Posts Tagged ‘Old Testament’

In the realm of epistemology, the Bible brings a richly multifaceted understanding of truth and knowledge. While most traditional philosophical definitions of truth and knowledge focus on concepts and abstractions, the biblical understanding is broader and thus more holistic. Read the rest of this entry »

            Psalm 1 introduces the Psalter, the Hebrew book of worship.  It is a wisdom psalm and describes the nature and consequences of two different lifestyles—the choice between wisdom and folly.   Therefore Psalm 1 asks us as we enter into worship what kind of person we are.  There is no more important question that we can ask, and it deserves to be pondered deeply and at length. Read the rest of this entry »

            In the first of this series, “Recognizing the Risen Lord,” I argued that the earliest disciples recognized Jesus as the risen Lord by identifying him with the crucified Christ.  I concluded that the fact that the risen Lord is the crucified Christ is a truth so radical that it challenges human religion, reason and politics and thus calls for a change in the human heart that only can come about by God’s grace.  In this post I want to discuss the need for God’s grace to affirm that the risen Lord is the crucified Christ.  The discussion will again center on Luke 24. Read the rest of this entry »

Liberal Christians often stress the prophets’ call to social justice, but are silent or even opposed to other aspects of their message.  Why? Read the rest of this entry »

My last post was inspired by the following quotation from G. K. Chesterton.  “Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.”  I reflected on how we criticize sins in others that we aren’t susceptible to but excuse those which we are more inclined to commit.  I also pointed out how strongly Jesus condemned this kind of self-justifying personal hypocrisy. 

This time I’d like to look at the issue of institutional hypocrisy or the way in which political “liberals” and “conservatives” often agree on evils but find different ones excusable.  Read the rest of this entry »