Autonomous But United
I grew up in Free Will Baptist churches, occasionally attended local association meetings with my father, and regularly attended the annual National Association Free Will Baptists. Even from a young age I knew that all Free Will Baptists didn’t share identical philosophies of ministry, nor did they agree on Bible translations, or what men and women ought (or ought not) to wear. But from what I could tell, we were a lot alike. I knew...
Reflections on Inspiration and Interpretation: The Implications of Inspiration for Interpretation (Part Two)
by Matthew McAffee In Part One of this essay, we introduced the nature of Scripture as dually-authored. In this essay, we will explore this further, commenting on how it is both divinely given and humanly written. We will also identify more specific ways in which our view of inspiration informs our attention to interpretation. The Significance of Scripture as Dually-Authored for Interpretation How does the nature of Scripture relate...
Reflections on Inspiration and Interpretation: The Nature of Inspiration (Part One)
by Matthew McAffee In the following two-part essay, I would like to entertain the connection between one’s view of biblical inspiration on the one hand, and one’s approach to biblical interpretation on the other. In Part One we will provide a brief assessment of what God has revealed to us in Scripture about the nature of these writings. In Part Two, we will explore a few of the implications that arise from biblical inspiration that...
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Cross and Community
Until I was eighteen-years-old, I held dual citizenship in two countries. The first was in the United States, where my father was born, and me; the second, Germany, where my mother was born. It was a unique experience growing up in a cross-cultural home. I would antagonize my mother with questions about life in Germany: “What’s the word for this? Do they have words for that? Does everyone wear funny overalls over there?” (I’ve since...
Godliness and Government
We live in strange times.[1] With each passing year, America’s laws and leaders move further from the Judeo-Christian tradition as their moral compass. Roe v. Wade (1973) stands in infamy for declaring a woman’s legal right to an abortion. Last year, United States v. Windsor (2013) struck down the Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as the legal union between one man and one woman. Similar examples litter our landscape....
Does God Want Us to Fight about Worship?
Discussions about worship have produced more division among Protestant churches than anything else in the last 25 years.[1] Disagreements have mostly focused on musical questions, though the issues are broader, too. The debate has now reached a stalemate because worshippers have learned that if they don’t like their church’s services, there is always another service down the street. Such options reveal that the “worship wars” produced...
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