A review of The Bible Among The Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature, by John W. Oswalt, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009. The author of this book is well known for his scholarly two volume Commentary on Isaiah in the Word series. This book is meant more for a more popular audience, but is valuable for scholars, pastors and the general reader. From the books published in the past year I would put this one near the top of the …
Category: Biblical Studies
When a born-again Christian looks at the Psalms he sees Christ. When an unregenerate Bible scholar looks at Psalms he sees little or nothing of Christ. The reason for this is that while the believer allows God to be the Author of the Bible, and so accepts the real possibility both of predictive prophecy and a “developed Christology” in the Psalter, an unregenerate person’s eyes are blinded by his unbelief. A person may put on a good pair of eyeglasses …
As some of you know, I am Founder of Veritas School of Theology, an online seminary dedicated to educating God’s people in solid dispensational and presuppositional theology at a low cost. This ministry also provides me with an outlet for my ongoing development of what I call “Biblical Covenantalism” (see here, and here): a more far-reaching and theologically balanced type of Dispensationalism. One of the things we do at VST is to place a lot of emphasis on understanding the …
Everyone knows that from an evangelical perspective that there are a number of psalms that are designated “Messianic.” The main “Messianic Psalms” are Psalms 2, 22, 69, 110, and 118. These are so-called mainly because they are employed by the NT writers to relate in some way to aspects of Jesus Christ’s life and ministry. Psalm 8 might also be treated, though debate over its OT Messianic overtones usually debars it from inclusion as a Messianic Psalm. But there are …
1. The Making of Man In the pagan mythologies, we find that man is often formed both from an earthy element such as clay, and a divine element; something from a deity. Thus, man is semi-divine in ANE cosmologies, though one should recall how this “spark of divinity” is greatly diminished when these gods are in view. Of course, in the case of the biblical account man is not divine; he is not in any way made out of God’s …
A prospective student at Telos Institute asked me a good question about my view on Law versus the Gospel. As part of my reply I sent him the text of a letter I’d written to someone who had criticized a lecture of mine on the Decalogue. This individual had claimed that Christians were sanctified solely by faith plus nothing else, and that the law did not even provide a normative standard for ethics. Here is my reply (changed in a few …
The previous two installments are available here and here. Total Depravity Theologians often use the term “Total Depravity” to describe the fallen condition of man. By this they do not mean that man is as corrupt as he could possibly be (which would make every human being a devil). Instead, the word “Total” refers to the extent of this depravity in us, not its depth or degree. One theologian explains it as follows: “[It] does not mean the absolute loss …
This is a repost from 2007. It’s short but addresses an issue close to my heart. Too often theology is done for itself not as a search for Truth. Theology, if it is anything, is the search for and categorization of truth. As committed Christians we assert that biblical truth sets the standard of what is the truth – it is our ultimate authority. We must always allow God to say what He has to say and be scrupulous in …
86. Despite the tendency of some dispensationalist scholars to interpret the Kingdom Parables negatively, so that they view the movement from hundredfold to sixty to thirty in Matt 13:8 as marking “the course of the age,” and in Matt 13:31-33 “the mustard seed refers to the perversion of God’s purpose in this age, while the leaven refers to the corruption of the divine agency” (J. D. Pentecost), Christ presents these parables as signifying “the kingdom of heaven” which He came …
3. The Temptation in Eden Many Bible readers suppose that the serpent’s main objective was to get Eve to flatly disobey God by rejecting God’s authority in favor of his own. Certainly this would have been desirable, but it was probably too much to expect. In any case, Satan knew he did not have to be so persuasive as to get Eve (and Adam) to switch allegiances so radically. All he needed to do was to convince our first parents …