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When Good Things Become Idols: On Theological Loyalty, Criticism, and the Human Heart

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  Pondering Scholar Painting by Sir Martin Archer - Fine Art America None of the theologians who shaped how I read Scripture is above honest criticism. Neither is any ministry I have recommended, any position I have spent years teaching, or any book I keep within reach. I owe real debts to all of them: men and women who untangled questions that once looked hopeless, ministries whose work I have pointed others toward, convictions I have studied long enough to hold with some force. And then there are the books. Good grief, the books. That list is also my list of what I am likeliest to defend badly. How I react when one of those things is criticized says more about my heart than the criticism says about the thing criticized, and I doubt I am alone in that. When Appreciation Becomes Allegiance Gratitude toward those who labor in the Word is commanded (1 Thess. 5:12–13; Heb. 13:7), and nothing here retracts it. The trouble starts when gratitude hardens into allegiance, and the momen...
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James the Just: The Martyrdom of the Brother of Jesus

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One of the more remarkable accounts preserved in early Christian literature concerns the martyrdom of James, the brother of our Lord, traditionally known as James the Just . His death, generally dated to AD 62, is especially interesting because we possess testimony from both Christian and non-Christian historical sources. James was not always a believer. Indeed, John's Gospel tells us that Jesus' own brothers did not believe in Him during His earthly ministry (John 7:5; cf. Mark 3:21, 31–35). Something changed. Paul records that the risen Christ appeared specifically to James (1 Cor. 15:7), and by the time we encounter him in Acts, James has become one of the principal leaders of the Jerusalem church (Acts 12:17; 15:13–21; 21:18). Paul even identifies him as one of the church's recognized pillars (Gal. 1:19; 2:9).¹ But what became of him? Our earliest surviving account of his death comes from the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, writing toward the end of the first cen...
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The Testimonium Flavianum After Schmidt

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Jerome's Latin, written around 392–393, says Jesus was believed to be the Christ ( credebatur esse Christus ).¹ Michael the Syrian's twelfth-century Chronicle says he was thought to be the Messiah, and the tenth-century Arabic of Agapius of Hierapolis softens the clause further, to "perhaps."² Three languages, one direction. Every extant Greek manuscript reads "he was the Christ" ( ho christos houtos ēn ), and every one descends from a text already in Christian hands by the fourth century. Two different projects meet at that pattern. T. C. Schmidt's Josephus and Jesus (Oxford University Press, May 2025, now freely downloadable ) defends the Greek paragraph as Josephus's own, with a single emendation at the messianic clause, which his translation prints as "He was [thought to be] the Christ."³ The brackets mark the words he restores from the Syriac line. Jesús Fernández-Pedrera Correa, an independent researcher, posted a preprint to Zenodo ...
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How Many Wills Does God Have?

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  How many “wills” does God have? Classical Latin theology spoke of voluntas decreti (will of decree), voluntas praecepti (will of precept), voluntas arcana (secret or hidden will), voluntas revelata (revealed will), voluntas beneplaciti (will of good pleasure), voluntas signi (will of sign), voluntas efficax (efficacious will), and voluntas permissiva (permissive will). These aren't necessarily eight separate categories, because several are overlapping ways of describing the same fundamental distinction and their precise meanings vary somewhat among theological traditions. But the multiplicity of distinctions potentially muddies the water and suggests multiple wills in God. Reformation and post-Reformation systematic theology often made the distinction between God's “perfect will” and “permissive will.” Properly conceived this is fine, but it also potentially leads to the misconception that God has two competing wills. Earlier, that very charge had been leveled against Jo...
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The Wrong Answer Isn't Always a Heresy: A Long Argument About a Short Word

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“What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.” ~ G.K. Chesterton For a good stretch of its history, "heresy" didn't sound like an accusation at all. The Greek hairesis meant a choice, an opinion, a school you had opted into. Luke uses it of the Sadducees (Acts 5:17) and the Pharisees (15:5; 26:5), and Josephus did the same, adding the Essenes for good measure.[1] When Paul's accusers call the Christians a hairesis in Acts 24, Paul all but shrugs at the word: he serves the God of his fat...
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When Constantinople Sounded Like Geneva: An Orthodox Patriarch on Sola Scriptura

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  Here's a fascinating little episode from the history of the Eastern Church. In 1629, Cyril Lucaris (1572–1638), Patriarch of Constantinople and known as the “Orthodox Boogeyman” in popular online discussions, published a confession of faith that sounded remarkably Reformed. Indeed, his articulation of Scripture's authority could have come straight from Geneva! Consider his declaration in Chapter II of the Confessio Fidei : "Credimus Scripturam sacram esse theodidacton, hoc est, a Deo traditam... Huius auctoritatem supra Ecclesiae auctoritatem esse credimus: multum enim interest inter Spiritum Sanctum et hominem: Spiritus enim Sanctus Deus est, neque errare, neque fallere potest; Ecclesia vero... falli et fallere potest." "We believe that the Holy Scripture is God-given, that is, handed down from God... We believe its authority to be above the authority of the Church; for there is a great difference between the Holy Spirit and man: the Holy Spirit is God, who ca...
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Making the Case for Cases: Five Endings, Eight Labels, and a World of Exegesis

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Making the Case for Cases: Five Endings, Eight Labels, and a World of Exegesis J. Neil Daniels One of the first things a student of New Testament Greek discovers is that nouns refuse to sit still. Just when you think you have learned a word, its ending changes, and suddenly you're wondering what happened to the vocabulary you memorized yesterday. But there is a method to the madness. Greek is an inflected language, meaning that the forms of words communicate grammatical relationships that English ordinarily expresses through word order and prepositions. This brings us to the concept of case, which identifies the grammatical function of a noun, pronoun, adjective, or other declined word within a sentence. The nominative ordinarily identifies the subject; the genitive expresses various relationships, including possession, description, and source; the dative commonly indicates interest, location, or means; the accusative ordinarily identifies the direct object; and the vocative is use...
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