About 25 years ago I was privileged to take several seminary courses that focused on the science of textual criticism. Textual criticism was really important in those days because epic battles were then raging over texts and translations as the King James Version lost...
I teach a class on research and writing here at DBTS. I don’t consider myself a gifted writer, but I’ve tried to be a student of good writing, and I’ve had some draconian editors along the way who have helped me in no small measure (HT: Andy Naselli). People sometimes...
The intersection of Acts 5:29 and 1 Peter 2:13 encapsulates a tension facing many churches today. Harmonizing these texts is not a simple task. Still, it can be done. The simplest harmonization goes something like this: “We must obey the government unless the...
Over the years, dispensationalists have been called antinomian for many reasons. Mostly it’s been because of our tension with the so-called “third use” of the Mosaic Law: the appeal specifically to the Decalogue to inform Christian righteousness. Most...
Christian media outlets have a lot to say these days about the idea of shame, mostly trying to convince us that shame is bad. And in many circumstances, they are right. For instance, (1) we need not be ashamed before God for sins committed in our pre-conversion past:...
The Bible teaches that Christians ought to pray for healing and that God routinely answers such prayers (Jas 5:14–15 et al.). But what exactly should we expect from God when we pray to him for healing? As I see it, there are basically five discernable responses to...
Session 1: “The Logic of the Problem of Evil” (audio)- Dr. Tim Miller Session 2: “The Problem of Evil: The Biblical Witness” (audio) – Dr. Mark Snoeberger Panel Discussion
There it was in my Facebook feed. One of those ubiquitous memes from well-meaning fellow believers: God does not want you to try harder, he wants you to trust him deeper. Stop trying. Start trusting. But is it true? Does God really not want us to “try hard” to become...
Reading the Bible Supernaturally Review Article - SnoebergerDownload
It is with great pleasure that we announce the release of the 2018 Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal, now in its 23rd year of publication. This year’s selections give attention to a thorny question in Zechariah, the curiosity of Paul’s reticence to directly cite the...
…so said the late R. C. Sproul in a timely and succinct blog post just last year. Sproul was a master of theological summary, and it is only fitting that we remember him for this service to the Christian Church in the wake of his recent departure. Despite Sproul’s...
Last week on this weblog Bill Combs offered a corrective against using the hammer of justification to answer questions better answered with appeals to regeneration/sanctification. This problem is not, I think, an incidental concern, but an endemic one, and one of some...
One of the more troubling mis-translations in the history of English Bible translation (at least in terms of its popular acceptance and impact) is the King James rendering of Luke 2:14 as “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” Despite...
Go to your average weekly prayer meeting, and chances are it won’t be long before you hear a prayer dressed up with mindless filler that means practically nothing. We all know it would be really bad to lead out in prayer by saying, “God: here’s my prayer list: Frank,...
Download the audio here.
The NIV Zondervan Study Bible - SnoebergerDownload
Summer comes to a more-or-less official end this weekend with the celebration of Labor Day. The day is not so much about general labor, of course, but about organized labor (an issue about which the Bible is mostly silent and, when it does speak to the issue, is a bit...
A few weeks ago a theological kerfuffle erupted on the blogosphere. Several Reformed Confessionalists (whom I will call Carl Trueman and Co.) accused certain members of the evangelical complementarian community (whom I will call Grudem, Ware, and Co.) of Nicene heresy...
So said Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:23. And so we must agree with him. Still, I wonder whether this verse can sustain all the freight that has been loaded onto it over the years. Does it mean, as John Piper suggested a few months ago, that Christians should not carry...
Once again the anniversary of Christ’s death is opening up the question whether it is proper to say that God died on the cross, with good men leveling arguments at and past one another. Some argue that God, being immortal (1 Timothy 1:17; 6:16; etc.), by definition...
In the past few months I have encountered several conflicting ideas about forgiveness in unexpected counseling situations. Nor is the confusion confined to the uninformed or immature. The biblical idea of forgiveness is an elusive one that is often missed entirely or...
As an instructor in Systematic Theology I sometimes have conversations (whether formal or informal) over the merits of some point of theology or biblical application that end rather oddly with an appeal to “convictions.” The idea seems to be that if a person holds...
A Biblical Argument against Premarital Sex - SnoebergerDownload
The scientific community is abuzz this week with the announcement that liquid water has been confirmed on Mars. Of course scientists have long known that water is abundant in our universe (including on Mars), but specific evidence of a stable supply of liquid water...
A couple of weeks ago Union University made news by practicing secondary separation (or at least what fundamentalists have been pummeled over the last 70 years for practicing under that label): they broke fellowship with an organization of professing believers—the...
