Mark Roberts did a great job on Converse with Scholars. Join us as we interview him about the reliability of the Gospels. You can listen to the broadcast here or download it. Visit Mark’s site and take a look at his book.

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Hermeneutics #5: How to Interpret the Scriptures.

How did Christ’s advent change the way that hermeneutics of the Old Testament was done? Is there a “fuller sense” that adds another layer to our interpretation of the Scriptures?

You won’t believe it, but Rhome actually makes a good proposal about how we can justify and control finding a “second” layer of meaning.

 

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In our ongoing discussion about New Testament textual criticism, we have noted the following:

• There are hundreds of thousands of differences in the wording of the manuscripts of the New Testament
• The vast bulk of these are of such minor consequence that they can’t even be translated
• Less than 1% are both meaningful and viable—that is, they are both significant in that they affect the meaning of the text and they have a decent enough pedigree to warrant consideration of being authentic (reflecting the wording of the original).

For this blog, I said that I would discuss some of the kinds of variants that are both meaningful and viable. Continue Reading »

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In my previous post to this blog, I presented my review of Robert Millet and Gerald McDermott’s book Claiming Christ: A Mormon—Evangelical Debate. As I noted, this was a review originally written for Christianity Today, which rejected the review. The history behind this event is perhaps even more interesting—and troubling—than the book itself. Continue Reading »

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I am honored that Reclaiming the Mind Ministries has asked me to join its list of bloggers here at the Parchment and Pen.

On October 8, I submitted to Christianity Today a review article on Robert Millet and Gerald McDermott’s new book, Claiming Christ: A Mormon—Evangelical Debate (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007). On November 20, the magazine informed me that they were not accepting the article. According to the book review editor, an unnamed editor at the magazine “decided that some of [my] opinions weren’t accurately based on what the book actually says.” The editor gave no specific examples and offered no further elaboration.

There is a history behind this decision, which I will review in a subsequent blog entry. Here I will simply present the review that Christianity Today rejected. I have made only formatting changes to the review. The three asterisks after the title of the book indicate that the review rates the book as deserving three stars out of five. Continue Reading »

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Hey folks, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

I am trying to see what the interest level is on a new idea. As you probably know, the Parchment and Pen Blog of Reclaiming the Mind Ministries is a theological content blog. This means that the blog is purposed to provide meaningful theological reflection based on provocative blogs that serve as mini articles. In other words, it is not a news blog. It seems to have been well received and has thus become a significant part of our commitment at Reclaiming the Mind Ministries.

Because of this, we are playing with the idea of producing an audio Parchment and Pen CD containing audio recording of the blogs of our authors. This way, people can purchase a CD of the Parchment and Pen blog being read aloud like a book on CD. We may do this monthly or yearly. If we do this, you can purchase the CDs to get caught up on the content of Parchment and Pen or you can give this as a gift to others.

My question is would this be something that you are interested in? 

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Hermeneutics #4: How to Interpret the Scriptures.

We now move to look at some real difficulties that are brought to bear when we attempt to be faithful to an authorial intent hermeneutic (i.e. we should interpret the Scriptures according to the intent of the original author). If the authorial intent hermeneutic is the best way to understand the Scriptures, why didn’t the New Testament authors use this hermeneutic when they interpreted the Old Testament? What does that mean?

Join us as we pick on Matthew, pondering why he seemed to be so fast and loose with the Old Testament.

 

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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 their historicity. Notice these accounts from the Gospel of Mark taken from Gregory Boyd and Paul Rhodes Eddy in their excellent new book Lord or Legend: Wrestling with the Jesus Dilemma.  

• Jesus’ own family did not believe him and even questioned his sanity  (Mark 3:21)
• Jesus was rejected by people in his hometown and couldn’t perform many miracles there (Mark 6:2-5)
• Some thought Jesus was in collusion with, and even possessed by, the devil (Mark 3:22) Continue Reading »

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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 of textual criticism, because I am discussing a man who was arguably the best textual critic ever to come out of North America. But this particular blog is not about textual criticism per se, so the justification will obviously wear thin… To make up for my lame attempt at an excuse, I will incorporate a glance at what is perhaps the most famous text-critical problem in the New Testament.

I was at the annual Society of Biblical Literature conference in San Diego today. One of the sessions was dedicated to the memory of Bruce Metzger (who died in February, just days before his 94th birthday), a man who taught New Testament at Princeton Seminary for nearly five decades. There were four presenters, the first of whom was Bart Ehrman, Professor Metzger’s last doctoral student.

Ehrman relayed the famous ‘squirrel story’ that anyone acquainted with Metzger lore knew about: One day, while walking with an unnamed student across the campus at Princeton Seminary, Metzger and student stopped to see a squirrel racing up a tree. The squirrel jumped from the tree to another that was out of its reach. Suddenly, the squirrel fell to the ground and died. Metzger turned to the student and said, “I know what the Greek word for squirrel is.” Continue Reading »

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My sister Angie and her son Drew in 2002

I often tell the story during my Introduction to Theology class of an experience that I had that deeply implicated me and has affected the way that I “listen” to God’s movements in my life. It concerns an event that happened in the summer of 2003 with my sister Angie. It has to do with how experience can seem to say one thing, but be very misleading. Continue Reading »

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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 remarriage, the same person gives counsel to the repentant remarried person. God is gracious. Divorce is not a sin that cannot be forgiven. Two wrongs don’t make a right, so don’t divorce again in order to go back to your former spouse.

It would seem that with such bi-polar counsel, the one considering divorce should just act now and ask questions later!

My two previous posts asked Is Divorce Ever Good? and Is Divorce Ever Understandable? These two drew heavily on experience and situations that seemed to call for a “greater-good” approach to some divorce cases when abuse was present. Now I want to deal with the Bible and what it has to say about divorce asking the question Is Divorce Ever Biblical? Continue Reading »

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UPDATE: Michael Patton. Character count was at 500 Richard. I changed it to 2500. This should give people more space for comments, just not for a book! 

Parchment and Pen is intended to be a place where scholars can submit their ideas and thoughts and where others can interact in a thoughtful and concise way. Unfortunately, some have decided to use PaP as their soapbox to bully, show-off, or just be unkind. Continue Reading »

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Well everything about what we offer as a ministry that is. I am not going to divulge any of Michael Patton’s secrets here (he doesn’t need any help in that area; he takes Paul’s notion of boasting about his weaknesses to new heights!)

On to the ministry.

Some of you are probably very familiar with all the facets of our ministry. But for those of you who visit P&P from other blogs may not know of all the resources RMM offers. I will give you a brief overview of the three ministries under the umbrella that is RMM and links to their respective pages. I hope you find these to be useful resources and pray God will use them to strengthen your own walk. Continue Reading »

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I remember one of my professors at Dallas Seminary talking about the future of “doing” church. He said that we had better get ready for virtual churches and decide whether or not we felt that these could constitute legitimate churches. My thoughts were that this would never happen. How can people “do” church online?

Well, it is happening. Many churches are beginning to hold services online. While the majority of churches now post the MP3’s of their sermons online, others are taking virtual prayer requests, and some are actually holding online services. How? Some open up virtual chatrooms where the sermon is streamed through a live feed. In these rooms, congregation members can chat with one another about the sermon, give prayer requests, and even be lead by an “online pastor” (a new pastoral position that many churches are now hiring for!). Continue Reading »

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