1 Thessalonians 4 | The Brown Bible

Research Tools

Belief and Logic

Ken Brown | July 4, 2009

In our introduction to Biblical research, the first two principles given for approaching God’s Word were: (1) Believe what you read and (2) think and be reasonable: you can’t throw logic out the window just because you are reading the Bible. Those who can stare a clear scripture in the face and deny what it obviously says because it disagrees with a previously held belief have ceased learning. Likewise, those who can accept two or more contradictory views at the same time will never come to an accurate understanding of God’s Word (or of much of anything else for that matter). On the surface, this seems so obvious to most of you (I hope) that you are probably scratching your heads, wondering why I am making an issue of it. As it plays out in practical application, however, relatively few people are completely consistent about this as it pertains to Biblical exegesis.

As one example, let’s look at 2 Corinthians 5:20, a familiar verse for many of us, but have you ever considered the fundamental problem with how the King James and a number of other versions translate this verse?