Having laid out in the previous several posts what I believe may be commended as “received laws of language,” I would like to close this series with a practical look at a pair of difficult passages that stretch the limits of the discussion: Matthew’s use of...
Having discussed two seminal axioms of language that seem to qualify as “received laws of language” (the Univocal Nature of Language and the Jurisdiction of Authorial Intent) and offering a qualification concerning the dual authorship of Scripture often raised by...
Having established two axiomatic principles of language that govern the intelligible use of words (the Univocal Nature of Language and the Jurisdiction of Authorial Intent), we need to pause, I think, to make an important qualification—not so much a third axiom of...
A second received law of language that may be deduced from common usage is the Jurisdiction of Authorial Intent. I proposed last week that a text can have but one signification in any given context; this week I suggest further that the sole arbiter of that...
We come now to the heart of this series, viz., a discovery of the “received laws of language” that we as humans unconsciously use every day as we engage in ordinary communication with one another. The material here is not new with me, but rather is a distillation...
When evaluating the truth or error of any proposed theological statement or system, there are two primary questions that the theologian asks: the question of correspondence and the question of coherence. In using these two terms, I am using two recognized...
For decades it was assumed, by both sides of the debate between dispensational and Reformed theology, that the primary distinction between the two models (there were really no other viable evangelical options in the early days) was hermeneutical—dispensationalists...
This week the Gospel Coalition’s annual meeting features a panel discussion with panelists who reject the Gospel. On the face of things this seems to be out of step with TGC’s founding principles, which exalt commitment to the Gospel as the singularly non-negotiable...
Another week of blogs, another contribution to the relentless stream of warnings to all Christians everywhere never to let music preference be a factor in deciding where to go to church, and above all never, ever to leave a church for this reason. This unremitting...
In our last post we appealed to John 17 to show that a properly ordered witness for Christ must avoid the two poles of (1) being both in the world and of the world, hoping the gospel will advance wordlessly through personal intimacy alone (Christ of culture) and (2)...
I work in an almost exclusively Christian environment. With the exception of a few brief encounters with folks delivering packages, reading the gas meter, and such, my whole workday is spent with believers. I’m not the best person, I admit, to speak of sharing Christ...
Last week, Pope Francis made headlines by announcing in his weekly address that we will be able to see our pets in heaven. Specifically, he pontificated, “Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.” Since this statement is sure to set the theological world abuzz, I...
Students sometimes ask me the difference between the hermeneutics employed by Covenant, New Covenant, Progressive Dispensational, and Traditional Dispensational theologian/exegetes. Perhaps the easiest way to answer is to offer an example of one of the most heavily...
With the election hard upon us, it is a good time to be reminded that nothing we do can rightly be divorced from the sufficient governance of Christian Scripture. No pockets of neutrality exist in any sphere of life, including our politics. While the battery of issues...
Among the many promises of John 14–17 are several that anticipate heightened activity by the Holy Spirit in the apostolic era. These have long been a source of both comfort and confusion to NT believers. Assurances that the Spirit would assume new functions of...
When I was a boy I grew up in a traditional American home. My father taught me the value of hard work, integrity, courtesy, and the disciplines of standing alone for right, offering a firm handshake, and looking people square in the eye. He had learned these things...
Normally when book reviews appear on this website, they’re for new books: cutting edge books that add some new piece of information or fresh analysis to our ever-growing bank of theological information. But we also need to reflect on historical gems—classic treatments...
Last week I read a curious piece that purported to identify the exact point at which Pilgrim was saved in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress: was it at the wicket gate, at the foot of the cross, or perhaps even at some other point? I confess a measure of confusion on...
One of the more troubling mis-translations in the history of English Bible translation (at least in terms of its popular acceptance and impact) is the King James rendering of Luke 2:14 as "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." Despite...
We live in a hyper-sexualized and semi-pornographic culture. The problem dominates popular advertising, pervades our entertainment choices, and even weasels its way into our churches. The concept of modesty is no longer a legitimate standard for censure, but an object...
In this post my goal is to utilize the issue of homosexuality as a case study to demonstrate that the “Jesus + Nothing = Everything” approach to sanctification is not merely an academic wrinkle, but an error of such prodigious import that it threatens the very essence...
One of the tensions of pan-denominational evangelicalism that fixates entirely on Gospel essentials is the eclipse of the bookends of biblical theology: creation and new creation. Details about the doctrines of creation and eschatology are interesting, we are told,...
A few months ago I expressed some fairly strong reservations about a nefarious variation of “Gospel-Centered” sanctification that has captured the attention of a number of conservative evangelical luminaries—a preach-the-Gospel-to-yourself,...