Over the past year (September 2021 to July 2022), at our midweek small groups, I took my church through the Pentateuch. The plan was to cover as much of the key storyline as we could in the number of weeks available. This of course meant that bits that I would have loved to cover were cut. We also ran Topic Nights looking at some of the big themes that appeared, and review sessions at the end of each book. These were all filmed for members who could not make it, or who wanted to review (videos are at the bottom of this page). Passages Here are the passages we studied…
How does the divine intention of a text relate to the intention of the human author?
In recent years, discussion around intentions has grown significantly. In evangelical circles, there have been many views of how the intentions of the divine author and the human author interact. In some senses, these fall along a spectrum from seeing the intentions as totally separate, through to completely identical. It is worth outlining what is meant by the human author’s intention. It can be very easy to overstate what is being said. This has caused many to mishear or talk past the other side. For instance, it would be ridiculous to claim we can infer everything about the author from reading what they have written. We cannot know their background,…
Review: James (Big Greek Idea)
Over the past few months I have had the pleasure of looking over James: Big Greek Idea, the first in a new commentary series by Kregel Academic. I love the premise of this series! It provides a type of commentary that I have not seen before. It takes the benefits of a Greek language commentary (such as the NIGTC), and combines it with bits of an expositional commentary (such as the ProcTrust series), whilst also including details for teachers and language students. This makes the series, in my eyes, something to dip into regularly as I preach through a book. To make the most of this series you will need…
Review: Are you 100% sure you want to be an agnostic?
A quick glance at the current landscape shows that agnosticism appears to be the trendy thing to be. Gone are the days of the ‘New Atheists’ with their outspoken opinions, and in their wake now stand the ‘nones’. People who don’t have a religious affiliation on their census. The people who asked whether God exists will reply ‘I don’t know’. The position that appears wise in a world torn between competing opinions. Peaceful, centred, not causing a ruckus. Agnostic – a trendy choice. But can you be agnostic about Jesus? To answer that question Andrew Sach and Jonathan Gemmell come along with their new book ‘are you 100% sure you…
The revelation of the Trinity in Scripture is perfect
“The revelation of the Trinity in Scripture is perfect”, says Fred Sanders in ‘The Triune God'[1]Sanders, F., 2016. The Triune God, M. Allen & S. R. Swain, eds., Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.. As Sanders says this, he means that the disclosure in Scripture of God’s identity is complete, sufficient, and the way it is meant to be. Or, to put it another way, we could not have done a better job of revealing the Trinity if we wrote the Bible ourselves. When you really think about that statement, it leads to a realisation that, in Scripture, we have all the information that the True and Living God wants us to know.…
Logos 9 | 6 months later…
It has been six months since Faithlife released Logos 9, and I thought it would be a good time to look and see the parts that I have used the most.According to my ‘screen time report’ from macOS, Logos is my most used application during the week, which already speaks for how prominent it is in my daily workflow. So I took note of the features that I use regularly, and the things that keep me coming back to them. Hopefully you, as the reader, will find this beneficial for seeing how you could do similar! Preaching mode When I started my detailed log, the very first entry was the…
