Theology
Restitution & Justice
A difficult issue to deal with in Old Testament theology is the alarming frequency with which the death penalty is commanded in the Pentateuchal law. For instance, in Exodus 21-23, capital punishment is the judgment mandated for crimes like murder, assault & battery on one’s parents, kidnapping, cursing one’s parents, allowing one’s animal to kill a person, bestiality, sorcery, and idolatry. Other crimes like ordinary assault, involuntary manslaughter, tort, theft, negligence, statutory rape and oppression require financial restitution.
Amillennialism – my thoughts. Tentatively.
On my post about the amilllennial eschatology webcast, a commenter asked for my thoughts on amillennialism. Really, that webcast was my first real exposure to hearing about amilliennialism from amilliennialists. So my thoughts here are accordingly tentative.
D. A. Carson MP3s
Andy Naselli posted an excellent resource today. The Gospel Coalition has made available a page with literally hundreds of Don Carson mp3 and m4v lectures and sermons. I have listened to Carson repeatedly and benefitted immensely from his clear and engaging teaching. The new Carson resource page will surely be a wealth of profitable material!
Web-Conference on Eschatology
Last Saturday, I benefitted from watching the live eschatology web-conference hosted by The Midwest Center for Theological Studies. Sam Waldron, Kim Riddlebarger, Richard Gaffin, and Vern Poythress discussed the doctrine of the end times from an amillennial perspective with particular emphasis given to the place of the nation Israel in God’s future plan for human history.
Punctuating God’s Word
The story of the receding floodwaters in Genesis 8 hangs its suspense on the question of when the dry land becomes dry enough. As Noah sends a raven and a dove, the tension heightens and the reader with fresh eyes wonders, “Will the ground ever be dry enough to live on?” In the NET Bible, the climax is written this way: “He waited seven more days and then sent out the dove again from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there was a freshly plucked olive leaf in its beak!” (Gen. 8.10-11). The sentence ends in a way that is (unfortunately) uncommon in English Bibles: with an exclamation point!
Characters in Absalom’s Coup
This post continues the previous one by describing the characters in II Sam. 15.13-19.8. No story would be worth reading without characters to move the plot along; this narrative has quite a variety of them!
Literary Observations on Absalom’s Attempted Coup
In a recent Sunday School class, I was placed in a small group of students and given a passage of Scripture to work through, finding lessons to share with the class. I’ll spend the next few post in sort of mini-series on literary aspects of the story of Absalom’s attempted take-over of his father David’s kingdom as recorded in II Sam. 15.13-19.8. Please take the time to read that passage before you finish this article.
God makes empty things full
That’s what the book of Ruth teaches. I learned and was edified as I was recently doing some outside reading on literary analysis of the Bible (reading a Biblical narrative and studying the literary features like character, plot, setting, etc).
Overview of Matthew
On Sunday, my pastor preached an overview of Matthew 1-20. This sermon simply and clearly walked through the major sections, explained the purposes of each and gave an excellent summary of that portion of the book.
What if you could see all the Bible’s cross-references in a picture?
You can. Right here. Pretty amazing, if you ask me. Even more amazing when you think about the fact that the 1189 chapters of the people were written over a spread of 1500 years by 40 different people, most of whom never met each other. It seems to me that there’s something humanly impossible about unity like the Bible’s coming out of such diversity!