Bible, Theology & Philosophy

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers. (KJV, 2 Timothy 2:14)

I’ve often heard this text used to discourage detailed debate about the meaning of Scripture passages, or even to devalue highly precise Bible study. Is this what Paul’s warning to Timothy here is about?

First, observe that whatever “striving about words” is, Paul clearly saw it as something that threatened Timothy’s ministry. Timothy is to “charge them before the Lord” not to do this. Second, the activity is doubly discouraged as lacking in value (“no profit”) and also as causing damage of some kind to hearers (“subverting”). Third, the activity apparently involved individuals in at least two roles: the “strivers” and the “hearers.”

So what activity is being forbidden here? What is meant by “strive not about words”?

A review of Dispensationalism Revisited: A Twenty-First Century Restatement,* edited by Kevin T. Bauder & R. Bruce Compton, Plymouth, MN, Central Seminary Press, 2023, 294 pages, paperback.

This book was written to commemorate the life and teaching of Charles A. Hauser, Jr, a man who did not have a high profile ministry but who had a big impact through his faithful service to the Lord, and the tributes at the back of the book are not to be missed.

It may seem odd to suggest that the book entitled Apocalupsis does not belong to the genre of literature commonly referred to as apocalyptic. Nonetheless that is my suggestion here. The term employed in the title of the book denotes a revelation or disclosure.¹ While this particular revealing or disclosing describes a broad swathe of eschatological events, it is not its own literary genre.

Apocalyptic as a genre is described as “characteristically pseudonymous; it takes narrative form, employs esoteric language, expresses a pessimistic view of the present, and treats the final events as imminent.”² Henry Barclay Swete (Cambridge), even while arguing that Revelation is apocalyptic literature, admits that the book differs from that genre, in that the book of Revelation (1) is not pseudepigraphic, (2) engages a specific audience (seven churches), (3) has a significant church focus, rather than a purely Israel nation-centered focus, and (4) includes notes of insight and foresight that are more indicative of inspiration than is found in earlier extra-biblical apocalyptic literature.³

What do we make of the fact that the Bible says both that God repents and that he doesn’t?

I think the key to what’s going on here comes from the passage about God’s rejection of King Saul. I don’t know whether you noticed this in the previous post, but this event appears in both the list of statements that God doesn’t repent and the list of examples of his repenting.

In other words, the passage says both that God doesn’t repent and that he does.

Read the series.

What are some specific things that we can do to stand with—that is, bless (Gen. 12:3)—the people, nation and land of Israel?

As we documented in the previous installment, we certainly have good reason to desire to do so. As Jesus told the Canaanite woman, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24). And as He reminded the Samaritan woman, “Salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22).