11
Jun
2015
Whatever Happened to Literal Hermeneutics? (Part 4d)
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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 non-dispensationalists, I turn to a third and final principle, again borrowed from my mentor, Rolland... Read More
5
Jun
2015
Whatever Happened to Literal Hermeneutics? (Part 4c)
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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 language, but an answer to a common observation that is often raised at... Read More
3
Jun
2015
Can We Be Good Without God? Yes…but really No
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Atheists are fond of boasting that they can be perfectly good people without God—that is, without needing the threat of some all-powerful Being punishing them for wrong-doing. Their argument can have two purposes. One is to counter the oft-quoted sentiment: “Without God, everything is permitted.” Rather, they claim, they are morally upstanding citizens even without... Read More
31
May
2015
1611 KJV Discovered
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When the King James Version was published in 1611, there were actually two printed editions, with 450 variations in the biblical text (Norton, Textual History of the King James Bible, 173–79). These are commonly called the “He” and “She” Bibles, from their respective readings in Ruth 3:15 (“he went into the city” and “she went into the... Read More
30
May
2015
Justification and Sanctification
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Guy Waters has an excellent summary of justification and sanctification over at the Ligonier Blog.
28
May
2015
Whatever Happened to Literal Hermeneutics? (Part 4b)
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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 signification is its author. This seminal axiom of language is... Read More
23
May
2015
Book Giveaway: Winner
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Jonathan Cook, youth pastor at First Baptist Community Church in Monte Sereno, California, won the book giveaway.
21
May
2015
Whatever Happened to Literal Hermeneutics? (Part 4a)
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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 of an article published in 2002 by Rolland... Read More
18
May
2015
Book Giveaway and Some Summer Reading
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In a few days, we’re going to give away a couple of books to one of our readers. The books we are giving away are Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy and Four Views on the Historical Adam, both in the Counterpoints series published by Zondervan. In order to enter the drawing for these books, you... Read More
15
May
2015
Whatever Happened to Literal Hermeneutics? (Part 3)
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This blog post is fairly ambitious, seeking to answer two questions: How can we prove the existence of universally “received laws of language”? And, assuming they exist, Who gets to decide what those laws are in the absence of an explicit biblical statement of those laws? My answer to the first question may seem a... Read More