Last Seminary

On the Gospel Accounts of Peter's Denials of Christ

"The prediction and outplaying of [Peter's] denials, as recorded in the four Gospels, is a powerful reflection of a condition of our relationship with Christ—that our faith is more vulnerable than we care to admit. But a small thorny issue surrounds the Gospel accounts of this event, one that is a nagging distraction to serious hermeneutic exposition. The issue has to do with Mark quoting Jesus as saying that a rooster will crow twice after Peter denies Him three times. The problem is that all the other three Gospels quote Jesus as saying, apparently, that the rooster will only crow once."

History, Authority, and Interpretation: A Theology of Scripture

"The purpose of this paper has been to address several issues that arise out of Hans Frei’s _The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative_ but are not addressed there. The issues all revolve loosely around the problem of distinguishing between story and history. As mentioned previously, the Christian faith is based upon the notion that the God of Israel, who...acts in history to redeem his chosen people and the world. If the proper interpretation of scripture requires the choosing of a story over and against a history then our faith is imperiled – redemption is a fiction."
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The Rationality Of Belief In Inerrancy

"Is it no longer possible to hold that belief in the inerrancy of Scripture is a rational position to take? The purpose of this paper is to argue that belief in inerrancy is rational, i.e., one is within his or her epistemic rights in believing that inerrancy is true. In what follows, I will clarify the objection that belief in inerrancy is not rational. Then, some relevant features of the theory of rationality will be sketched and applied to the question of the rationality of inerrancy."

Dissolving the Inerrancy Debate: How Modern Philosophy Shaped the Evangelical View of Scripture

"The debate among American evangelicals over scriptural inerrancy has received less attention in recent literature than it did during its height in the 1970s and 1980s. Nonetheless the issue itself remains unresolved; indeed, many consider it beyond hope of resolution. Recent work by certain philosophers, however, suggests that there is a way out-not by resolving the debate but by dissolving it."