A response to Don Carson and Allan Chapple
I am not by nature a grumpy person. I don’t often get very heated in debate or upset about things. You could even call me phlegmatic (love that word).
ESV/NIV Comparison Chart
In his RTR article (reproduced elsewhere in this month’s web extra), Allan Chapple judges that the ESV has fallen short of its own objectives, and provides some examples. As promised (in the paper edition of this month’s Briefing), here are some counter-examples, where the ESV is advantageously a few steps more direct in translation than the NIV, while remaining quite readable (that is, where the ESV has achieved its objectives).
Generating Confidence in the Bible: The use of Bible translations in Christian ministry
As a preacher, I am passionately concerned to ensure that I am faithfully proclaiming the word of God. Equally important is the question of whether I am effectively proclaiming the word of God. It will be of little or no lasting benefit to those who hear if I parade my cleverness—my wit or charm, my ability with funny or emotive stories—and not bring people into contact with the word that God has spoken. It likewise will be next to useless if I proclaim the truth in a way that obscures its meaning or makes it difficult for people to hear and understand.
A Bible for Everyone
Copyright (c) 2003 First Things 138 (December 2003): 10-14.
One summer years ago, I attended a conference that met at Princeton Theological Seminary; we participants stayed in the seminary dormitory. We soon discovered that the lounge on the first floor of the dorm had been converted into a kind of outsized study. A large table dominated the room; scattered across its surface were dozens of hefty books, many of them held open by other books. A group of men sat around the table from morning to evening, sometimes rising to consult one of the piled tomes. Whenever we walked past we could see them framed in a large picture window like figures in a painting. I half-expected to find a neat brass plaque screwed to the windowsill and bearing a single word: Scholarship.
All Scripture Is Breathed Out by God and Profitable
Today, at the end of prayer week, we focus on the preciousness and power of the Word of God, the Bible. I will call you today to love the Word of God and meditate on it every day this year and memorize it systematically.
Good English With Minimal Translation: Why Bethlehem Uses the ESV
Why I would like to see the English Standard Version become the most common Bible of the English-speaking church, for preaching, teaching, memorizing, and study.
The English Standard Version: A Review Article
Originally published in The Reformed Theological Review. Reprinted with permission.
My aim is to assess the quality of the English Standard Version of the Bible (ESV). This can be done by comparing the ESV with other translations. However, such a huge task could not be reported adequately within the scope of an article such as this. A more satisfactory alternative is to measure the ESV against what it was intended to be: that is, to compare the final product with the aims of those who produced it. By concentrating on its characteristic features and studying representative passages, even the limited survey possible here will enable us to reach sound conclusions. (more…)
The Perfect Muslim
Introduction
This article is a comprehensive study of the subject of submission in the Bible and Qur’an. This is a subject on which the Bible and Qur’an have much in common and as such is a place where Christians and Muslims can agree at many points. The article examines submission from the time of Adam until the return of Jesus. It also asks the question as to what it means to submit to God perfectly.
Should the stewards object? A biblical approach to gambling
Life
Gambling seems obviously wrong to many Christians, and yet one searches in vain for a direct forbidding of it in the Bible. Are we justified in opposing the practice? Michael Hill takes up the issue.
Just a matter of opinion? Straight answers to curly questions #3
Everyday Ministry
A gift for preaching
Mastering Contemporary Preaching
Bill Hybels, Stewart Briscoe & Haddon Robinson.
IVP, 1989.Rediscovering Expository Preaching: Balancing the Science and Art of Biblical Exposition
John MacArthur Jr.& The Master’s Seminary Faculty
Word Publishing, 1992.
Introducing God (the course) by Dominic Steele
Review
These days we are blessed with an abundance of evangelistic courses. Here, John Chapman reviews one of the latest on offer—a course that combines the sociology of Alpha with the theology of Two ways to live.
Interchange: ‘Can Christians fall away?’
In Briefings #299 and #300 we published a two-part series on the doctrine of assurance (‘Safe in the shadow of the LORD’). The first article in the series, ‘Can Christians fall away?’ written by Andrew Heard, attracted more feedback than we could publish in the print version of The Briefing. Much of the feedback was helpful to the discussion so we’ve included all of it below, in no particular order other than the date on which it was received.
The porn problem
Life
It’s official: smoking in films influences teens. Newspapers around the nation on 11 June 2003 reported a new study—published online that day in The Lancet—that surveyed 3500 adolescents who had never smoked, and assessed their exposure to smoking in movies. A follow-up survey some time later found that those who had watched ‘hard-smoking’ movies were up to three times more likely to take up the habit themselves. Health groups have called for an ‘R’ rating on all films with frequent smoking scenes.