Begin reading through the New Testament and, in addition to the grand story, you will eventually notice a few things. For one thing, the story of Jesus gets repeated four times, then you hear the story of the early church, and then you begin to read letters that don’t seem to be in any sort of coherent order. Why is the New Testament organized how it is, and not some other way? Why is the

If the average Christian were asked to identify the essential roles in Christianity and pre-Christian Judaism, he or she would probably name the pastor, the apostle, the prophet, the priest, and perhaps also the king. Depending on the person’s denominational affiliation, he or she might mention the pope or the musician or the nun. Few members of any denomination, I think, would mention the historian—a figure lamentably seen by many as merely providing additional support

As I approach the end of a four-year project to translate the New Testament from Greek, I have saved the Gospel of Matthew for last. What has struck me most while translating it is how often Jesus taught from Wisdom of Sirach in the first half of this Gospel. I worship, fellowship, and serve in a Restoration Movement congregation (a movement which comes from within Protestantism), therefore I have no denominational bias in favor of

At the heart of vocational Christian ministry is the responsibility to faithfully proclaim the Gospel of Christ crucified and to administer the Sacraments of the Church. In the Anglican tradition, we depict this solemn duty at ordinations by presenting the ordinand with a copy of the Bible alongside a paten and chalice. In a liturgical settings, one tool used to more effectively preach the Gospel is the lectionary. A lectionary is a cycle of readings

To take certain commentators’ reports at face value, the Museum of the Bible in downtown Washington, D.C. is just one small step removed from Ken Ham’s Creation Museum and Ark Encounter—an expressly sectarian environment cloaked in pseudo-neutrality. At least, that’s the line peddled by Candida Moss and Joel Baden, longtime critics of the project and authors of “Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby.” Echoing Moss and Baden, Vox writer Tara Isabella Burton similarly

Christians are no strangers to ideological controversy. For generations, many have been inspired by the old story of a seemingly insignificant man from a poor village in the desert, who amassed a following of rag-tag nobodies to confront the most powerful empire of the day on behalf of the oppressed and downtrodden. He possessed supernatural abilities that enabled him to accomplish miraculous feats. The actions of this man and his followers would overthrow an empire,

As a teacher, I am regularly asked about Bible passages and the theology they convey. Sometimes the questions are straightforward; other times, not so much. Just last week, for example, as I was innocently trying to lead our community group through Romans 8:18-30, I was asked how to interpret verses 29-30 in light of that not-at-all-discussed-among-Christians topic of Predestination and Freewill. It happens. The vast majority of the time, I am more than happy to

Here at Conciliar Post, there have recently been a couple articles poking alleged holes in the Reformed doctrine of sola scriptura. This post should be considered less a full rebuttal of the points made in the previous posts and more of an extended comment that will hopefully act as “iron” (Prov. 27:17) for further discussion in the spirit of CP’s mission statement. If I am able to at all challenge and sharpen the positions of

In most Christian circles, the simple statement that “Christians interpret the Bible in a different way than they interpret the Constitution” would probably be largely uncontroversial. The intuitive objection to juxtaposing the documents in this way–that the Bible is the Word of God, while the Constitution is man’s words–does not directly address the interesting paradox: why do many political and theological conservatives use interpretively “liberal” language (“underlying purpose,” “culturally specific,” “not literal”) in their interpretation

Welcome back to the third and final “Myths of the Apocrypha!” In the first article, we asked whether Roman Catholics inserted seven “apocrypha” books into their canon to disprove Martin Luther. In the second, we asked whether early Christians rejected those same books for containing false teachings. Today, we ask the big question: “Did Jesus and His apostles quote any of these seven books?”   Myth #1: Roman Catholics inserted “apocrypha” books into their canon

Without the Bible—and more specifically, the New Testament—the Christian faith would not exist today. This is a fact that Christians of any branch would readily agree upon. But how did we get this collection of 27 New Testament books?1 How do we know that we have the correct books—that we haven’t left any out or included any spurious ones? To frame the question more poignantly, can we trust the collection of books we call the

Dear Protestant brothers and sisters, I have seven free gifts for you today! Hopefully you won’t mind my re-gifting them since I received these presents myself a few years ago. They’re not brand new either, but they are divine! I got my seven gifts when I learned that a long-standing idea in Protestantism turned out to be a myth. Philosopher Norman Geisler and other prominent theologians taught me that Roman Catholicism inserted several apocryphal books

Ancient texts are not irrelevant to today’s debates for the plain fact that they are ancient. Rather, ancient texts prove that today’s debates recapitulate eternal questions of the human condition. Last week I had the pleasure of reading The Wisdom of Solomon and viewing Avengers: Age of Ultron, both for the first time. These artifacts are separated in birth by two thousand years but united in one purpose: to describe the nature of God, and