Parchment & Pen Blog

Historians take note of potentially embarrassing elements found in historical documents. Why? Because those who are writing true history don’t normally include things that might turn their face red. If you are embellishing something, you leave all that stuff out! This is why the potentially embarrassing elements of the Gospels are a significant part of [...]

I realize that some of you were expecting this blog to give a few examples of meaningful and viable textual variants. But that will have to wait till next week. For now, I wanted to take on a different topic. I suppose I could justify this by saying that it is still on the topic [...]

Divorce is sin. Divorce is bad. God hates divorce. Divorced people can never remarry. If you remarry, you will be in a perpetual state of sin unless you remarry your former spouse. These are all the things that constitute good conservative Christian counsel to those who are considering divorce. Right? Yet after divorce and subsiquent [...]

A student was kind enough to sketch us out. Rhome is on the left and I am in the middle. The guy on the far right is Timon Bingtson. He was an intern for The Theology Program. richards on 09 Nov 2007 at 6:08 am # Where’s Michael’s vest? stevemoore on 09 Nov 2007 at [...]

The news has been out since 2004 that the world’s leading atheist, Antony Flew, changed his mind in light of the available evidence. Like waking up from a bad dream, a number of atheists and skeptics reacted in, well, . . . disbelief. Their stance shifted to skepticism and then, as this late-in-life conversion became [...]

<p><a href=”http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/category/dan-wallace-contra-mundane/”><img height=”170″ width=”335″ align=”right” style=”width: 335px; height: 170px;” src=”http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/images/Parchment%20and%20Pen/danpandp6.jpg” alt=”” /></a><br /> Wow! Nearly five dozen brave people have put their reputations on the line by taking this little quiz. Well done, folks. You all get an A just for courage. Now, for the questions again with their answers and explanations:</p> <p>1. The first [...]

I am an Evangelical . . . a “Historic Evangelical.” Meaningless, I know. But let me respond to many of you by taking the next step in putting some flesh on this proposed new name for an old tradition. Reason for the Change: 1. Evangelicalism has lost its meaning in most circles today. “Evangelicalism” means both everything and [...]

Considering the current discussion on the blog about the crisis in Evangelicalism, I found that Michael Spencer posted on this subject a few days ago. He lists 13 critical problems facing contemporary evangelicalism. I agree with all thirteen. I will also add mine to the end in brackets. 1. Vast evidence of a growing doctrinal [...]

It would seem that every so often designations lose their value. I have talked about this much in this blog as I have lamented the demise of evangelicalism. I have watched the roots of evangelicalism rot, splinter, dry out, and die. I am was an evangelical. I find that it is hard to call myself such without dying [...]

Michael Patton put up A Brief Primer on Textual Criticism last week without my knowledge. He didn’t know that I wanted to begin something of a series on this topic. Sheesh! We need to talk to each other a bit more often! I’ll try not to duplicate what he has written too much. But I [...]

My best friend while I was at seminary, Chris Woodall, has recently converted to Anglicanism. He wrote about this in his blog recently. It is worth a read. Give him some trouble—he always does me! Here is a nice statement made by Chris: The spiritual-life advertised by evangelicals all my life did not work for [...]

Dear friends, A different sort of blog this time, but one I can hardly keep to myself. As many of you know, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (www.csntm.org) sent out two teams on expeditions this past summer—one to Patmos and one to an eastern European country. The expeditions accomplished far more [...]