We all know what it's like when we're leaving our driveway and have to return to the house for something we forgot. And then, for some of us, we forget what we were looking for in the first place. We waste time and energy looking for something when we have forgotten even what that something […]
1 In the reading of Scripture, whether privately or in public worship, consider including both an Old Testament and a New Testament reading, the former selection related to the latter as promise to its fulfillment. We begin to think in terms of this pattern by hearing the connections. 2 Ask yourself: What's the stage of […]
In his preface to the 1545 Wittenberg edition of his Latin writings, Martin Luther provided an autobiographical account of his discovery of the meaning of the Gospel. There the old doctor recounted the story of that all-important time when, as a young theologian troubled by his sin and by the threat of God’s justice, he […]
There is a subterranean issue that bedevils contemporary debates over the interpretation of Scripture. This fault-line is not geological but philosophical, and ultimately theological. On one side of the chasm are those who believe that texts have a specific message, a determinate meaning-in principle knowable-which the author verbally conveys to the reader. On the other […]
Carl Henry has long been fond of saying that there are two kinds of presuppositionalists: those who admit it and those who don't. We might adapt his analysis to our topic: There are two kinds of practitioners of hermeneutics: those who admit it and those who don't. For every time we find something in the […]
Today, to a disconcerting degree, the disciplines of biblical scholarship and dogmatics (or systematic theology) undertake their tasks with too little interaction. I fear that some dogmaticians could not exegete their way out of a paper bag, and, as an Old Testament professor, I know that some biblical scholars could not even spell Arianism. Yet, […]
It is a common practice to number the Gospels and to name them by books and say that there are four Gospels. From this practice stems the fact that no one knows what St. Paul and St. Peter are saying in their epistles, and their teaching is regarded as an addition to the teaching of […]
MR: To offer a single definition of a single "postmodernism" would be a quite unpostmodern thing to do. Nevertheless, could you give us some insight into the contemporary context of your project. EM: Your insight about definition is important. The act of defining could be mistaken for a foundationalist move, the attempt to set up […]
The Bancroft Prize, commonly regarded as the most prestigious award for scholarship on American history, took the unusual step last April of honoring a book focusing on America's religious past. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt, by University of Delaware historian Christine Heyrman, explores how Evangelicalism emerged as the dominant religious faith in […]
