An Opportunity for the Church

Our current cultural context feels very threatening. Multiple forces seem poised to tear the church apart. Politics, broader philosophical and ideological movements within the culture, crises of personal and ministerial integrity, technological distractions, and other social forces make our existence as communities of faith increasingly tenuous. If you’re anything like me, you might be tempted to view these trends pessimistically and dread the future as a time of increasing fragmentation and loss for the church. 

However, these difficulties just may provide a moment of opportunity to rethink our core commitments and our approaches toward life as Christian communities. The following are my own personal meditations on the kind of things that could provide increasing cohesion for our communities of faith in a time of social fragmentation. 

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What Is the Meaning of the Word γενέσεως in Matt 1:1?

Here’s a brief post that comes out of a discussion with some friends at church today surrounding the translation of the Greek word γενεσεως in Matt. 1:1.

Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) Annual Meeting, 2022

Greetings!

Ethiopic Resources

Ethiopic is a fascinating language. It is Semitic in terms of its structure (so it has similarities with Hebrew and Arabic), but rather than being consonental, it has a 182 character syllabary in which the vowels are indicated by slight alterations of a basic 26 letters, a system used by the modern Amharic language.

On an Unhealthy Over-emphasis on Theology

I’ve been increasingly aware in recent years of my own tendency to supplant knowledge of God for knowledge about God. I’ll be the first to relish the joys of unbroken study of some passage of Scripture or some theological truth and to champion the necessity of hard work and study for successfully living out the Christian faith. However we can so easily view the study of these things as ends in themselves rather than means to the end of knowing and loving our creator and redeemer. (See this essay by Esther Meek, where she eloquently discusses how God-given means of grace such as Bible reading can become legalism when they become the end rather than the means.)

Musical Creations

In my youth, I always loved creating things: drawings, paintings, and music. (When I was a new Christian, I was really struck by the fact that God was a creator because the joy of creation is so well reflected in human beings.) From about age 15 to about age 25, music was a huge part of my life. My own father was an amazing guitar player, and I loved writing and playing music. (The pictures below are from my early 20’s.)

Latin Resources

Greetings, readers!

In this post I’ll list some resources that I’ve found useful for studying Latin with reference to biblical and theological studies. If you’d like to see my similar posts on other languages, then simply follow these links to Coptic Resources, Syriac Resources, and my new post on Ethiopic Resources. This post will be a work in progress, so feel free to check back as I continue to update it.

Some Reflections on an Evangelical Approach to the Study of Christian Scripture

Scripture is divine-human speech that is trustworthy and transformative. The fact that Scripture is divine-human speech can be established from 2 Peter 1:21: “… men carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (my translation). In George Ladd’s words, “The Bible is the Word of God given in the words of men in history.” The fact that Scripture was composed by human authors means that Scripture is part of this natural world; this authorizes research and study into the natural dimensions of Scripture: linguistics, social-scientific criticism, literary criticism, source and redaction criticism, historical background studies, textual criticism—all of these are legitimate areas of inquiry that pertain to the human authorship of Scripture.

Grace Baptist Church Spring 2021 Sunday School: NT Survey

In Spring 2021, I had the privilege of teaching a NT Survey for our church’s Adult Sunday School. We looked into some of the basic issues related to the NT overall, and then surveyed the four Gospels. Below you will find the videos for each week, along with any links to other resources I thought might be helpful. We hope you find this edifying for your relationship with God through faith in his Son, Jesus, the Messiah.

My Dissertation Is Available on ProQuest

Exciting news! My dissertation, The Theme and Structure of the Didache: A Study in Discourse Analysis, is available on ProQuest!

The abstract is as follows: