When you are learning a new language, hearing it is incredibly important. To learn any modern language it is assumed that you will be using as many senses as you can. For Koine (Biblical) Greek, it can be hard to engage more than your eyes simply because audio resources are not always easy to find. …
How to Drastically Improve your Greek Parsing Proficiency with ParseGreek and Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek
When you begin learning Koine Greek, you are likely to use a beginning grammar like William D. Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek (BBG). As you go through a first year grammar you learn the morphology of the Greek language through a number of useful paradigms. Mounce does an excellent job of teaching the mechanics of …
Nothing to See Here, Everything is Perfectly Normal
Have you ever found yourself desiring something that was so clearly worse than what you already have that you wonder what in the world could be driving you to want it?One day I felt this very thing. It was a perfectly normal day, and I wasn't unhappy, or tired, or sad. I didn't notice myself …
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Pray for Your Enemies
At a leadership meeting at my workplace one particular leader encouraged us to pray for those whom we might find difficult to lead. Whether that person is going through a difficult time, or are being particularly difficult themselves, we as leaders have a responsibility to shepherd and care for those who are entrusted to us. …
What makes for good preaching? How church history shows us that it’s bigger than topical vs. expository
What makes for good preaching? That is a huge question, and not one which I will solve in this post, but I do want to dive into one of the debates that is common when discussing this question and provide a different perspective, which I have come to over the past few months while diving …
Saved for What? Salvation Through the Eyes of Eastern and Western Christians
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him …
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The Christian Life: a Challenge that Ends in Glory
When I began reading Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, my goals were to become more clear on what he actually taught (as opposed to what others taught in his name), to find out whether I agreed with him, and to see what I could learn from him. Over several months I made my way …
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Augustine on Free Will, Grace, and Perseverance
Over the past year I have been especially dedicated to the task of learning the differences in the systems known as Calvinism and Arminianism, and in discovering where on that spectrum I fall. This task has prompted me to read not only the works of contemporary authors on the subjects, but also those of Calvin …
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God’s Sovereignty, God’s Goodness, and the Fall of Man
Calvin and Arminius are well known for their views on predestination, but I would argue that they cared less about that subject than they did about defending particular attributes of God’s nature which they felt were at risk of being overlooked, under-appreciated, or misrepresented. The attributes they sought to defend informed their arguments concerning predestination …
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Arminius on the Doctrine of Predestination
I first encountered the doctrine of predestination as described by Jacob Arminius in his “Public Disputations”, which opened his collected writings in Arminius Speaks: Essential Writings on Predestination, Free Will, and the Nature of God. After that first encounter, I honestly couldn’t detect any difference between his view and Calvin's. As I continued to read through …
Jesse Orloff 