In Our Idea of God, Thomas V. Morris explores how we might think about understanding the idea and person of God without the Bible. He is not excluding the Bible, nor limiting himself to natural theology, but he is asking us to consider starting points...
A Little Book for New Philosophers: Why and How to Study Philosophy, by philosopher and apologist Paul Copan was, for this aspiring philosopher, an inspiring thrill ride across the landscape of the possibilities, power, and joys of doing philosophy. In fact, my esteem for Copan,...
In Christian leadership and laity, the word “inerrancy” is often misunderstood because it is ambiguous until it is well defined and qualified by a handful of important attributes. For the sake of clarity in writing and discussion, this paper defines a usable taxonomy based on four attributes, bifurcated into mutually exclusive values, including precision (Empirical vs. contextual), scope (Total v. limited), specificity (Verbal v. dynamic), and locus (Original v. subsequent). Through examination of the sixteen possible and impossible combinations, four highly probable inerrancy types are identified as worthy of further discussion and use, named Literal, Semantical, Devotional, and Metaphorical inerrancy. In conclusion, some possible avenues for further development of the attributes, and quantification of individual commitment to these types are suggested.
In Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith, author Michael Reeves attempts to present the doctrine of the triune God as a “solution and a delight,” not an “oddity and a problem” (2012, p. 10). Through a combination of sometimes cringeworthy “hip”...
1.0 Introduction Biblical Theology (BT) is a relatively recent approach to hermeneutics, emerging from Exegetical Theology (ET) and Systematic Theology (ST) as a distinct discipline, largely in response to post-Reformation scholasticism which birthed the “higher criticism” of the scriptures in the 17th and 18th centuries...
Introduction In Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, authors Richards and O’Brien offer many reasons why Western Christians may be misunderstanding scripture because they are imposing their own context and assumptions on it rather than viewing it from the original writers’ and recipients’ frame of reference...
This paper was written as a final assignment for my M. Div. program at Fuller Theological Seminary, for the class IS502 – The Practice of Christian Community. Introduction Three years ago, as part of my application to the M. Div. program at Fuller Theological Seminary,...
1. A Brief History of My Communities My childhood was spent within a family whose ideology can be characterized as agnostic, scientific, and feminist. My parents divorced when I was 3 years old, and I never saw my father again until I found him at...
