Category Archives: Hermeneutics

In Covenant: God’s Purpose, God’s Plan, John Walton suggests that the entirety of scripture and the entirety of God’s relationship with humanity are held together by the theme of God’s self-revelation. God made the covenants and inspired the scriptures to tell us … Continue reading →

[Fair warning: In the next several posts, I’ll be well off the beaten path, trying to fit some elements of the last several years of Bible study together. Several answers will be unconventional and are offered for your consideration and … Continue reading →

We’re still talking about how to study the Bible. Really. One of the great appeals of Scofield’s dispensation theories was that they were easy to teach — especially when teaching children. In fact, I well remember going through the Jule … Continue reading →

With Abram, God begins making a series of compounding, cumulative covenants, as follows: * Abram/Abraham * Moses * David * Jesus But the theologians sometimes also add Adam (the “Adamic covenant”) and the New Heavens and New Earth. McKnight refers … Continue reading →

“Covenant” defined First, we need to cover generally the Bible’s history of covenants. These don’t line up quite with the old Scofield Bible dispensations, but that’ll be okay. It’ll be a little unfamiliar, but it will make so much more … Continue reading →

Okay. I’m through reposting old material for a while. Now it’s time to put the ingredients together and hope the result is a cake. I’m headed toward a new outline of the entirety of the Bible — but I have to … Continue reading →

We need to add a fourth ingredient to our cake mix: the Creation as Temple of God. Lately, I’ve seen several scholars refer to the fact that the Creation is pictured as God’s Temple in Genesis 1 — which is … Continue reading →

Rather like preparing to bake a cake the old-fashioned way — from scratch — we’ve been adding ingredients to our narrative hermeneutic. We started with Scot McKnight’s A-B-A’ formulation. We added some elements from John Walton’s Covenant argument. Next, we need to … Continue reading →

Walton lays out God’s history of covenants in terms that I’d never heard before. He concludes that the covenant made with Noah is separate from all the others, as it indicates no effort toward self-revelation. God had appeared to Noah … Continue reading →

We’re continuing to work through Covenant: God’s Purpose, God’s Plan. by John H. Walton. Never do the biblical writers describe election as a reward. It does not come in response to any attribute or action of Israel. His election did … Continue reading →