As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“I’m sympathetic to the presuppositionalist reflex… That being said, in placing the epistemological accent so strongly on the Bible over against God’s ‘general revelation’ in the created order, Reformed-style presuppositionalism suffers from a degree of hermeneutical naivete.
I believe some of Jesus’ teachings about discipleship come from I Kings 19:19-21. The rabbis viewed the relationship of Elisha to Elijah as a role model for a disciple. Here are the verses:
19 Elijah left there and found Elisha son of Shaphat as he was plowing. Twelve teams of oxen were in front of him, and he was with the twelfth team. Elijah walked by him and threw his mantle over him. 20 Elisha left the oxen, ran to follow Elijah, and said, “Please let me kiss my father and mother, and then I will follow you.”
“…whenever I’m discouraged in my work, I pick up one of his books again and his life inspires me to continue. They’re not easy reads, but what he went through to bring them to us was remarkable, and it will change your perspective on ‘oppression’ forever.” - Phil Cooke
“ ‘Literaler is better’ is a common trap. As with many common traps, there is some truth set in this one as bait. We’ll get to that. But first we have to reductio.” - Mark Ward
“God has given us a down payment of his very person in the Holy Spirit. He’s really serious about his relationship with us. Let us embrace him and anticipate all that is to come.” - Olinger
“In this interview we discuss Barcellos’s new book, Trinity & Creation: A Scriptural and Confessional Account, a defense of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo in classical Trinitarian perspective, over and against recent revisionist accounts.” - Credo
“Today the Soviet Union is gone but newspeak and a thousand forms of disinformation thrive. I can do frontline reporting … and a reader will email to say I didn’t see what I saw because it doesn’t conform to a political narrative. She and the rest of us can fall prey to platform algorithms and manipulated content disgorged from a news cycle that never sleeps.
What does it mean to be “one flesh”?
— Here’s a few questions to get into specifics:
Does ‘one flesh’ happen when you get married?
Does it happen with sex? Does first base count? Second? Third?
Something else?
Is it a continuing process that builds slowly or is it more of an on-off status that happens at a moment in time?
Is it undoable?
Is it possible to be one flesh with many partners?
— What are some interesting reads? I’m looking for both reliable and otherwise.
Review of Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels,* Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017, 524 pages, paperback.
Richard B. Hays has established himself as one of the foremost NT scholars in the world, based on enduring works like The Moral Vision of the New Testament and Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. He has been at the forefront of the study of such seemingly obtuse but telling elements of the study of the NT as “metalepsis” and “figural interpretation.”
“While some may claim that eternal generation is an extra-biblical doctrine without scriptural warrant, Charles Lee Irons and Matthew Barrett demonstrate that the concept is seen throughout Scripture through familial imagery and other significant metaphors.” - Credo
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