For Family and Friends, a Blog

Five months ago, the birth of our fourth child went smoothly and without incident. This is why Audrey and I were shocked, when at a home visit, our midwife discovered that our baby girl’s heart rate was alarmingly slow. My mother had been planning to leave that morning, but she decided to stay with our other three kids. Minutes later we were on the way to the emergency room. Upon arriving, a nurse checked our daughter’s pulse, and seeing that it was still too low, the nurse’s body language became excited and concerned. She tapped our baby’s cheeks and shook her hands trying to wake her up and elicit a change in heartbeat. Only minutes after arriving at the hospital, were in a room where our baby was laying on a table and no fewer than five nurses and doctors bustled around the room gathering various equipment and gear. This began a process that would put us in the NICU for the next 48 hours—after which we brought home a perfectly healthy baby. During that time my mom stayed longer

At the end of this semester I’ll have some more “Semester Highlights.” I have two Greek classes and a systematic theology class I am in right now and they’re shaping up to be pretty exciting, if intense. Until then, maybe I can share a few ‘What’s on my mind’ posts. This is that. Evangelicals are allowing dictionary definitions of theological terms run away from their historical and theological definitions. I think this is evident in several areas, but for now I only want to focus on the doctrine of inerrancy. [1] The most conservative of Evangelicals have begun to conflate an important doctrine, that is, inerrancy, with the hermeutical method they subscribe to—whether they are fully aware of it or not. This does damage within our churches because: 1) It is not orthodox; 2) It gives us a phrase which we too-willingly weaponize and direct toward people with whom we disagree: ‘You deny the inerrancy of Scripture! That’s heresy!’ There is so much division right now, I’d prefer if

DTS offers students from Bible colleges the opportunity to test into an advanced standing program. Instead of merely skipping classes, I take accelerated courses that are 3 credits each but cover 6-9 program credits. The net result for me is that my program’s total length is 27 credits shorter—nearly a full year. So instead of taking 120 credits, I’ll take 93—18 of which are “advanced standing” courses. This semester’s advanced standing class was the first of two covering systematic theology. The assumption is that we have already had significant education in this area, so it is a chance to dive into a specific area much deeper. We were to choose a book on a topic of interest to us and read it deeply and thoroughly and present an extensive outline and presentation. My list of books and authors to read is long. The difficulty was narrowing my choices. Because I want to go onto to get a PhD, I have several incredibly influential thinkers who I am itching to read (indeed, whom I

This past fall semester I began my academic internship at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM). Dr. Daniel Wallace (the professor with whom I took Honors Greek I and II) is its president. CSNTM has the goal of digitizing Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. The result is an online library of stunning high res images that can be viewed for free by scholars and the curious alike at csntm.org. This internship is partly helping a worthwhile nonprofit in its day to day affairs, and a fairly intense introduction to the field of textual criticism. What is textual criticism? IT IS SCARY AND THREATENING. IT WILL DESTROY YOUR FAITH. Just kidding. It is necessary and whether any of us realize it or not, it is foundational to every single standard English translation (yes, even including the KJV—no one gets a pass). As a discipline it becomes a necessary process for any document when the following are true: 1) The original (autograph) is lost, 2) There is mor