Review - Conscience: What It Is, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ (Part 1)

Dan Miller

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The goal of this book is “to put conscience back on your daily radar, to show from Scripture what God intended and did not intend [the] conscience to do, and to explain how your conscience works, how to care for it, and how not to damage it.”1

Definition & Understanding

As their titles suggest, the first two chapters deal with defining the conscience. Chapter 1 defines the conscience as “your consciousness of what you believe is right and wrong.” Chapter 2 examines how the New Testament writers taught about conscience and develops a biblical understanding of the conscience from these data. Included in this is a definition of the “weak conscience”: an “uninformed moral consciousness.”2 As we’ll see later, this is the first of two definitions given in this book, and this presents a dilemma.

Chapter 3 answers, “What Should You Do When Your Conscience Condemns You?” The answer is the gospel, for nothing but the grace of God in the atoning work of Jesus can free us from guilt. This applies to the lost man approaching the cross with his guilt and the long-time believer who must again and again return to God in confession and seek forgiveness. We must never allow our guilt to become a tool for the accuser to bring us to despair.

Discussion

Do you believe the titles/headings of the Psalms are inspired Scripture?

Ed Vasicek

I noticed that when my favorite reader, Max McClean, reads from the Psalms (ESV) on Biblegateway.com, he does not read the headings (“A Psalm of Asaph on Jeduthun,” or “A Psalm of David”, etc.).

What is your viewpoint on these headings (often called “titles”), found in the Hebrew text? Do you believe these heading are part of inspired Scripture (some versions number them as verse 1), or do you believe that these headings are something less than inspired Scripture?

Discussion

Why Complementarian Men Need Complementarian Women

SI Filings

Editor at the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: “When we talk about female identity and vocation—in marriage, at home, and in the church—we need women to shape the conversation alongside men. My male colleagues think so, too.” CT

Discussion

The Components of Literal Interpretation

Rolland McCune

From Dispensational Publishing House; used by permission. Read the series so far.

Dispensationalism & the Literal Interpretation of the Bible, Part 4

While it is true that “literal interpretation” is not the private property of dispensationalism, the claim is actually the consistent use thereof. A case can still be made that traditional dispensationalism can make good on this claim.

There is no lock-step consensus on what “literal interpretation” really is. In the 19th century, E. R. Craven, the American editor of Lange’s Commentary, with unusual clarity made the point that literal interpretation is better termed “normal” since both literal and figurative interpretation can be comprehended in the term.1 More recently, Roy Zuck differentiated, correctly, literal interpretation into “ordinary-literal” and “figurative-literal.”2 It is not the intent here to define precisely what “literal interpretation” really is, but rather to suggest four rubrics or principles that must be entertained in understanding literal interpretation. These must be held in relationship to other factors of good hermeneutics such as context, literary genre and the like. There may be other such fundamental underpinnings, but at least these must be comprehended in a proper approach to Scripture. The first two of these principles will be our focus in this installment.

Discussion