Skip to main content

Engaging the Bible in Mission Theology: Scripture Tools for Every Person (STEP)

Engaging the Bible in Mission Theology Scholarship: Scripture Tools for Every Person (STEP)

An essential part of mission theology is an engagement with Scripture.  For years now, those of us who could afford it have used Bible programmes that allow us to search Scripture for words and phrases in a variety of languages, including the original languages.  The top commercial programmes have been BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos.

Just rolled out in its first edition this week is StepBible.  See www.StepBible.org.

This is a simply fantastic development in the world of Biblical literacy.  Now, for free, people around the world will have at their fingertips a large number (and growing) of translations, including critical editions of the Old Testament and New Testament in the original languages.  To get a tour of the site, go to: https://stepweb.atlassian.net/wiki/display/SUG/Quick+overview+using+Screenshots

Congratulations to Dr. David Instone-Brewer and those assisting him in developing this through Tyndale House, Cambridge (see: http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/).

Making the Scriptures accessible and developing tools to study it is a large part of the Great Commission--to make disciples of all nations.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Alasdair MacIntyre and Tradition Enquiry

Alasdair MacIntyre's subject is philosophical ethics, and he is best known for his critique of ethics understood as the application of general, universal principles.  He has reintroduced the importance of virtue ethics, along with the role of narrative and community in defining the virtues.  His focus on these things—narrative, community, virtue—combine to form an approach to enquiry which he calls ‘tradition enquiry.’ [1] MacIntyre characterises ethical thinking in the West in our day as ethics that has lost an understanding of the virtues, even if virtues like ‘justice’ are often under discussion.  Greek philosophical ethics, and ethics through to the Enlightenment, focussed ethics on virtue and began with questions of character: 'Who should we be?', rather than questions of action, 'What shall we do?'  Contemporary ethics has focused on the latter question alone, with the magisterial traditions of deontological ('What rules govern our actions?') and tel...

Was Jesus’ Criticism of the Pharisees’ Ethic Its Legalism or Lawlessness?

The popular understanding of the Pharisees is that they were legalists.  This is not, however, Jesus’ criticism of their ethics, even though the charge of Pharisaic legalism comes from a (mis)reading of the Gospels.  The Pharisees are cast in popular imagination as the quintessential example of legalists, overly focussed on rules and promoting works in order to attain righteousness apart from God’s grace.  The latter view, that Judaism overall and the Pharisees in particular advocated works righteousness, has been loudly criticised in light of numerous texts in second temple Judaism, celebrating God’s grace in choosing the Jews, not self-righteous works. [1]   Be that as it may, the Pharisees have remained the foil to Christian ethics precisely over their purported legalism—a focus on unloving, unforgiving rules and regulations that also places norms above, purportedly, higher moral principles.  Jesus’ ethic is contrasted as an ethic of forgiveness, mercy, love...

Early Christian Views on Wealth, Possessions, and Giving

[The following post continues notes and studies on the issue of wealth, poverty, and Christian ethics.  It originally appeared in an online publication: Rollin G. Grams, 'Early Christian Views on Wealth, Possessions, and Giving,'   Explorations (Fall, 2010), an online publication of the Robert C. Cooley Center for the Study of Early Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.  Online:  https://www.scribd.com/document/41882213/The-Cooley-Center-Articles-Early-Christian-Views-on-Wealth ]  For several reasons, study of early Christianity in Protestant circles is on the rise.  Ecumenical dialogue, for instance, requires a return to the common ground of Christian writers prior to the great schisms of the Church throughout history.  Also, an increasing interest in worship and spiritual disciplines has sent some Protestants on pilgrimage to more ancient and liturgical forms of the church.  Recent challenges to long-standing Christian practices...