Christianity is both a vertical and a horizontal relationship. It is a vertical relationship of the believer with God; and, it is a horizontal relationship of a believer with other believers who are also a part of the body of Christ. This horizontal relationship is transacted within a local context in which God places the believer. Below are the ten priorities and purposes for a local church in which the believer is a vital participant…
Nearly everything we do is built on trust. When we eat we trust that we will not be poisoned by the cook. When we go for a walk we trust that other walkers will not bump us out of their way. When someone tells us something we trust that they are telling us the truth. In fact, there is hardly anything we do in our everyday lives that does not involve trust. While we generally trust those we have come to know, we readily trust some people whom we do not know if they are people possessing appropriate authority such as a policeman, or a medical doctor or an airline pilot. The right authority invites and engenders trust. Christians trust the Bible because it derives from the highest authority – God. In fact, Christians have good reasons (a rationale) for believing that the Bible is divinely inspired and the only infallible and authoritative written Word of God.
The Bible is remarkably silent about the origin of the Evil One (the term used by Christ in Matt. 13:19, 38; and, John 17:15 to describe the devil). Oddly, it is not until the last book of the bible that we are told about the identity of the “serpent” in Genesis 3. “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Rev. 12:9). Heiser (2020) notes that this account in Revelation 12, about the serpent’s identity, cannot explain his origin because the episode it describes occurs after the ascension of Christ (244). The allusions to the prelapsarian state of the Evil One are possibly seen in Isaiah 14:12-14 and Ezekiel 28:2-10. At the very least, both of these references seem to indicate that the original state of the Evil One reveals he was a heavenly being who was created as a good and powerful being made to serve Yahweh and who was originally present in Eden. While we are not explicitly told in Scripture what his act of pride was that led to his rebellion, we can surmise it from the Genesis 2 and 3 passages and support this from Rabbinic traditions that is was connected to the creation of the woman (Morris and Scharl 2021). This is also supported if we simply take the progressive revelation contained in the opening chapters of Genesis, where the introduction of the Evil One (“the serpent”, Gen. 3:1) occurs with the creation of the Ish’ah – the woman.
While theology is my passion and discipline, I’m also extremely interested in various fields of science and serve as a visiting scholar at the Science-Faith think-tank, Reasons To Believe. I do not regard science as an enemy of theology, and therefore take what scientists claim with appropriate acceptance. The scientific case for recent global-warming is barely contestable. If the modelling is correct about the rate of global-warming continuing to increase there can be no wonder that so many people are alarmed at what the future may hold. The Australian government’s ‘Future Climate-Change’ website states a range of temperature increases over the next 30 or so years ranging from rising sea-levels engulfing many Pacific Ocean island nations, and temperature increases in the range of 1°C to 4.8°C…
How seriously should we regard the Bible today? After all, in an age of such scientific certainty there appears to be many Biblical inaccuracies identified by scientists and historians to cast insoluble doubt on the preposterous claim that the Bible is the “word of God”. This has led some Seminaries (such as Fuller Theological Seminary) to abandon the belief that the Bible is “inerrant” (without error) in favour of a new belief that the Bible is “infallible” (correct in matters of religion only). It’s time now to examine this debate in closer detail…
Both inerrancy and infallibility acknowledge that these concepts apply to the original manuscripts of the Bible (“the Autographs”) – not to any one particular copied manuscript or translation of the Bible. The issue of Biblical translation is linked to this debate and we’ll deal with it shortly. Inerrancy means without error. Infallible means cannot be wrong. At first glance it may appear that these words are saying the same thing. But this is how they are being distinguished…
In Matthew 28:18-19 it is Trinitarian (“in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”), but in the Acts of the Apostles, it is in the name of Jesus. I remember in my youth about hearing of a group of Pentecostals who made this the touch-stone of whether someone was baptised correctly or not. Today there are “Jesus-Only” groups who insist that what appears to be a Trinitarian formula is actually code for “Lord (The Father) Jesus (The Son) Christ (The Holy Spirit)”, which is why, they appeal, the Trinitarian version is no where used in the Book of Acts. In a culture steeped in legalism and superstition, my answer failed to connect with my audience. I left frustrated feeling that I had failed to adequately explain what the Bible teaches about water baptism. I am therefore writing with a sense that I wish I could have conveyed these thoughts in the language of my Indian friends to their satisfaction so that they could see that the Bible does not present a mixed message about Baptism.