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Writing about Session: 10 Historical-Grammatical Interpretation, Andrew Lee shares his thoughts on the historical-grammatical method of biblical interpretation. Understanding the true meaning that the authors of the Bible intended doesn’t seem too hard, right? I always thought that you just take your time and be intentional about comprehending it and keeping it in context. Well, after the most recent session of the theology program, I learned that it takes much more care to keeping context than I ever imagined. The…

Writing about Session: 9 History of Interpretation, Evan O’Leary shares his thoughts on the history of biblical interpretation. Session number nine in our theological study has brought us to history of interpretation, hermeneutics through the centuries. We first looked at four different questions regarding interpretation. The first question was, how did the first century Jews interpret the scriptures? Second was how did the Christ and the Apostles interpret the scriptures? Third was how did the early church interpret the scriptures?…

Writing about Session: 8 The Inerrancy of Scripture, Nathan Smock shares his thoughts about how the Bible is true. It’s a little ironic how the post modern mindset of unknowable truth is at such odds with the assertion of the inerrancy of scripture. One would think the pessimism and despair, so equated with the post modern, would rather drive them to a desire to embrace the truth of inerrancy with a fervency that would cause envy in the hearts of…

Writing about Session: 8 The Inerrancy of Scripture, Beth Warrick shares her thoughts about how the Bible is true. Is the Bible perfect? Are there errors in the Bible? Believing that the Bible is “inerrant” is to believe that the original manuscripts of the Bible (autographa) were, in fact, without error. The Bible that we have today does contain errors (variants) due to errors in copying and translating the manuscripts over time. However, none of these errors affect any major…

Writing about Session: 7 Proving Inspiration, Candice Smock shares her thoughts on proving inspiration of Scripture. So the Bible was written by God 100% and by man 100%? All of the books of the Bible were inspired by God? A complete and perfect message from God in the exact way He wants us to know it? Prove it! The Bible has had to jump through many hoops of criticism over the years to get where it is today- bound together…

Writing about Session: 6 Inspiration, Larry Meiners shares his thoughts on the inspiration of Scripture. What does it mean that the Bible is inspired? How did inspiration occur? How does one’s view of inspiration affect their interpretation? These are all good questions about how scripture was written. That is one of many reasons why I decided to take the Theology class. To answer questions like these about the Bible and the information it contains. What is inspiration? The best biblical…

Writing about Session: 6 Inspiration, Gary Presnall shares his thoughts on the inspiration of Scripture. The lesson for session 6 of my theology class I am taking was Inspiration of scripture. The key points that had an impact on me in the lesson were that there is only one interpretation of scripture, but many applications. I was always under the impression there were many interpretations and many applications. I appreciated how God reveals Himself to us in different ways, and…

Writing about Session: 5 Canonization of Scripture (NT), Bryan Carlton shares his thoughts on the canonization of the New Testament. Growing up, I didn’t put a lot of thought into where the Bible came from. I sure didn’t think that people might disagree on some of the writings or how much went into deciding what should be included. The Old Testament was easy for the early church to agree on – it was the collected Jewish Holy works that had…

Writing about Session: 4 Canonization of Scripture (OT), Andy Johnson shares his thoughts on the canonization of the Old Testament. Have you ever wondered: how exactly did the Bible come to be? Was it put together by committee? Did one man write the entire thing? How do we know we have everything that is supposed to be in there? Are we missing anything? “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for…

Writing about Session 3 Transmission of Scripture, Grant Etherington shares his thoughts on having confidence in the Bible. Here is a question to ponder: How do we know that the Bible is the same today as it was when it was written? Let’s start with the Old Testament, it was written in two languages Hebrew and Aramaic, and was written over a period of time from 1500 to 400BC. Now the New Testament was written in Koine Greek(basically how they talked…

Writing about Session 3 Transmission of Scripture, Anna Lee shares her thoughts on having confidence in the Bible. As Christians, it is imperative that we are confident in the Word of God we have in our hands. But few of us understand how the Bible has been transmitted from when it was originally written to the copy that exists in 2014. Transmission is defined as “to send something, pass something on, or cause something to spread, from one person thing or…

Writing about Session 2 Sola Scriptura, Brady Warrick shares his thoughts on tradition. The focus of Session 2 of our study was on Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura is the belief that Scripture is the final and only infallible authority for the Christian in all matters of faith and practice. Not included in the definition is the word ONLY. It does NOT say scripture is the ONLY source of truth. Solo Scriptura (not Sola) is the belief that Scripture is the…

Our church is going to publish a series of blog posts from written by the first class of students in our theology program. They are now in the second 10 week course of the program entitled Bibliology & Hermeneutics. Each student has been tasked with writing a blog post about their impression and thoughts of one session from the course. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and…

For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. ~Romans 12:4,5 The Apostle Paul had earlier been speaking about no longer living for oneself but rather living for God as a spiritual sacrifice; we are to die to self and live our lives for Him. We are also to live humbly and not to think…

And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” ~Luke 24:5-7 I love Easter Sunday! It is a wondrous time of anticipation,…

And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus. ~Luke 23:26 When Pastor called on us to read through the crucifixion account in the Gospel of Luke this week I could not help but spend time thinking on this verse. Pastor’s message this last Sunday was to focus our attention not only on the events of Jesus’ arrest, trial,…