Resources by Rick Oster:
Rick Oster
A highly respected teacher at Harding School of Theology for over 40 years, Dr. Richard Oster helps prepare students for work in Christian ministry (and a smaller number for doctoral studies elsewhere) by teaching courses in New Testament Greek and courses in the content of the New Testament. These courses include Acts of Apostles, Pauline letters, book of Revelation, NewTestament Theology, and historical and cultural backgrounds of the NewTestament. He is also an expert on ancient Ephesus.
Foreword to ‘Male and Female: A Biblical Look at Gender’
The following is one of the forewords for the book Male & Female: A Biblical Look at Gender, edited by Renée Webb Sproles. Henny-Penny, we are told in various versions of the story, was a chick hit upon the head by a single falling acorn. She concludes the “sky is falling” and precipitates mass hysteria...
Rick Oster
The Inspiration of the New Testament
*Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of a series on the Bible, its formation, and its trustworthiness. For Part 1 (“The Inspiration of the Old Testament”), click HERE. Do we have good reasons to think that the New Testament is divine in origin and intended by God to be an authoritative guide for our lives...
On Gender and the Bible: What about Husbands and Wives? (Part 6)
This is the sixth in a series of articles dealing with gender and the church. Previously, we engaged with John Mark Hicks’s book, Women Serving God, and Scot McKnight’s, Blue Parakeet. (See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.) This article focuses specifically on gender and marriage. While Paul honors and...
On Gender and the Bible: Can Women Be Elders? (Part 5)
“If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.” —Margaret Thatcher. “Women have discovered that they cannot rely on men’s chivalry to give them justice.” —Helen Keller. “It’s time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through, no right, no wrong, no rules...
The Inspiration of the Old Testament
Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian during the first century AD discussed the Hebrew Scriptures in the time of Jesus in an apologetic work written against a non-Jew named Apion. Josephus writes about the superiority of the Hebrew Scriptures over pagan writings in his work, Against Apion (1.8). For example, Josephus argues in this defense of...
On Gender and the Bible: Does God Allow Women Preachers in 1 Timothy 2? (Part 4)
This is another in-depth post where we examine what the Word of God teaches about men and women in the church. This the fourth installment and it is focused on the vitally important teaching of 1 Timothy 2. We will continue to engage with John Mark Hicks’s book, Women Serving God: My Journey in Understanding...
On Gender and the Bible: Why Do Women Stay Silent in 1 Corinthians 14? (Part 3)
This will be another in-depth post where we examine what the Word of God teaches about men and women in the church. It is the third installment in a series engaging with John Mark Hicks’s book, Women Serving God: My Journey in Understanding Their Story, and Scot McKnight’s book, Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read...
On Gender and the Bible: What’s Up with Head Coverings in 1 Corinthians 11? (Part 2)
(For Part 1, click here.) This is the second installment in a series engaging with John Mark Hicks’s book, Women Serving God: My Journey in Understanding Their Story, and Scot McKnight’s book, Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible. In the first post, we critiqued the methods and tools used by both authors to...
On Gender and the Bible: What John Mark Hicks and Scot McKnight Get Right and Wrong (Part 1)
Who doesn’t love a good story? John Mark Hicks’s new book, Women Serving God: My Journey in Understanding Their Story in the Bible, is full of them. We find the story of Hicks’s journey from rigid patriarchy to egalitarianism, the stories of church history and its various positions on the subject of women in ministry,...
Thoughts about Hell from Jesus Himself
There are obviously so many channels from which one can learn about the concept of the afterlife. Many world religions teach the concept of a painful afterlife, often deriving the idea of a painful condition due to a life of immoral living and/or the stultification of God. I have treated the idea of the portal...
Rick Oster