Issue
Hermeneutics: Has God Really Said?
Vol. 8, No. 4 • Jul/Aug 1999
We all know what it’s like when we’re leaving our driveway and have to return to the house for something we forgot. And then, for some of us, we forget what we were looking for in the first place. We waste time and energy looking for something when we have forgotten even what that something […]
All Articles (9)
Knowing What You’re Looking For in the Bible
We all know what it’s like when we’re leaving our driveway and have to return to the house for something we forgot. And then, for some of us, we forget what we were looking for in the first place. We waste time and energy looking for something when we have forgotten even what that something […]
“Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt” by Christine Heyrman
The Bancroft Prize, commonly regarded as the most prestigious award for scholarship on American history, took the unusual step last April of honoring a book focusing on America’s religious past. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt, by University of Delaware historian Christine Heyrman, explores how Evangelicalism emerged as the dominant religious faith in […]
“A Brief Instruction on What to Look For and Expect in the Gospels”
It is a common practice to number the Gospels and to name them by books and say that there are four Gospels. From this practice stems the fact that no one knows what St. Paul and St. Peter are saying in their epistles, and their teaching is regarded as an addition to the teaching of […]
“But That’s Your Interpretation”
There is a subterranean issue that bedevils contemporary debates over the interpretation of Scripture. This fault-line is not geological but philosophical, and ultimately theological. On one side of the chasm are those who believe that texts have a specific message, a determinate meaning-in principle knowable-which the author verbally conveys to the reader. On the other […]
The Tabula Rasa Fallacy
Carl Henry has long been fond of saying that there are two kinds of presuppositionalists: those who admit it and those who don’t. We might adapt his analysis to our topic: There are two kinds of practitioners of hermeneutics: those who admit it and those who don’t. For every time we find something in the […]
A Plea for Greater Dogmatic Engagement with the Old Testament
Today, to a disconcerting degree, the disciplines of biblical scholarship and dogmatics (or systematic theology) undertake their tasks with too little interaction. I fear that some dogmaticians could not exegete their way out of a paper bag, and, as an Old Testament professor, I know that some biblical scholars could not even spell Arianism. Yet, […]
