Steve RungeWe are heading into the summer vacation season, the perfect time to let your bible reading go on vacation too! I am issuing a Summer Reading Challenge for those wanting to either enhance (or begin!) their regular time in Scripture. How? I will be...
Michael S. HeiserAnyone who teaches the Word of God wants people excited about exploring Scripture. Ultimately, you want to turn listeners into competent students so that they can teach others. Along the way you have to deal with a lot of mistaken methods and...
Logos Staff“Are we reading the book of Genesis as if God has sort of subtly placed scientific information there for us to read 2000, 3000, 4000 years later as modern people?” asks Dr. John Walton. “Or are we supposed to read it as an ancient book? I’m inclined...
Paul BurkhartIn my first year of seminary, I was in a New Testament class with an eccentric and somewhat unorthodox professor who enjoyed challenging various long-held theological assumptions and beliefs with the goal of helping us freshly think through these...
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. You should read your Bible. You should also commit Scripture to memory. Both spiritual disciplines are axiomatic for Christians. But neither is Bible study. I’ll explain what I mean by taking one at a time...
Was Abraham called to kill Isaac? Yes. He went forward with that plan until God “called” otherwise. Would he have been disobedient to continue with the original “calling” of killing Isaac after God said “stop”? In the church today we have a very...
We’ve all heard the old saying that certain things get better with age—wine, cheese, common sense. Anyone who’s watched Antiques Roadshow also knows that the longer you have something that there’s a demand for—real estate, investments, fine art, a...
Ryan BurnsIt’s May, which for most schools is graduation season. Men and women who have invested countless hours in classrooms and libraries are now preparing for the ceremony that will mark the end of a sometimes long and often very difficult journey...
Names are typically the best way of quickly achieving identification, especially if the person is already know to everyone. But sometimes context demands that you do something other than the ordinary. TV programs are a great modern example of this...
Because the Bible says quite clearly that it is “God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16), Christians tend to think of inspiration as some sort of otherworldly event. In the course of many years of teaching biblical studies (and chit-chat that happens at church)...
“There are two basic approaches, or philosophies, to translation,” says Dr. Mark Strauss in his course BI181 Introducing Bible Translations. The first is called formal equivalence. It’s also known as a word-for-word or literal...
When I was interviewing for my first associate pastor role, the senior pastor said something to my wife and me that I would soon learn was almost a mantra: “If you come to Cold Springs Church, you will experience spiritual warfare.”...
We’re going to take a look at another passage found in all three Synoptic gospels recounting Jesus’s response to the Pharisees complaint about His disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath in violation of law. All three gospels have the...
As a biblical scholar, I’m often asked for advice on how to interpret the Bible. I could refer people to tools (like Logos Bible Software) and techniques for analyzing the original languages, even if you’re dependent on English (like Learn to Use...
Though this title may sound a bit cheesy, any seminary student will tell you that one of the best parts of seminary is the lifelong friendships that you form. Think about it, it is most likely the one time in your life that you will be surrounded by...
Steve’s away at BibleTech this week, so we got one of our Logos pros to show us how we can use the principles of discourse grammar and Steve’s Hi-Definition resources in conjunction with Logos 6 to gain new insight for preaching and study. In this...
The last time we chatted, I made the comment that the right context for interpreting the Bible accurately isn’t the history of Christianity in any of its creedal distillations or denominational forms. But I went even further—I said that the biblical...
Seana ScottSo, you think God called you to seminary so you can better serve God in the world? Awesome. Your seminary time will be sure to teach you many things about God and his Word. In order to exit seminary as passionate as you are about ministry now, you...
One of my favorite applications of discourse grammar is reading the Synoptic gospels, well, synoptically. Mathew, Mark and Luke have enough overlapping content that scholars often study the stories in parallel using what’s called a synopsis...
Anyone interested in Bible study, from the new believer to the biblical scholar, has heard (and probably said) that if you want to correctly interpret the Bible, you have to interpret it in context. I’m certainly not going to disagree. But I have a...
Guest AuthorBook Review Matthew S. Harmon and Jay E. Smith, editors, Zondervan, 2014, 320 pp. This Festschrift for Doug Moo, after a biographical appreciation of the honoree, is divided into three major segments: “Exegeting Paul,” “Paul’s Use of Scripture and...
It won’t take you long upon your arrival at seminary how much things may have changed from previous generations of seminary educations. One of the biggest differences is just how digital everything is. Most seminaries have some sort of online class...
In any school, especially graduate school—including seminary—one of its greatest costs is to one’s sleep. At least, I know that’s the case for me. I spent most of my adult schooling years with an average nightly sleep duration of 4 to 6 hours. And...
“What scares the New Atheists” | The Guardian // For the first time in history, there exist societies in which the default worldview and assumption is secular. In these places, people walk out there doors and the existence of a god is...
Benjamin B. Warfield’s famous lecture “The Religious Life of Theological Students” delivered at Princeton Theological Seminary on October 4, 1911 is still very fresh and relevant to theological students in our time. Warfield’s...
Chuck McKnightThis post has been adapted with permission from Geerhardus Vos’ Reformed Dogmatics. There is a causal connection between the justification of Christ and that of those who belong to him, between the making alive of his soul and the regeneration of...
This week is Holy Week. And though we are in the final days before the highest annual joy of the Christian Calendar–Easter–these days are meant to be marked by the deepest and most difficult times of meditation on suffering and death...
Mikel Del RosarioHave you ever felt like the more you study the Biblical Languages, the more Greek and Hebrew you seem to forget? I felt that way, too, when I was first starting out. Today, I’ve completed my fourth semester of Greek and I’m currently in my fourth...
Participles have been called the workhorse of the Greek language. They occur far more frequently in Greek discourse compared to English, and in ways that don’t work naturally in English. Here’s how Wallace describes the situation:...
In your first year at seminary, you will inevitably be on either the giving or receiving end of what is probably the oldest seminary joke in existence, perhaps dating back to the time of Jesus himself. “Why do we have to buy all these textbooks? You...