Posted by Dyfed on Friday, February 17, 2012,
In :
Bible
Allow me to go back to the
question about the inspiration of the Bible. When Paul wrote to Timothy and
said that ‘all scripture is God-breathed’ I concluded in my post on that verse
that he was referring to the Old Testament only. But, asked one commentator,
what about the point Peter makes in his second letter (2 Peter 3:15-16)? He
seems to be saying that Paul’s letters are as inspired as ‘the other
Scriptures’.
Paul's missing letter
Was Peter referring to all
Paul’s writings or on... Continue reading ...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, February 10, 2012,
In :
Bible
A few years ago when I was
involved with co-leading a new church plant one of the first things I had to do
was to form a ‘statement of faith’ for the congregation. This was a novel
experience for me since as someone brought up a Baptist in Wales (I am still a
baptist, by the way) I never had to think about such a thing before because
Welsh Baptist churches never had a formal statement of beliefs. But as people
felt we needed to be well defined in our theology (and there’s nothing wrong
...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, February 3, 2012,
In :
Bible
What role does the Bible
play in defining what a Christian is? Do we need to ‘believe the word of God’
before we can claim to be Christian? In certain quarters today you would think
so. The Bible as the literal word of God to us has to be accepted. Any wavering
on this and you would soon be condemned as being on dangerous ground. But this has not been the
case throughout church history. One German church historian noted the shift
that happened during the first and second centuries C.E.:
Abo... Continue reading ...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, January 31, 2012,
In :
Bible
Bishops, sex and science: a
combination that was quite controversial last week as ever. At stake is the
dignity of a section of our society and the livelihood of one psychotherapist.
The story behind the headlines involves a journalist pretending to seek
counselling to 'deal with his homosexual tendencies'. The psychotherapist –
working in private practice – agrees as she is a Christian who believes a gay
man can be cured of his homosexuality. The journalist breaks the story and the
psych...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 27, 2012,
In :
Bible
Over the past couple of
weeks I’ve been looking at 2 Timothy 3:16 and suggesting that though some will
pluck it out of context and use it to ‘prove’ that the Bible is the inerrant
word of God in all its detail this verse in fact can be used to do no such
thing. Last week I looked at the word God-breathed and the previous week I
considered which Scriptures it was referring to. Today it would be good to ask
what the verse has to say about the purpose of Scripture.
Useful not sufficient
The ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 20, 2012,
In :
Bible
When Paul said that ‘all
scripture is inspired’ (2 Timothy 3:16, NASV) what did he mean? Last week I
looked at the issue of which biblical books he could be referring to and
concluded that it was the books of the Old Testament alone he had in mind. In
this post I want to look at the word ‘inspired’.
God-breathed
The Greek word here is ‘theopneustos’ – literally
‘God-breathed’. (Interestingly the NIV uses this translation rather than
‘inspired’.) Nowhere else in the NT does... Continue reading ...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 13, 2012,
In :
Bible
A common misuse of the Bible
is to pluck out a verse to prove a point. Where the Bible itself is the subject
of the discussion the verse most commonly used is 2 Timothy 3:16 – ‘All
scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for training in righteousness.’ There, they say with a flourish,
this proves that the Bible as a whole is the word of God. I’d like to take the
next two or three posts to have a closer look at this text.
All scripture
Letâ€... Continue reading ...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 6, 2012,
In :
Bible
For the past 200 years or so
the Bible has come to play an increasingly central part in the daily life of
ordinary Christians. It wasn’t always the case. Go further back and few
ordinary Christians could either read or could afford their own copy. Go
further back again and the Bible did not exist in their language. Even further
and the Latin version was quite rare. Take another step to the third century
and there wasn’t even a common agreement on which books should be included in the
Bibl...
Continue reading ...
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