The Wandering Heretic

There are two false doctrines that are circulating in modern American Protestant Christianity. The first error is the primacy that many Christians give to Jews in general and those that occupy the Land of Israel in particular. The second error is to ignore the writings of the Tanakh (or Old Testament) entirely, claiming that grace [...]

I just found out that my upgrade to WordPress caused one of my stats plug-ins to hang my website. No one was able to post comments for the last few weeks even if they wanted to. Even loading my site was an issue in some cases. The problem was, that since I set my stats [...]

I have reached the end of my survey of the 11th chapter of Romans. The chapter is the culmination of Paul’s express desire to reconcile believing Jew and Gentile together into one Body. Paul then noted that even unbelieving Israel was part of his motivation to convert the Gentiles. He hoped that unbelieving Israelites would [...]

As noted in the previous post, Paul has proclaimed that God was forming a new body to work in the world for His glory. This new body (or nation) was composed of Gentiles grafted into the faithful remnant of Israel. In it, God was reconciling all the [formerly] disobedient, Jew and Gentile alike, to Himself. [...]

I now reach the end of Chapter 11 of Paul’s letter to the Romans. However, before I do, I want to lay out some historical groundwork on how this epistle was written. Many assume that Paul wrote a systematized theology with Romans as he spelled out and defended his theology to a church he did [...]

I am going to ask that indulge me on this post as I entertain a possible interpretation of Paul’s phrase in Romans 11:26 that “in this way all Israel will be rescued.” After this more theoretical reflection, I will return to finish out my analysis of the rest of the Chapter. That being accomplished, I [...]

I have now reached one of the most controversial statements in Paul’s letter to the Romans; well, at least in Chapter 11. At the start of the chapter, Paul noted that God was working through a Remnant of the Jewish believers and that Remnant was the “root” to which the “wild branches” of the Gentiles [...]

Romans 11:13 represents a transition in the book of Romans. Paul shifts his focus of attention from the Jewish followers of Christ to the Gentiles. This transition is obvious since he specifically says “Now I am speaking to you Gentiles..” You can’t get more obvious than that, yet most commentators miss this transition. Perhaps this [...]

Finally I can feel some comfort in analyzing Romans, Chapter 11. As I have noted, the main purpose of Romans was to reconcile the “Christian Jews” and the “Christian Gentiles” together. Both groups, due to ethnic bigotry, refused to join together into one body. The lead in to Romans 11 was Paul’s discourse to first [...]

Though I am going to concentrate on Romans 11, one cannot discuss a single chapter within the Scriptures without placing its context in the writing as a whole (though most people do!). Since I spent several posts to set the historical and situational context, it would be folly not to set Romans 11 in its [...]