The ragged, disjunctive, and incoherent quality of the counter-script to which we testify cannot be smoothed or made seamless.

But it is also ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because the key character is illusive and irascible in freedom and in sovereignty and in hiddenness, and, I’m embarrassed to say, in violence.

, the locus of authority is the Bible’s good news and “main theological claims”, and these are what the church at large must base its unity upon

I think that much exposure to sensuality, banality, and God-absent entertainment does more to deaden our capacities for joy in Jesus than it does to make us spiritually powerful

Being entertained by sin does not increase compassion for sinners.

What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ. Television takes us almost constantly in the opposite direction, lowering, shrinking, and deadening our capacities for worshiping Christ.

examples of metaphysical questions

Is there a first cause?

Do we have free will?

irst is that every genre has its constituent elements.

Every genre also has its own ground rules

f we do not pay full attention to techniques of characterization in a story, we are cutting against the grain

my wonder that anything should at this date be found in the Hebrew manuscripts which escaped so many translators perfectly acquainted with the language.

You must pardon my saying that you seem to me not to understand the matter: for the former translation is from the Septuagint; and wherever obelisks are placed, they are designed to indicate that the Seventy have said more than is found in the Hebrew. But the asterisks indicate what has been added by Origen from the version of Theodotion

even if there had not appeared in them one spirit, without doubt divine, and the seventy learned men had, after the manner of men, compared together the words of their translation, that what pleased them all might stand, no single translator ought to be preferred to them

Effective immediately, disaffiliating churches will not be responsible for contributing a pro rata share of the Conference’s post-retirement medical liability.

To achieve the Board-determined funding level, the Board of Pensions reevaluated its allocation of assets to existing obligations and determined funds could be reallocated from the Special Grant account that exceeded its target funding level to the account that supports the post-retirement medical program

For local churches seeking disaffiliation at the special called Annual Conference on December 4, 2022, the Trustees will use this updated July 1, 2022 Wespath report when calculating a church's pro rata share of the Conference's underfunded pension liability.

t should be incontrovertible that there was a genuine historical development involved in the formation of the canon

the use of the term canon to describe the Scriptures was of Christian origin and not applied in classic Jewish literature

IV Ezra

The great majority of Greek manuscripts through the first eight centuries lack this pericope

Bruce Metzger, arguably the greatest textual critic of the twentieth century, argued that “No Greek Church Father prior to Euthymius Zigabenus (twelfth century) comments on the passage, and Euthymius declares that the accurate copies of the Gospel do not contain it” (Textual Commentary, 2nd ed., loc. cit.).

Another notable feature of GA 471 involves something that does not appear in its pages: the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11).