Answer Not a Fool / Answer a Fool
Prov. 26:4-5, ESVAnswer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. The Majority View D.A. Carson, in a long review of three recent bibliology books, says he has often used the verses above "to demonstrate the way proverbs work: they are not universal case law. The formal divergence in this instance powerfully embraces more comprehensive reflection than either proverb alone could have done." I agree...
Fair Is Fair
Ok, I caught the NAS adding some interpretation into its translation at a place (Prov. 26:5) where the NIV (and TNIV) were more literal: NAS Answer a fool as his folly deserves, That he not be wise in his own eyes. NIV Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes. Yes, the TNIV was more literal than the NAS in the particular phrase I'm focusing on, but look what it did with the gender-neutral third-person singular masculine pronoun: TNIV Answer fools according to...
New York Times’ Kristof on Evangelicals
Nick Kristof is a very entertaining and informative columnist/opinion-writer/humanitarian/world-traveler. I was quite excited when the New York Times made its "Times Select" online content available free to students because I knew it meant I'd finally be reading Kristof right when his material came out! Kristof has literally given his blood for the poor of the third world. He doesn't care so much about the label worn by those who join him in this work. Though he speaks openly of his liberal...
A Little More on Humor and Pulpit Dignity
A friend of mine passed these points along from a more-developed version of a lecture I'd heard BJ Seminary's Dr. Layton Talbert give on humor: The biblical record does not reveal a frivolous or slapstick sense of humor. “The humor of the Bible is not of the rollicking type but the subtle and intellectual type for which the term wit is often an accurate designation” (DBI). The biblical record does not suggest that He employed humor simply for the purpose of making people laugh. Humor at its...
Mark Dever on Acts 29 and Paul and Salon.com on Dignity
Here's Mark Dever speaking to the Mark Driscoll-related Acts 29 church-planting network yesterday (emphasis mine): Our differences are enough to separate some of my friends—your brothers and sisters in Christ—from you. And perhaps to separate them from me, now that I’m publicly speaking to you. And I don’t want to minimize either the sincerity or the seriousness of some of their concerns (things like: humor, worldliness, pragmatism, authority). Dever goes on to say that what he shares with the...