Posts from April 2012
By Gary Manning Jr
Apr. 27, 2012 10:18 a.m.
New Testament
Earlier this semester, my good friend Ken Berding and I were discussing the different views on Romans 7:14-25 and decided that we would each write a blog post summarizing our reasons for holding opposing views on the passage. Last week, Ken gave a great defense of the view that Romans 7:14-25 is autobiographical and is thus about the Christian struggle with sin. I found Ken’s reasons 3, 6 and 7 very strong (Ken also gave a fine experiential discussion of that struggle in an earlier post). As Ken pointed out, there are many smart people on both sides of this issue, so this is not a “slam-dunk” interpretational problem.
Throughout Christian history, there have been several opinions about what Paul meant in this passage. The two main options are 1) Paul is referring to his own experience as a Christian, and therefore the general Christian experience; or 2) Paul is referring to the experience of a pre-Christian Jew trying to obey the Law.
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By Edward W. Klink III
Apr. 27, 2012 12:00 a.m.
Theology,
Biblical Exposition,
Church Life,
New Testament,
Old Testament
In an earlier post I mentioned a book on biblical theology that my colleague and I had nearly finished writing. The book is finally finished, and is entitled: Understanding BIblical Theology: A Comparison of Theory and Practice (Zondervan).
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By Gary McIntosh
Apr. 24, 2012 3:29 p.m.
Church Life,
Culture,
Ministry and Leadership,
Missions
What sounds like a simple task at first often turns out to be much more difficult in practice. Such is the situation when attempting to define a multiethnic church. For example, a brief survey of the current literature reveals four words that are commonly used to describe churches where the people come from diverse backgrounds: “multinational,” “multi-racial,” “multi-ethnic,” and “multicultural.”
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By Betsy Barber
Apr. 22, 2012 6:37 p.m.
Church Life
The life events that we celebrate with our students here at Talbot are usually joyful, life-filled milestones: engagements, marriages, babies, commissioning services, ordinations, new jobs, etc. Once in awhile, though, we journey unexpectedly with one of our dear students through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. This has been our experience these past 6 months as one of our ISF students has died from cancer.
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By Kenneth Way
Apr. 18, 2012 8:00 a.m.
Apologetics,
Biblical Exposition,
New Testament,
Old Testament
The Museum of Biblical and Sacred Writings joins the Biola community and invites you to view a new exhibit.
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By Gary McIntosh
Apr. 17, 2012 2:44 p.m.
Christian Education,
Church Life,
Evangelism,
Ministry and Leadership
A church is a living organism. It's natural for an organism to grow. And it's natural for a church to grow. When a church is not growing it is quite likely that something is wrong. In the United States a healthy church will see between 5 - 12% growth in worship attendance each year.
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By Ken Berding
Apr. 14, 2012 4:44 p.m.
New Testament
As a follow-up to my previous post on Romans 7, following are seven reasons I think that an autobiographical reading of Romans 7:14-25 is the most straightforward reading of the passage. When I wrote the previous post, I did not intend to offer a full account of the passage. Nor do I here. But for those who want to know a bit of why I hold that Romans 7:14-25 is Paul’s own struggle with sin as a mature believer, that is, as representative of Christians who are sensitive to any sinful shortcomings in their own lives (please see my former post) I will here offer seven reasons that have helped persuade me that Paul is writing about himself in this passage. I am reticent to put my thoughts down in writing because I know that people I respect (including some at The Good Book Blog) will view and weigh these arguments differently than I, but it seems, as Paul writes elsewhere, “you [readers] drove me to it.”
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