Koinonia

And the winners are...?

2012-01-27T09:33:28-05:00

Congrats to Jacob Sweeney and Ronaldo Ghenov, who were smiled upon by either chance or God’s sovereignly predetermined plan, and both won a copy of Four Views on Divine Providence.

You can learn more about this Counterpoints book in these reviews by Denver Seminary, Evidence for God, Jeff K. Clarke, and Tom Farr.

Four Views on Divine Providence can be ordered here, or through your favorite bookseller.

Wednesday Giveaway - Four Views on Divine Providence

2012-01-25T07:37:56-05:00

“in Ronald Maxwell’s film adaptation of Jeffrey Shaara’s historical novel Gods and Generals, a shell- shocked captain in the Confederate army asks Lieutenant General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson how he could remain so tranquil in battle when the fight was raging all around him. “General,” the young captain asks in an almost reverential tone, “how is it that you can keep so serene and stay so utterly insensible, with a storm of shells and bullets raining about your head?”

Jackson’s response reveals his unshakable confidence in the absolute sovereignty of God over all things, including the seemingly random events that take place on the battlefield. “Captain Smith,” Jackson thoughtfully responds, “my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death; I do not concern myself with that, but to be always ready, whenever it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live; then all men would be equally brave.”

Our understanding of God’s sovereignty can have massive implications for the way we live our lives, even if or most of us that won’t look quite like it did for Stonewall Jackson.

But what does it mean for God to be sovereign?

Does everything, from my salvation to the path of a bullet on a Civil War battlefield, happen according to his preordained will? Does God experience time and choices unfolding along with us? Or does the answer lie somewhere in-between?

Questions like these have preoccupied Christians for generations, and in this week’s giveaway, F our Views on Divine Providence, leading theologians wrestle with those difficult theological and philosophical issues.

The four positions are represented by Paul Helseth (God causes every creaturely event that occurs); William Lane Craig (through his “middle knowledge,” God controls the course of worldly affairs without predetermining any creatures’ free decisions); Ron Highfield (God controls creatures by liberating their decision-making); and Gregory Boyd (human decisions can be free only if God neither determines nor knows what they will be).

To enter the giveaway, simply comment below with your answer to this question: What are the practical implications of our view of God's sovereignty?

Also, a bonus entry is a available if you comment a second time letting us know that you shared a link to this giveaway on Facebook, Twitter, or your blog.

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*If you are reading this via Facebook, email, or RSS, please visit the blog to enter. Two winners will be determined by Random Integer Generator. Giveaway ends Thursday at midnight*

Robert H. Gundry's forthcoming fifth edition of A Survey of the New Testament

2012-01-24T14:59:01-05:00

Instructors: Find out more about the forthcoming fifth edition of A Survey of the New Testament by Robert H. Gundry! Download (PDF)

The Difference a Comma Makes - Acts 5:18 (Monday with Mounce 129)

2012-01-23T08:39:51-05:00

We all know that commas are not part of the biblical text, and yet they are required by English. To someone just starting their Greek career, it may not seem that commas deserve much attention; but Acts 5:18 gives a good example of why a comma can make all the difference.

I was reading the NIV the other day and came across this verse. “Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy.” What is the relationship between the “associates” and the “Sadducees”? In English, there are two.

1. It is possible that Luke is writing that the high priest has some associates, and those associates were part of the Sadducee party. What this interpretation permits is that there were Sadducees who were not associates of the high priest. I suspect this is the most natural reading of the NIV, implying that we are dealing here with a subgroup of the Sadducee party, a doubtful interpretation.

2. If you read the comma differently, you could understand that all the Sadducee party were the associates of the high priest. This is what the NASB is trying to convey with the parentheses. “But the high priest rose up, along with all his associates (that is the sect of the Sadducees), and they were filled with jealousy” (see also the ESV, NRSV, KJV, NET).

The HCSB neatly sidesteps the awkwardness of the parentheses by translating, “He and all his colleagues, those who belonged to the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy,” but it does leave the same ambiguity as the NIV. (Parentheses are generally considered poorer English, and writers tend to rewrite the sentence so they are not needed, unlike what I am doing right now.) Likewise, the NLT translates, “The high priest and his officials, who were Sadducees, were filled with jealousy.”

