As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“Does God exist in time or independently of it? Is he timelessly eternal, or does his life pass through an everlasting succession of moments? Most Christians agree that God transcends time in some fashion, but how, exactly?” - Credo
“In this video I want to lay out 4 ways that evangelism and apologetics and public theology in any sort of way has changed over the last 10 years. It’s harder today.” - Gavin Ortlund
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.
“You don’t have to go to seminary to be a theologian. You have to hear the Word of God and respond to it with faith. If we’re going to love God, worship God and obey God, we need to know who He is, who we are in relation to God and how that relationship works.” - The Baptist Paper
“What is the cause of this? There’s probably not one single answer to that question. Some of it is… overreaction to the retrieval of classical theism and Thomas Aquinas in Reformed circles.” - Ref21
“Next week, Carl R. Trueman will deliver this [Center for Classical Theology] inaugural lecture on ‘Classical Theology and the Modern Mind.’” - Credo
“We will gravitate to one system or another, and this is not necessarily a terrible thing, if we are gracious with those who differ with us and acknowledge the difficulties with our own positions.”- P&D
Discussion