...right tools to properly exegesis the word of God is crucial. Not eliminating the bible as the concrete foundation of our Christian knowledge but allowing other resources to become windows in our biblical mansion. The author Mr. Black is sharing with us the necessity of having the right tools to properly make application of the word of God. Greek is the language used by the Gentiles in the New Testament and to adequately teach or preached the New Testament scriptures one need understand Greek translations. There are tools to assist in understanding Greek and we must take advantage of them just like a mechanic always update their tools according to modernization of cars. Paul writes to Timothy and states “to study to show ourselves approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth”, (II Tim. 2:15). The author recommends ten essential tools in using and understanding Greek in ministry, which six of those tools will be discussed in this assignment. Let me establish that all of the tools are essential although I am discussing only six. The first tool is an English bible, whether the King James, (which is the recommended one), the Amplified Bible or whatever your preference is, one need a bible that adequately explains in English for easy comprehension. Secondly, one will need a modern edition of Greek New Testament, to go in to detail what the scripture is saying. It also assists to avoid loss of meaning through translation. Thirdly...
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...our perfect example in everything we can do in this life. In the scriptures we can find many different good examples of how we should and live our lives. One of the most amazing examples we found in the scriptures is how Jesus Christ treated the people according to their problems. At the same time he was the perfect example as a leader. We also cannot forget how he was his relation with Jewish leaders. The Jewish leader made many changes to the gospel and taught incorrectly; therefore Jesus mission was to teach the gospel correctly and the spiritual way to understand every doctrine and principle. Defend the right is something that God is expecting of us, in the bible, more specific the four gospel we learn how Jesus Christ had to defend the right vs the error. Even though the critics and his death that was part of the plan. How the four gospel impact my life One of the most beautiful stories in the bible that impact my life is the love that Jesus shows during his mortal life. Days before his death, he prayed to our heavenly father for every single of his disciples and followers. In the prayed we can learned how important is for Jesus every single person, also how is his marvelous love for every single of us. Also how he asked to our Heavenly father the importance of the unity into Him ad our father in heaven. I consider the four gospels a sacred and powerful scriptures, I cannot imagine how would be the bible records without any modification or miss translation that they suffered...
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...Short Essay on Inerrancy and Inspiration There are many people in the world today who are uncertain whether they should believe in the Bible as an authoritative book or just another “good book” or “fairy tale.” Since my salvation, it has been a passion of mine to learn as much as I can about the Bible so I can help others see and understand the importance and the authoritative message in Scripture. There are a few things that I would address to help individuals see the big picture of Scripture when it comes to being the authoritative Word of God. We first need to understand when picking up the Bible that it is not an ordinary book, but a book claimed to be written by God through 44 men over a 1500-1600 year span. Then we must ask, is the Bible authoritative? Authority is the right and power to command, enforce laws, exact obedience, determine or judge (American Heritage Dictionary 1979, 89). The Scriptures speak many times about the Bible having authority. We can first look at Jesus who taught with authority that was bestowed upon Him. Matthew 21:23 says, and when He entered the temple the chief priest and the elders of the people came up to Him as he was teaching and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Also Jesus commands with “authority and power” to the unclean spirits, and they were all amazed and said to one another, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and...
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...NOVEMBER 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Reason or Need for Adoption of a Canon of Scripture 4 Key Events that were Influential in Recognition of the Canon 5 Individuals and Councils that Helped Shape the Canon 6 Conclusion 8 Works Cited 10 Introduction The Bible is one of the most intriguing books ever written. There is no other book in history that covers the same amount of time or the comprehensive aggregation of people and cultures as found in the pages of the Bible. The mysteries and wisdom of the Bible have held the attention of Biblical and non-biblical scholars for centuries. We know from the study of history that not all Jews agreed on which books belonged in the Bible. As a matter of fact Christians also debated what to include and exclude in the New Testament Scriptures. This was a major problem in the first two centuries of Christianity. Biblical historian Paul Johnson wrote in his book entitled History of Christianity, “After more than two centuries since the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Christians faced a terrifying jungle of scholarly contradictions.” In light of this fascination and controversy with the Bible, this research paper will focus on some of the key events and movements that were influential in the recognition of the canonical...