The Greek is actually a little awkward. Ἀναστὰς δὲ ὁ ἀρχιερεὺς καὶ πάντες οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ, ἡ οὖσα αἵρεσις τῶν Σαδδουκαίων, ἐπλήσθησαν ζήλου. Word for word it reads, “But standing up, the chief priest and all those (πάντες οἱ [masculine plural]) with him, the-being-sect (ἡ οὖσα αἵρεσις [feminine singular]) of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy.”

ἡ οὖσα αἵρεσις τῶν Σαδδουκαίων is a nominative appositional phrase that further identifies the “all those with him.” The plural verb, ἐπλήσθησαν, then, goes back to the compound subject, “the high priest and all those with him.” Appositional phrases, by their very nature, stand apart from the rest of the grammatical flow of the sentence, and if you drop it out the sentence makes good sense.

The singular feminine ἡ is unexpected but required by the feminine singular αἵρεσις. Because it is a nominative appositional phrase and in a sense stands apart from the sentence, Luke can get away with the irregularity (if that is the right word) of a feminine singular contextually referring back to the masculine plural πάντες.

Given the historical context, I strongly suspect that the πάντες means allthe Sadducees were filled with jealousy, and we need to be careful of a comma suggesting only some of them were associates of the high priest.

Amazing, isn’t it. Miracles were being done everywhere. Peter’s shadow had healing power. And yet the religious rulers were filled not with awe and thankfulness, but with jealousy. The sad fact of life is that almost everything in this world is about power, and their power was threatened.

I have been reading a fascinating book about the life of William Tennent (The Vision that Changed a Nation, by John F. Hansen). It was Tennent’s conviction that the ruling religious authorities had failed to understand the necessity of a new birth, and so formed his “Log College,” teaching students not only the rigorous of a classical education but also teaching the necessity of passion and conviction and the work of the Holy Spirit and sin and conversion. Guess how the Sadducees of his day responded? With jealously and the wielding of social and financial power. Tennent had strong connections with the Great wakening, and 60 (yes, sixty) of his students went on to found new colleges that would continue his dream.

Hansen summarizes Tennent’s core belief by quoting the poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939): “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

Some things never change, and there will always be religious authorities who want to fill pails and throw water on fires. The question is, what will you do?

William D. [Bill] Mounce posts about the Greek language, exegesis, and related topics at Koinonia. He is the author of numerous books, including the bestselling Basics of Biblical Greek, and is the general editor for Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of the Old and New Testament Words. He served as the New Testament chair of the English Standard Version Bible translation, and is currently on the Committee for Bible Translation for the NIV. Learn more and visit Bill's other blog on spiritual growth, Life is a Journey, at www.billmounce.com

Extra-Curricular Activities 01/22/12

2012-01-22T07:46:17-05:00

A few bloggers offered reflections on the way we use technology this week, including James K.A. Smith’s Constrained to be Free, Mike Wittmer’s Your Brain on Technology, and Tim Gombis’ Social Media Technologies & the Language of “Addiction”

Louis gives us an early look at an upcoming Zondervan title, A Brief History of Old Testament Criticism.

Phil Long on Pseudepigraphy and Jewish Christian Literature.

Chris Green reflects on Rowan Williams’ Critical Theology.

Kevin DeYoung asks, Who are the 144,000 in Revelation?

Michael Bird examines 1 Cor. 11.2-16 in Headship, Hair, and Hats.

Roger Olson responds to criticism that he is Judging God’s Morality.

Michael Horton wrote a new essay, Making Necessary Distinctions: The Call to Discernment.

Disciplining the Dragon, a new CT article on the growth of Christian publishing in China.

And the winners are...?

2012-01-20T09:51:49-05:00

Congrats to Luke and M. Hughes, who each won a copy of How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens by Michael Williams!

Thanks to everyone who participated this week. Looking through your comments it seems that Esther, Leviticus, Job, and the Wisdom Literature came up most often as books that could be difficult to read through the Jesus lens.

Personally, Leviticus has always been a difficult one for me, but I was impressed with how Williams addressed it,

“The sacrifices that the Israelites offered to God were a means of acknowledging both his holiness and the requirement for those in special relationship with him to keep themselves holy. The things sacrificed to God had to be without any imperfection, and even those designated to offer the sacrifice on the part of the people – the priests – had special rules and procedures to follow when doing so. This demand for holiness in our relationship with God has not been removed or minimized. Not only do we need a perfect sacrifice, we need a perfect priest to offer it for us. Jesus, because he is both the flawless sacrifice and the sinless priest, fulfills both roles."

