Category: Reflections
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How to Interpret the Bible
The Bible is a really hard book to read. Reading the Bible is no small feat. To think otherwise, in fact, is to fail to account for the vast array of literature held therein, which was written over the span of hundreds of years by many authors in various countries and places, translated multitudes of…
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Intertestamental Intertextual Dialectics
NT Use of the OT In dealing with the OT, NT scholars face a particularly particular issue particular to NT studies, namely, the NT use of the OT. It does seem strange and seemingly unsightly to read some of the text of the NT, wherein it cites or quotes the OT. The manner in which…
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The First Century Church and the Church Today
Who founded the Church? Depending on who you ask and how you look at it, there may be many various answers to the question of who founded the Church. To be sure, without Jesus, there would be no Church. It seems, however, that without the Apostle Paul, the Church would not have spread or developed…
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Jesus: An Early First Century Jew
Rediscovering the early first century Jewish roots of Christianity There were no Christians following Jesus Christianity in the early first century was a rather homogeneous community of powerless, underprivileged, and disadvantaged Jews. It was not made up of well-to-do, powerful Gentiles, non-Jews, let alone White Evangelical Americans. It would not be until Constantine the Great…
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Living “As If”
The Serenity Prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,” is as simple and yet profound a prayer as any. Learning “to accept the things I cannot change” is much like living “as if.” The…
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Intertextual Dialectics
More about Intertextual Dialectics An Outlined Sketch Unlike intertextuality, which is largely comprised of the comparative study of texts in dialogue with one another, different and various contexts contrasting with and complementing one another, intertextual dialectics is the dialogical study of the manner in which texts of a comparatively given similitude conflict with or contradict…
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How Not to Win Friends and Influence People: The Sociopolitical Power of Jesus
What made Jesus so powerful in his day and age? Was it his miracles? His words and teaching? His presence? His love and forgiveness? His eventual sacrifice? While these are very important to adherents today, in his time, Jesus’ power was found not in any of these, per se, but in his goodness. Plato writes…
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Whence cometh evil?
Long has my mind been plagued with the question of whence cometh evil? I know the freewill argument indicates that it originates in the will of the one exercising said will. I know that some indicate that evil is but an illusion of the mind, which need be eradicated. I know that the devil or…
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The Existence of Evil Presupposes the Existence of God
Thesis statement:The existence of evil presupposes the existence of God. If is-ness is, then is-not-ness is as a corollary of the correlative relation obtaining between contraries. For if this is, then it is not, of course, that which it is not, being positively that which it is, which might be accorded as its is-ness and…
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Power
What is Power? Power, I have often heard, is not a good thing–it’s a necessary evil, even. As the saying goes, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” On the other hand, some say that “knowledge is power.” If power is evil and knowledge is power, then it must be that knowledge, too, is evil. Intuitively, it seems,…
