Gary Shogren's Blog
Coronavirus! Here is, I hope, the last thing I'll say on this matter. People are uncovering, as they always do with any and every scary event, COVID-19 buried deeply in some mystical Hebrew code. For example, one guy finds COVID and the accidental death of KOBE - as in the late basketball player - predicted... Continue Reading →
I am committed to using the very best edition of the Greek New Testament. At this moment, I accept as best the Nestle-Aland 28th edition (NA-28; I do not say this to put down the SBL or the Tyndale House New Testaments, but that is an issue for another day). Thus I am dumbfounded by... Continue Reading →
"My pastor doesn’t tell us how to vote! What he does is give out a score card that describes what the issues are [remember that phrase!] and then shows what each candidate stands for. But then he tells us to make up our own minds!" Anyway, that's the word on the street. Let’s look at two... Continue Reading →
I love to write, and since I just yesterday finished drafting out a new book - and having a great time doing so! - a comment by C. S. Lewis reminded me that I should not claim to be doing some great act of self-surrender whenever I crank up the laptop. To paraphrase Plutarch from... Continue Reading →
Every year I join the Goodreads Reading Challenge (take a look at the wonderful site, http://www.goodreads.com, where you can log your reading). This year, as in the past few years, I have set the goal of reading 104 books, an average of two per week. Some are shorter novellas or tractates, some are long novels... Continue Reading →
This material adapted from 1-2 Thessalonians, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, from pages 161-66. The book is available from Amazon and as a discount from Amazon, and also from Logos, in Korean and also in Spanish. 1 Thess 4:4 is the most complex verse in the Thessalonian correspondence because of the difficulty of... Continue Reading →
“Morpho-syntactical exegesis”: it all sounds so mysterious! It is not. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that there is no such thing as morpho-syntactical exegesis as such. Morpho-syntactical analysis, on the other hand, is a thing. Such analysis involves the identification and labeling of each word of a Greek sentence as... Continue Reading →
If I remember 8th-grade math correctly, and if I am hearing some of my fellow evangelicals clearly, either they or I have transgressed a basic principle of math. I’m pretty sure they are the ones who goofed about a basic issue, our worldview. What I mean is that, as a people, we are a priori... Continue Reading →
I teach, and try to live, the fact that every Christian should live with a daily and hourly focus on the return of Christ and our appearance before his judgment seat. This is a given, and it is impossible to understand the faith in any other way. Nevertheless, false predictions pop up with alarming frequency;... Continue Reading →
I almost never publish links to other articles, but this one is unique, and I won't be able to express it as clearly. The United States is currently overrun with theologians with good degrees, who are unemployed or underemployed. Here's some food for thought. Click "Are PhDs Necessary for Theological Education on the Mission Field?"... Continue Reading →
Open Our Eyes, Lord! 