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...Bibliology: Is the Bible credible? By Matt Massey Professor Ted Marvin Theology 3305 – Lectures in Systematic theology Outline I. Definition of Bibliology II. Importance of the Bible III. Reasons to trust the Bible A. The “A Priori Argument” B. The revelation of Jesus Christ C. Fulfilled prophecy of Scripture D. The suffering of the apostles E. The power of the message of the Bible F. The inexhaustible infinity of revelation G. Unity of the Bible H. Transcultural Appeal I. The honesty of the Scriptures J. The superiority and influence of the Bible K. The test of personal experience and the inward witness of the Spirit L. The indestructibility of the Bible M. History and archaeology gives credibility to the Bible N. The completeness and timelessness of the Bible O. The claims of the Scriptures themselves IV. Closing Bibliology is simply “the study of the Bible.” For Christians, the Bible is the most sacred of books and on it hinges the entire religion of Christianity. Were the Bible to ever collapse, Christianity would have no foundation on which to rest and it too would follow suit shortly thereafter. For the skeptic, the Bible is a book in which good ideas, morality, fables, myths, and oftentimes blatant lies are contained. It is the express purpose of this paper to examine the evidences which give rise to the credibility of the Biblical text. There are a great many different aspects of...
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...The importance of Holy Bible in Church's Tradition Psalm 119:1 “Your Word is a lamp unto my feet: Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord!” I would like to bring to your attention, two quotes from two well-known Orthodox teachers about the relationship between the Bible and the Church: “In the great Tradition of the Orthodox Church, the Bible is the central source of truth and the most creative factor behind the worship, doctrine and practice of the Church. The great Fathers and saints of the Church viewed the Bible as an ocean of divine mysteries, having inexhaustible breadth and astonishing depths.” – Father Theodore Stylianopoulos “The Bible is the book of the Church. It is the main written authority within the Church – not over or apart from it. Everything in the Church must be biblical: for the Church, in order to be the Church, must be wholly expressive of the Bible. The Bible lives in the Church! Without the Church, there would be no Bible. The Church gives the Bible its life as a book. It makes the book come alive!” – Father Thomas Hopko So, Orthodox Christians understand the Bible as central to the life, teaching and worship of the Church and the Church’s life teaching and worship as wholly expressive of the Bible. The Bible is not merely a single book, but a whole library of books containing many different kinds of writings: poetry, prayers, hymns, historical narratives, biographies, prophecies, letters, proverbs...
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...certain issues were right or wrong–– such as stealing, murder, drug use, abortion, and similar issues. He attempted to shoot all their examples down, with a sense of arrogance on his face. I slowly slipped my hand up and asked him the following statement: “What about incest, where relatives molest and rape their children?” I will never forget the look on his face, his smirk swiftly dropped to the floor. As he stumbled through his incoherent response, I thought about the importance of absolute truth. Christians need to realize the importance of what our Canon represents: a book of absolute truth given to us by our God. We are living in a generation where rejecting the Scripture is the new trendy fad. This generation calls the Bible, “just a storybook”. Little do they know that this book is God’s inerrant word, given to man through the Spirit’s inspiration. The Bible needs to be 3 understood as the true Canon. The word “Canon” comes from the Greek word “κανών (kanon)”. This word defines the Bible as a “measuring rod” or in other words...
