George Guthrie has an informative and edifying article on the King James Version. In particular, he explores how the translators themselves regarded what they were doing and how it stood in relation to other versions. They also expected the KJV to be later corrected and improved! By implication, they did not hold to the doctrine... Continue Reading →
Love, sure, but during an election year?
A fresh preface to my essay, “The Forgotten Sign of the End Times: icy relations among God’s people.” I include here not only things I observe in others, but principally the things I'd like to root out of my own heart. The Lord's return may - or may not - be near, but no-one who reads church history... Continue Reading →
‘Christianity-without-Christ’ and Other Pointless Projects
This was a commencement address that I gave in 1998 at Biblical Theological Seminary. You can download the text here. Shogren_Christianity without Christ In the last century, during the heyday of Liberal Christianity, a fringe group of thinkers raised the question, “Does a person really have to believe in Christ in order to be a good... Continue Reading →
Is the Earth a flat disc after all?
Is it just me, or is anyone else running into Flat Earth proponents lately? (Check this ARTICLE) People who think NASA is doing mind control over us, that no one has ever been to space, that the Bible teaches the earth is a disc? Yeah, it's a thing. It's conspiracy thinking at heart. Basically an... Continue Reading →
Yeshua? Iesous? Jesus? Some other form? Who’s right?
The reader may download the entire article as a pdf file, especially given the presence of long technical footnotes׃ Shogren_Yeshua Iesous Jesus Some other form Who’s right. The results from the TLG search, mentioned in the article, may be downloaded here: Ιησους in TLG first 1000 references The headlines are usually IN BOLD PRINT!! With lots of... Continue Reading →
April Fools! No, they have not discovered the Gospel of “Q”!
What an announcement, that they discovered a Hebrew manuscript of Q! So wrote someone on a website from New Zealand (liturgy.co.nz) earlier today, but not everyone took note that it was published on April 1, 2016! In fact, the photo of the papyrus is nothing new; it's the Nash Papyrus, which was discovered over a... Continue Reading →
“I don’t believe it!” Thoughts on truth and social media, Part II
In Part I I began an extended-play rant against internet disinformation. I'm against it for two reasons: I don't like false information; I don't like to look foolish when I fall for it. Here are other areas where we need to show some healthy skepticism: ECHO CHAMBER EFFECT In 2015 the social media were packed with... Continue Reading →
“I don’t believe it!” Thoughts on truth and social media, Part I
"You must not pass along false rumors." Exodus 23:1 My friends know what a skeptical soul I am. Whenever I see a post on the social media, my first reaction is to shake my head and say, “Yes, but, how do you know this to be so?” And they know me as the one who... Continue Reading →
An Epidemic of the Ethical Woulda-Dones
The doctor has paid a house call and left, shaking his head. The diagnosis? American Christians have come down with a bad case of the Woulda-Dones. The symptoms? We are irresolute about making tough, righteous decisions today, but we know exactly what we bravely and clearly and boldly “woulda-done” if we had faced the moral... Continue Reading →
The Emperor Constantine the Great – a villain or a hero, or something in-between?
Download the article as a pdf: Shogren_The Emperor Constantine the Great – a villain or a hero, or something in-between To many, the Emperor Constantine was a saint: in the Orthodox church he is one of the “Equal-to-Apostles” (isapóstolos) a title given to people (such as Patrick, Cyril the evangelist of Russia and others) who were... Continue Reading →