Mark WardSome people doubt evangelicalism exists—it’s too fractured to be called an -ism. And in the last year the value of the label has been fought over more vociferously than ever. What is “evangelicalism”? Is it even a useful concept anymore? I believe...
We rarely think about thinking. Many very smart people fail to see the assumptions hidden underneath their reasoning. How often do news articles assume that the only really reliable way of knowing truth is the scientific method? I happen to believe...
Put yourself in the shoes of the original readers of the famous second Psalm: The kings of the earth set themselves,and the rulers take counsel together,against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,“Let us burst their bonds apartand cast away...
What’s the difference between lament and complaint? Or is “lament” just a name we give to complaining when it’s in the Bible? Recently I attended the national meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, where I heard Tremper Longman deliver a...
The rear seating in our 2004 Yukon must have some kind of magnetic field that provokes good questions from kids. This week it was, “Why do we decorate trees at Christmas? What does that have to do with Jesus being born?” I don’t remember asking such...
What Flannery O’Connor said of the South is true of all America—but it seems truest at Christmas: While the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he...
Pope Francis recently created an international theological incident when he told an Italian TV interviewer that the classic, traditional wording from the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation,” is “not a good translation.” Instead he...
What do we really know about the “magi,” the three “wise men” who brought gifts to Jesus? I get questions like this from my kids all the time, questions about Bible and theology stuff. I love their curiosity. And I often find myself answering them...
The Trinity can sometimes be a because of its relationship to discussions about gender (see 1 Cor 11:3) and its place in the perennial back-and-forth between more confessionalist and more biblicist strains of evangelical faith. Recently I attended...
One of the most important figures of the Reformation died over a millennium before Luther was even born. B. B. Warfield explains his significance: It is Augustine who gave us the Reformation. For the Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the...
I could tell by the faces of my amazing adult Sunday School class, with whom I have such enriching discussions, that what I had just said did not register. I needed to call an audible. It was time to ditch (temporarily) my planned lesson and start a...
How would you like to become a bestselling Christian writer, author of a devotional classic that not only still sells well but actually gets read around the world? The only catch is that the book has to come out after you die. That’s the story of...
I finally bought Logos when I realized how often I was about to leave my beautiful new bride at home while I finished up my dissertation at the library. I still had to spend time in the stacks and study carrels, but Logos let me spend much more time...
I spent hours looking over Logos libraries before I bought one (Gold). I did the same before I upgraded (Platinum). How can you make an informed purchasing decision? Which library do you need? The homework necessary to figure it out may be daunting...
There’s a makeover video on YouTube that is now clocking in at 25 million views. And it points, through a sad irony, to a truth recovered 500 years ago at the Reformation. The timelapse video shows Jim Wolf’s stunning transformation from unkempt...
The first of Luther’s famous 95 Theses—whose 500th anniversary we celebrate today—is a critique of an erroneously translated phrase in Jerome’s translation of Matthew 4:17. In English we know this as, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”...
I once gave a presentation at my church on “Why Bible Typography Matters.” It was announced a month or so in advance, and people started making comments to me about it. Someone said, “You’re going to talk about Bible typology—like how Joseph...
“Should we split infinitives? Can we say ‘to boldly go where no one has gone before’?” A sharp teenage girl in my church recently asked me this. Great question. How do we judge what is “correct” English, anyway? And should Bible teachers even, like...
Greek New Testament manuscripts often use paragraphs to indicate a shift in thought. But modern editors have not felt bound by these paragraph divisions: each Bible text may have its own. Paragraphing is a necessary task for translation—and a help...
On Wednesday I posted a translation of the wise and valuable—and largely forgotten—preface to the most important English Bible ever: the King James Version. Today’s Christians think of the KJV as settled, established, widely accepted, and honored...
When I first read the KJV translators’ preface, I was surprised to see that they fully expected a cold reception to their work. They could have no idea that their Bible would one day be praised even by non-Christians for its literary quality and...
I don’t just read the books in my Logos library; I use them. I use them for preaching, for writing, for study, for personal emails, for online discussions with friends. I use my digital books in Logos so often that I get frustrated when the...
My Christian tradition has heroes like every other. This is good, at least when the heroes are good; it’s biblically sound to have heroes (Heb 12:1). The Bible itself offers its (nonetheless flawed) characters in part as moral examples, as heroes...
Truly understanding someone you deeply disagree with is exhausting. It’s a labor of love. A friend with different politics recently brought up a subject about which I know “my side’s” position but not my own. I sensed he was attacking my tribe, but...
Ἀγωνίζομαι is a Greek word commonly abused by Bible interpreters; and I think it raises an interesting test case for what to do when major Bible translations differ. In this post, I want to try to discern what that word is used to mean in its...
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount amazed its original hearers; it subverted their expectations on multiple levels. It’s the meek who win the world. Believers are supposed to be happy when persecuted. And then this: Jesus, this new teacher with...
John Newton wrote a beautiful letter to a friend which is called in his collected works, “On Controversy”—because that friend was about to engage in public controversy over Christian doctrine; Newton wanted to give him some scriptural counsel. I...
The Figurative Language dataset in Logos marks the word “dine” in Luke 14:1 as a metaphor. Why? Can you figure it out? I’ll give you ten Logos Pro points if you get the right answer. One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the...
I cringe almost every time I hear a preacher criticize a particular phrase from an English Bible translation in preaching—even and especially those times when I caught myself doing it before I could stop myself. We preachers and Bible teachers would...
Why should Bible teachers go through the pain of learning and then using the original languages of Scripture? I gave you five reasons last week, but persuasion doesn’t occur solely because of reasons. Sometimes personal testimony is most effective...