Author: Tony Arsenal

One of the questions I occasionally get asked is “Which translation of the Bible is the best?” Now, this question is one that doesn’t have an answer. Ideally, people would learn Greek and Hebrew, but that isn’t realistic for everyone. So we are forced to make a choice, to trust a particular translation committee and… Continue reading Assessing the CSB

Common in Reformed circles, in my experience, is a strange phenomenon. If you ask a group of Reformed believers: “Does baptism save a person?” The answer will almost always be a resounding, and at times unnecessarily aggressive “No!“ If placed in the form of a true/false question we see something like this: “True or False: ‘Baptism… Continue reading Baptism now saves you… or “What’s the deal with 1 Peter 3:21?”

I am very pleased to bring to you a series of posts by a good friend of mine named Chris Lilley. I met Chris while we were students at Bethel University in Arden Hills, Minnesota. Both of us were students in the Biblical and Theological Studies program, and Chris was a year behind me. I… Continue reading Why I’m no longer a Theistic Evolutionist (Introduction)

As of late, I have added the popular Roman Catholic call-in show Catholic Answers Live to my podcast retinue. The reasons are plenty, but the two primary reasons are 1) it is good to get a theology you are critical of directly from a reputable source (rather than just reading critical treatments) and 2) it is… Continue reading Papacy, Prosperity, and Catholic Answers Live

I woke up Friday morning to a somewhat desperate message on Facebook asking “Have you read Leithart’s article?” With an accompanying link. I glimpsed at the article and added it to my OneNote folder to read later. I did my morning Bible reading and got ready for work. Throughout the day, I got no fewer… Continue reading Keeping the Trinity One — Some Thoughts on Peter Leithart’s “Keeping the Trinity Personal”

As I have commented in the past, simply reading the Bible slowly, carefully, and with the intent to retain meaning, has tremendous benefits. Often times a text that seemed like a difficult text, or was confusing, becomes clear by simply reading the whole chapter or book in which it exists. Similarly, reading the whole Bible… Continue reading Jephthah’s Not-As-Rash-As-You-Thought Vow

Ok. Go listen to this lecture, then take a nap, and then listen to it again. As I recently wrote, the doctrine of divine simplicity and its correlated doctrines of immutability and impassibility have to become a Shibboleth for our age. DeYoung absolutely nails it in this lecture at T4G 2018.

There are some sounds in any language that some non-native speakers struggle with. In fact, more often than not… they never quite get it. Often times, the language-learner simply substitutes a similar sound. A classic, albeit stereotypical, example of this phenomena is found in the many caricatures of native speakers of Asian languages substituting /l/… Continue reading Divine Simplicity: A Shibboleth for Our Age