Martin Luther, so the conventional wisdom says, was a “Pauline” theologian, the doctor of justification by grace through faith alone. It comes as something of a surprise, then, to learn that his work as professor of Bible was not centered in Paul, nor even in the New Testament. Instead, he lectured mostly on the Old…

In a well-known passage from his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas makes a distinction between two different kinds of doctrine, each of which “pertain to the faith” in different ways. First, there are doctrines that constitute “the substance of the faith in itself” (per se substantia fidei); second, there are doctrines…

St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (c. 1217–1274) placed a high value on the doctrine of creation, as is manifest in his several discussions of the doctrine throughout his career. Getting clear on creation, Bonaventure believed, entailed not only knowing the creature better, but also knowing the creature in terms of the Creator. Higher still is the…

Learning from missteps is often just as important as having exemplars to emulate. The Venerable Bede offers contemporary readers some of both when it comes to interpreting Genesis 1. Relatively little is known about Bede’s life in Northrumbia at the Wearmouth-Jarrow monastery; we don’t even have a monastic rule from Bede’s time. While some have…

Basil is finding a new level of popularity in young-earth creationist (YEC) writings, and no wonder. He explicitly turns away from the allegorical approach that led Origen and later Augustine to embrace instantaneous creation, and professes a literalism in his Homilies on the Hexaemeron that seems to spare Genesis 1 from the sorts of interpretive…

Modern readers typically view the Genesis creation narratives through the lens of science. Does the text confirm or contradict contemporary scientific accounts of the origin of life? If the former, the reader attempts to demonstrate their congruence; if the latter, the reader either rejects the prevailing scientific consensus or rejects the veracity of scripture, at…

As a member of my church’s education committee, I share the duty of planning and organizing the topics and teachers for the various adult Bible classes. All adult classes work through the same biblical books, and we are used to kicking around names of potential teachers within the congregation and then assigning them to a…

John Webster’s Holy Scripture is arguably the most academically significant book in English to deal with the Bible from a theological point of view since the publication four decades ago of David Kelsey’s Proving Doctrine: The Uses of Scripture in Modern Theology. Webster’s little book is widely cited and has been assessed by a variety…

In my previous post I discussed the value of using ancient Near Eastern (ANE) texts to sharpen and enhance our understanding of the world of the Old Testament. In terms of the Creation Project, I want to explore ANE texts that address cosmology in order to understand better how the ancient Israelites might have interpreted Genesis 1. In this post…

Sapientia, in conjunction with InterVarsity Press, has been excerpting from the Reformation Commentary on Scripture volumes to provide readers with insight into the fascinating diversity of voices—some available for the first time in English—responsible for changing the course of historical Christianity during the movement we call the Reformation. In light of the recent publication of…

What the authors of Scripture said, God said—right? It’s a concise way of explaining the sometimes difficult doctrine of Scriptural inspiration. The average Christian, then, can feel comfortable trusting in the Bible’s authority and get down to the business of learning from it. But Dr. John W. Hilber, one of two 2016-17 Senior Henry Fellows…

Reading Journal Home << Previous Entry Next entry >> As I prepare this post, it’s snowing outside—cold, white flakes that put me in mind of the flaky fires of the seventh circle of Hell. Today’s post is all about such unlikely juxtapositions of image and idea and our condition of interpretation. The Defiant Soul &…