity or authorship. We were never offered any grand theories on where the “real” writers of the book obtained their source materials, or what agenda they might have been pushing. Plato and his work were never belittled. The editor of our English edition praised the Republic as a “great work.” Our task as students was clear: we were there to explore the authentic writings of a real historical figure who lived in Athens over 2,300 years ago.
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no comments | tags: inspiration, Pascal's wager, prophecy | posted in Gospel Advocate