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...‘God is most clearly revealed to us through scripture’ Revelation is the communication of knowledge from a divine agency. There are two types of revelation, which lead to the writing of scripture. These are general and special revelation. General revelation is information God that is available to all people at all times, such as awe inspired by nature. Special revelation is religious truth delivered to someone directly from God. I will argue that the traditional notion of god is most clearly revealed through scripture. Propositional revelation comes under the category of special revelation. It consists of God directly revealing truths about his nature to a human. These are often then relayed through scripture. The important thing about them is that they are facts about God, and thus the bible is absolute truth. Faith in this case, is a ‘belief that’, so in order for us to believe some propositions to be true, faith is require. This is a view supported by Aquinas, who thought that faith was based on something factual, unlike opinion, but not as certain as science. An example of propositional revelation is the 10 commandments. If one is to take the bible literally, then they were given to Moses on the stone tablets direct from God during a theophany. However, this contradicts many ideas about god. It is often argued that God does not reveal himself to us directly as it would compromise our freewill, but in this account it suggests that he directly revealed himself to Moses...
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...as a collective body of Christ. The Bible provides Christians with an assurance that Christ’s love is to be experienced and shared by all who believe in Him. In Acts 2:42-47, Paul describes one of the early Christian communities learning the “apostles’ teachings and fellowship”. He states, “All the believers were together and had everything in common.” “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.” The apostles fostered the Christian’s need to learn about Christ and praise Him together in their own daily life as well as the manner in which they shared the life and word of Jesus with the new Christians. In addition to a Christian community providing mutual learning and worship, the Bible also describes Christians as encouraging one another and inciting one another in the love of Christ. In Hebrews 10:24-25 it is said, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of ding, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” This scriptural message of encouraging one another is also found in Hebrews 3:13-14; “But encourage one another daily…so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ”. Through scripture, one can grasp the...
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...The Bible, Theology, and Worldview Christian Worldview Development There is a strong relationship between the bible, theology and worldview. The bible is what informs us on how to do theology and one’s worldview. Reading scripture allows us to understand the will of God and perform theology. Performing theology is useless without the knowledge of scripture and hermeneutics. Many people express their own personal worldview, but they must know how to use the bible to sculpt their view of the world correctly though the eyes of a believer. The bible is perfect and without error; for one to do perfect theology one must use scripture and that will shape their worldview. All theological methods should start with the Word of God. According to 2 Timothy, all scripture is breathed out by God. Everything the bible says is through Him and one must not go against that. One must accept scripture as fully authoritative and that it is our source to understanding theology. Worldviews can have an effect on how one reads scripture and interprets it. People come from different cultures and church traditions that approach the Word of God differently. In order to perform this theology correctly it is important that one holds a high view of scripture. Through the study and reading of scripture, wisdom is gained. Martin Luther had three basic rules for studying theology. The first step is prayer, the second step is meditation, and the third step is suffering or experience. It is important that...
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...Theo 201 01/26/2013 Many dispute the claims that the Bible makes for itself in that is the inspired, inerrant, and authoritive Word of God. We know this to be true of God, that in Him and in Him alone we find authority, and that there is no higher authority outside of Him. H D McDonald wrote, “Authority of God is, the authority of what God is, which is made known in His self-disclosure, since only in His revelation can God be known. Revelation is therefore the key to God’s authority, so that the two, revelation and authority, may be regarded as two sides of the same reality. In revelation God declares His authority”. (McDonald 2001) Now that the question of authority has been answered it is important to understand and essentially clarify the meaning of inspiration. Inspiration is the process by which God chose to reveal Himself, apart from general revelation, through his written word. By his word, we mean being Gods own word written by men and superintended by His Holy Spirit as the divine author, it is whole and was verbally given with the incorporation of the writer’s personality without any error or fault. The Bible itself also testifies that it is the Word of God. Dr Elmer Towns states, “Over 3,000 times in the Scripture the authors claim their message is from God. Expressions like ‘”thus saith the Lord”’ appears approximately 500 times in the Pentateuch and over 1200 times in the prophets.” (Towns 2008) Now if that evidence alone is not enough we cannot deny the empirical...