You can order How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens here, or through your favorite bookseller.

Wednesday Giveaway - How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens

2012-01-18T09:54:10-05:00

What unifies the story of the Bible? With sixty-six books written by dozens of authors over a massive span of ancient history, is there anything that brings together these smaller narratives into a coherent whole?

According to Michael Williams there is, and that unifying principle is actually a person, Jesus Christ. In How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens, Williams demonstrates how every book of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, points to Christ, either foreshadowing his coming or reflecting on the implications of his life, death, and resurrection.

This new release is the latest addition to our How To series, and this week two of you have a chance to win a copy.

To enter the giveaway, simply comment below with your answer to this question: What book of the Bible do you think could be difficult to read through the Jesus lens?

Also, a bonus entry is a available if you comment a second time letting us know that you shared a link to this giveaway on Facebook, Twitter, or your blog.

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*If you are reading this via Facebook, email, or RSS, please visit the blog to enter. Two winners will be determined by Random Integer Generator. Giveaway ends Thursday at midnight*

A No Win Scenario - Acts 2:11 (Monday with Mounce 128)

2012-01-16T09:30:12-05:00

There are some times in which there simply is no good way to translate a verse. No matter how hard you try, there will always be some ambiguity.

I am reading through the NIV looking for what I call “NIVisms,” phrases that stand out as a little unusual. Every translation has them. I suspect that sometimes these NIVisms are the result of hours of debate, and there simply was no easy solution.

In the story of Pentecost, when the plethora (I love that word) of people heard the disciples speaking in tongues as evidence of the newly bestowed Holy Spirit, they were bewildered because “each one heard their own language being spoken” (2:6). Here is an example of our decision to use “their” as an indefinite, referring back to one or more than one. I think this works fine here, even though you have the singular “one,” then “their,” and then the singular “language.”

But when you get to v 11, it gets stranger. The NIV reads, “we hear (ἀκούομεν) them (αὐτῶν) declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues (ταῖς ἡμετέραις γλώσσαις)!” The reason this sounds unusual to me is a confusion of number, but the confusion is in the Greek.

I am curious. What do you hear by “our own”? I hear one person claiming to hear the gospel in “his own (singular) tongues (plural),” Except for people who are motherly bilingual — one of the greatest gifts to give to a child — there is no such thing as my (singular) own tongues (plural). But certainly this is not what Luke is saying.

Certainly this is the voice of the crowd (plural). Each person has his or her own native tongue, and each are stating in bewilderment that each one of the disciples was speaking in a language native to someone in the crowd. And so we understand “them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues” to mean that each one of the disciples was declaring the wonders of God in a language native to someone in the crowd.

Kind of torturous to say it clearly, which is why the NIV I assume left it as they did. Or perhaps the committee didn’t hear it the way I do.

Extra-Curricular Activities 01/14/12

2012-01-14T08:11:59-05:00

Seven million people have watched a YouTube video of a young man’s poem describing why he loves Jesus but hates religion, Kevin DeYoung and Brian LePort both respond.

Michael Bird shares the story of early Christians raiding slave ships to set the captives free.

Martin Luther on Spiritual Warfare.

Darrell Bock shares a quick review of Simply Jesus.

Tim Gombis reflects on our use of language.

Out of Ur continues their series on The Religious Views of 20-Somethings.

9Marks discusses the Post-Program Church.

Service Is Not A Scandal, a response to Mark Noll.

Leslie Keeney on Doctor Who and Moral Absolutes.

LifeWay Research recently surveyed pastors about their views on Creation and Evolution. Louis reflects on the results here.

And the winners are...?

2012-01-13T11:27:04-05:00

Congrats to Jonathan Huber and Ryan Bouton who each won a copy of Biblical Greek: A Compact Guide!

You can lean more about Mounce’s latest resource in these reviews by Phil Long, the NT Resources Blog, and Jacob Sweeney. Biblical Greek: A Compact Guide can be ordered here, or through your favorite bookseller.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this week's giveaway, stop back soon for more news, discussions, and giveaways at Koinonia.