Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1132. Wooden literalism is the caricature that gets thrown at every Bible believing Christian sooner or later, usually by someone convinced that anyone who trusts Scripture must also believe the four winds are held by four literal angels at the four literal corners of a flat earth. I do not believe that, and neither…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1033. Scripture interprets Scripture is one of those phrases preachers use so often that it risks sounding like a slogan rather than a method. In practice it names something quite specific. When a passage is unclear, ambiguous, or genuinely difficult, I let clearer passages elsewhere in the Bible set the boundaries for how the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1014. The truth we call progressive revelation answers a question that shapes the way you read the whole Bible, namely whether God handed down everything He wanted us to know in one go, or unveiled His truth and His purposes step by step across the centuries. It is no dry academic puzzle, because how…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1013. The phrase apocalyptic literature turns up constantly in biblical studies, and if you do not understand what it means you will struggle to read whole stretches of the Bible well. It is not a scary word, though the imagery it covers can certainly be vivid. It simply names a particular way of writing…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 01005. If the Bible is clear, why do sincere Christians disagree so often about what it teaches? This is one of the most honest questions believers ask, usually when they are genuinely trying to understand God’s Word and find themselves surrounded by conflicting interpretations. It can be unsettling. If Scripture really is God’s clear…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09113 There is a version of Protestant Christianity that treats Bible interpretation as an entirely private affair between the individual believer and the text, with no mediating role for community, history, or accountability. This sits uneasily with what Scripture actually teaches about the body of Christ, the distribution of gifts for the building up…