One of the Best (and Most Overlooked) Passages that Demonstrates the Divinity of Jesus
Did the New Testament authors think Jesus was God?
Some critical scholars would say no. Jesus, they would argue, is just presented as an ordinary man who has been given an exceptional role as God’s chief emissary and representative. He is messiah perhaps. But not God.
Of course, Christians (historically speaking) have disagreed. Yes, Jesus is Messiah, but he also shares in the divine identity and is rightly accorded all the glory and honor due to God.
When it comes to demonstrating the divine status of Jesus from Scripture, the “go to” passages are not difficult to list: John 1:1; John 8:58; 1 Cor 8:6; Phil 2:1-11. These are the … Continue reading...
What Do Manuscripts Tell Us about the Origins of the New Testament? A Preview of the Tarwater Lectures
One of my favorite things about books is not just reading them but holding them. Especially old books. I love the feel of a book in my hand that many people have read before me. There’s that musty bookish smell when you flip through the pages. There’s the worn out covers and notes in the margins.
When you read a book like this you feel like you are walking a well-worn path that many others have trod before.
And it is precisely this sort of experience that is absent with the arrival of modern e-book technology. Whether we are reading on a Kindle reader or off our tablets (or smartphones), … Continue reading...
The @RTSCharlotte Women’s Bible Study Has Started Again!
As many of you know, from 2014 to 2016 I led a women’s Bible study on the RTS Charlotte campus on the book of Romans–42 installments in all. The HD videos of the study (with handouts) are available here.
We continue to be encouraged to hear that the videos are being watched by folks all over the country and the world. Just a short time ago, I received an email from a group in Slovakia that is working their way through the Romans study.
The idea for this study was born out of a desire to connect with the people in the city of Charlotte outside the formal classroom … Continue reading...
Are Protestants Closer to Catholics than Martin Luther? A Response to the Recent Pew Study (Part 2)
Last week, I posted the first of a two-part response to a recent Pew study which claimed that modern Protestants sound more like Catholics when it comes to issues like sola scriptura and sola fide.
While modern Protestants certainly have some significant theological weak spots, I pushed back against the results of this study on the grounds that the questions being asked were fundamentally misleading. Indeed, the theological descriptions of the Protestant (and Catholic!) positions were flat out wrong.
Having already dealt with the sola scriptura issue in the prior post, we now turn to the issue of sola fide. Here is the summary of the Pew survey … Continue reading...
Are Protestants Closer to Catholics than Martin Luther? A Response to the Recent Pew Study (Part 1)
Mark Twain once quipped, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Ah statistics. They can be very helpful. Or very misleading. And much of it depends on how the questions are asked.
Last week it was announced that a new Pew foundation study demonstrated that modern Protestants are a lot less like Martin Luther and a lot more like Roman Catholics than people might think.
When it comes to the two main issues of sola scriptura (Scripture alone) and sola fide (faith alone) apparently Protestants aren’t so Protestant after all. The study conclusions state:
…For example, nearly half of U.S. Protestants today (46%) say faith alone
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