Critical GNT

Many of us don't have access to a critical edition of the Greek New Testament—at least not the Novum Testamentum Graece edited by Nestle and Aland.  The Society of Biblical Literature has provided one free of charge in partnership with Logos Bible Software at their website.  It comes in a variety of formats that are compatible with most Bible software packages today.  For those interested in variants in NT readings, it's a helpful resource, if not quite as complete as the standard critical text today.  And it's hard to beat free.

On Marriage

Rey over at the Bible Archive did us all a great favor by posting an open letter to his children about Christianity and supporting your-flavor-of-marriage.

Because it's written in typical reynosian fashion, I'll quote some choice passages:

Romantic love, a good thing, was wrongly set up as the goal of a real marriage. Sex is good, but movies and songs praised sex apart from marriage. Things were also made that let people enjoy sex without enjoying children.

Marriage became one thing. Sex was something else. And Having Children was something else. Sex you could do with someone you love. Marriage you did when you found someone you love and could stay with. And Having Children became something you did when you were the right age.

Then people got unhappy: they didn’t have enough love, or enough sex, or too many kids, or they never got married. Then a hunt for all those rights: divorce made more sense, so did the hope of finding someone who would reflect happiness in all those broken pieces.

And:

So let’s say that the lack of attraction is so bad that it’s disgust. They not only aren’t attracted to being with the other person, they’re outright grossed out by it. That still doesn’t mean that they are banned from loving. It might just mean that they will have to live on being a single person.


That’s a tough pill to swallow, but it might just be the case. It’s exactly what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7. It sucks that the person is left by their spouse, but remain in the state they have been called. And that calling might not be an internal sense of being celibate but a situational realization.

There are people that are born unable to go out in public and others who are born with a constant desire to steal and yet others who are born without the ability to walk. Their life might have to be set up around those things so that they don’t walk and they don’t get put in positions where they might steal or they don’t spend time in large crowds.

In so doing, these people might be examples of the Gospel at work promising the future age in this present age. The person walks around as a co-heir of Christ and, even better, a huge billboard of the cross. This person is really bearing their burden, refusing self-satisfaction, and moving ahead showing that God has given them an opportunity to lay down their own life as a living sacrifice. Imagine preaching the Gospel to an audience and saying “this is what I want, but I know it is not the way God created humans to be: therefore I lay down my life and present it to all of you. I am weak, but in Christ I am made strong.”

It all comes back to the gospel.

Verbal Plenary Inspiration

Lots of chatter about this lately, and it seems reasonable to collate a few resources for the interested.

First, definitions.

Verbal:  pertaining to the words.  Plenary:  entire.

People tend to confuse the term "verbal" with "dictation," so it's not unusual to find people who think that VPI refers to God talking to people to tell them what to write down, overriding whatever human element may be present in Scripture.

But it should be said that verbal does not talk about how God inspired but rather what God inspired.  Two competing ideas of inspiration are "verbal" and "concept"; in the former, God inspires the words of Scripture; in the latter, God inspired the concepts of Scripture.

What those who hold to verbal inspiration stipulate is that Scripture is a product of both God and man, and that the two are not in conflict.

• Theopedia
• Brainout
• Bible dot org
• Westminster Confession of Faith
• Pastoral Musings (good summary material here) 

Word Doctrine and the Perspicuity of Scripture

"Perspicuity" is a ten-dollar word that basically means clarity.  The Westminster Confession speaks of it in Chapter I, section VII in saying that not all things in Scripture are equally clear, but those which are necessary for our salvation are so clearly described that anyone can understand them.

Word doctrine provides a suitable reason for this:  when God speaks with the intent of being understood, the act of his speaking creates the understanding in the creature.  (It is worth noting that there are clearly times in the Scripture when God speaks with the intent of preventing understanding.  See, for example, Is 6.10, Mt 13.13-15 and parallels.)


While I suppose the point is a simple one, I think it's incredibly important. In thinking about the topic of inspiration or semantically-driven hermeneutics, the point must remain outstanding:  God has communicated with us in order to be understood, at least in the matter of our salvation.  We should be wary of using language as a tool to obscure meaning rather than enlighten.

Word Doctrine

I was lately asked to briefly describe my Christian faith.  After a bit of noodling, I settled on Nicene, little-c catholic, reformish with a bit of Lutheran sympathy, mainly with his view on the Word.

I confess that I owe most of my understanding to people who read Luther, and less to Luther himself.  But orthodox Lutheranism describes the several attributes of the word, one of which is efficacy:

When used theologically the term implies, as John Theodore Mueller wrote, that the Scriptures possess. . .the creative power to work in man,  who by nature is spiritually dead, both saving faith and true sancification The Word of God does not merely teach man the way of salvation and show him the means by which he may attain it; but by its truly divine power (vis vere divina) it actually converts, regenerates, and renews him. This unique efficacy is possessed by no other book in the world . . . for the divine efficacy of Scripture is nothing else than God's power in the Word.

 There's some good support of this idea in the Scripture.

Glory in the Sky

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.  Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.  (Ps 19.1-2)