Were the Earliest Christians Illiterate?

In the 1979 film Rocky II, the newly famous Rocky Balboa, fresh off his split-decision loss to Apollo Creed, is hired to do a TV commercial. During the filming of the commercial it quickly becomes clear that he can’t read the cue cards. The direc…

One of the Core Markers of Early Christian Identity

One of the most notable features of early Christianity is that it was a religion concerned with books. Particularly, scriptural books.
As Margaret Mitchell observed, “Christianity was a religious movement with texts at its very heart and soul, in its b…

6 Ways Christian Students Can Prepare for College: #6 Stick Together Like a Band of Brothers (or Sisters)

Over the last few months I have been working through a 6-part series helping Christian students think through how to prepare for life at a big university. This topic is particularly relevant, I hope, given the number of high school seniors who are in t…

Were Later Versions of Christianity Radically Different than Earlier Ones? Reflecting on Recent Scholarly Claims

I think it’s fair to say that the last decade has witnessed a bit of a resurgence of academic interest in early Christianity.
By “early Christianity,” I don’t mean the Christianity represented by the major figures in the fourth and fifth centuries when…

Were Later Versions of Christianity Radically Different than Earlier Ones? Reflecting on Recent Scholarly Claims

I think it’s fair to say that the last decade has witnessed a bit of a resurgence of academic interest in early Christianity.
By “early Christianity,” I don’t mean the Christianity represented by the major figures in the fourth and fifth centuries when…

6 Ways that Christian Students Can Prepare for College: #2 You Won’t Have All the Answers

Last week I began a new 6-part series helping Christian students think through how to prepare for life at a big university. The series is based on a recent lecture I gave to the Regents School in Austin, Texas, where I laid out 6 principles designed to…

Is It a Waste of Time for Seminary Students (and Pastors) to Learn the Biblical Languages?

It’s that time of year again.
On Monday, a wonderful new crop of seminary students here at RTS-Charlotte will begin the grueling month-long experience of Summer Greek. And, like all seminary students before them, they will begin to ask the question of …

How Did We Get Our Bible? My Interview on the NT Canon at the Ligonier Conference

This past March I spoke at the Ligonier National Conference. My plenary address was on “The Truth about Marriage” (you can watch here), and I also did an enjoyable sit-down interview on the subject of the origins of the New Testament canon….

Is the Concept of a “Self-Authenticating” Bible a Modern Invention?

How do we know which books are from God, and which are not?  Certainly the apostolic origins of a book can help identify it as being from God (see post here). And, the church’s overall consensus on a book can be part of how we identity it as being from…

My Six-Part @Ligonier Video Series on The New Testament Canon

Since next month I will be speaking at the Ligonier National Conference in Orlando, FL, I thought I might highlight a video series I did for Ligonier a few years ago. It is a six-part video series (available here in either digital or DVD format) on the…

Is Deconstruction the Same as Deconversion? A Few Reflections on Reforming the Church

The last few years have been a rough stretch for the evangelical church. Plagued not only by a complex and intractable health crisis with COVID, the church has also faced an increasingly polarized cultural-political environment as well as numerous inte…

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