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...resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as told through the writers of the gospels and the early missionaries- those who were sent out to spread the gospel. Christianity’s Jewish heritage was fundamental and the major text for Christianity and still today is the Bible. From its very beginnings in Jerusalem, Christianity has been profoundly influenced by various events. Christianity suffered many early persecutions but by 381 CE, it had been confirmed as the central religion of the Roman Empire. However, the collapse of the Roman Empire and its eventual division into the Eastern and Western Empires brought more conflict, and by the 11th century the Christian Church has become the Church of the West- the Roman Church- and the Church of the East- the Orthodox Church, known as The Great Schism. The sixteenth century brought more division with the Reformation in Europe and in England, with dividing into Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church, due to inadequacies in the Medieval Church such as the selling of indulgences and clerical concubinage. In addition, from the Protestant Churches, the many variants, which sub-divided from that helped created the concept of Pentecostalism- Variations of all Churches. The Christian Bible is a...
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...Megan Cardenas Mr. Chae Christian Scriptures TR 3:30 06 October 2015 Feminist Hermeneutics and Biblical Studies The article “Feminist Hermeneutics and Biblical Studies,” written by Phyllis Trible, is a tribute to the different ways feminists have approached and interpreted the portrayal of women in the Bible. The first approach talks about the Bible making it seem like women are men’s property, the second approach focuses on challenging traditional culture and reinterpreting certain biblical verses to find a divine woman identity, and the third approach retells biblical stories that highlight the sympathy felt for abused women. Each approach connects to the other through the main idea that traditional interpretations of the Bible neglect females and therefore affects the way human beings behave towards them. Trible takes different approaches to question the longstanding belief no one speaks about: the association of Scripture with sexism and the dehumanization of women. Trible questions this belief that the traditional Bible is sexist by providing textual examples to support his arguments. For example, the first approach documents the case against women. He uses several examples from scripture to support this approach, including how a daughter is less desirable than son, how a father chooses his daughter’s husband, how daughters always had to submit to abuse, and how the Levite from Ephraim and other males betrayed, raped, murdered, and dismembered their own concubine...
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...This essay will explore whether or not the bible should serve as an ultimate authority for Christian ethics and discover how synonymous Biblical ethics are with the ethics of Christianity. This piece will also look at what it is about the Bible that recommends it as such a major authority of morality and ethical practice. The bible is seen as a ‘guidebook’ for a Christian, giving details on how they should live according to God’s law; however, questions negating the validity of this belief in God’s law often come to the forefront. The Bible permits the stoning to death of adulterers. Something which in contemporary society seems atrocious. A point to be aware of is the huge cultural difference between the bible and contemporary life. If we focus on the difference between the Old Testament and modern day life the cultural difference is one of the chief factors behind the difficulty of using the bible in ethics today. The bible is written in a culturally conditioned format. Language, racial attitudes and the different emphasis on aspects of life including holiness and purity, all count towards the invisible barrier when discussing how synonymous biblical ethics are with the ethics of Christianity. (Rodd, 1995, 89). An issue that arises more than often when discussing biblical and Christian ethics is sexuality. Different churches hold different values and take tradition, Scripture and experience at different levels of importance. Krody says this … “ A central concern in...
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...Week 2 Reflection Case study 1.1 The Bible and Tradition A major issue in Christian Theology is in the way which the Bible was interpreted. There was controversy over two interpretations of Arianism and Pelegianism. Condemned as heretical, their opponents argued that they did not interpret in an orthodox manner. But who decides what is orthodox? An appeal to tradition was of importance in challenging unorthodox interpretations of the Scripture. Tradition refers to the way the gospels we handed down from teacher to teacher. Examples of this are known in the writings of Matthew, Mark, & Luke. It is known that Matthew used Mark as a source for his writings. Luke also used Mark and possible Matthew in his writings. This is known as the synoptic gospels. Gnosticism is another issue of tradition. Gnosticism was a major threat to the Christian church because some of their teachings were very similar to the Christians. However, their belief in Salvation was significantly different. Gnostic writers wrote of a secret teaching which ensured the believer would be saved. They taught the idea that the secret knowledge was required to pass into Heaven. The Gnostic writers argued that this secret oral teaching had been passed down from the apostles in a veiled form in the Bible. In response to Gnosticism, Christian theologians began to develop a traditional method of understanding Scripture, known as a single-source theory of tradition. Irenaeus of Lyons is noted...
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