I'm back, hopefully for good

Been an interesting and busy few weeks for me. I kept thinking things would eventually slow down, but they didn't. Things seem to have settled down now though. I am preaching each week on Sundays at two small Methodist Churches and will probably be appointed there soon. Finally got accepted into Asbury and will sign up for online classes soon enough (I can't tell you how excited that I am for all of that). Now I can fully realize how low I am in Biblical knowledge and theology, more than my reading of other theology blogs has placed a blow to my ego (a blow that I need because there is no room for pride in Christian theology).

So a topic I have been thinking upon is the topic of Biblical Inerrancy. I will make another post on it in further detail, but here are a couple of brief observations from reading the posts on other blogs. Biblical inerrantists and errantists (BIs and BEs for short) both paint the other in caricatured manners. From some BIs, there is the tendency to question the legitimacy of the faith of BEs and to be vitriolic towards them. On the other hand though, BEs tend to have the air of intellectual arrogance towards them, as if there were once "unenlightened" BIs, but now see the errors of their past ways and pour contempt upon those who hold it and even call Biblically Inerrancy the worst theological invention from the popular Faith and Theology blog. In addition, there are errors on the issue of the Bible itself that I find both sides tend to fall into. More to discuss in my next update though.

But just so where people can know where I stand, I don't hold to Biblical Inerrancy in fact, but most of the time you could not tell with me because I give the Bible the benefit of the doubt (just as we do for historical literature) and am not prone to strike away passages. But more on my view later also.

Also, to get a "liberal" view on things (though I hate using the terms liberal and conservative in theology), I've bought four books containing the works of Paul Tillich when I made a trip to Barnes and Noble last night. I picked up "The New Being," "A History of Christian Thought," "The Courage to Be," and "Systematic Theology: Volume One." Started reading "The New Being" (which is a collection addresses to colleges and universities) and got through the first address of "To whom much is forgiven...," which is a talk based upon story of the Pharisee and the sinner in Luke 7:36-47. Already, I am seeing disagreement between me and Tillich. I will expound upon more than I as get further into the book.

Finally, I've got a new project that I am going to take upon. I am an avid user of e-sword (http://www.e-sword.net) and it has suited its purpose for me for a while, but I have found it does not have the features that I need in a Bible program. Not to complain about it, but it is a free program. However, I don't have the funds to dedicate to some of the other Bible programs which charge hundreds of dollars, nor do I need everything that they have at the moment. So, I hope to brush off my programming skills (used to major in Computer Science) and write a Bible program using Java with the functionality that I look for (plus the other basic features). Of course this is a big project for me and I tend to start big projects but never finish them (of course have not started a big project the past few years). Plus it would be nice to use the ThML repository at CCEL if I could at all possibly incorporate the ThML format to the Bible program.

I am well aware there are other free Bible programs out there, but there is nothing that is free that seems to be geared towards a more academic study. For instance, a good way to search the Greek or Hebrew, or the ability to search for multiple words within multiple verses (as opposed to a one verse search), etc. etc. But we shall see though how far I get with this. Any input or help would be appreciated, and prayers for me in this endeavor even more so.