Shows / Scripture-ish
Episodes
Scripture-ishWhat about the Giants?
A few people recently posed to me a question about the Nephilim in the Bible, which are often identified as giants. Fortunately, I have actually written…
Scripture-ishDracula and Martyrdom
I was telling you why I love the 1897 novel Dracula so much, and what lessons I think a Christian might learn from Bram Stoker. Last time I introduced the…
Scripture-ishDracula and the Sacred Wafer
On the morning of May 16, Jonathan Harker began his diary entry with the following words: God preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced. Safety and the…
Scripture-ishApproaching the Bible as Scripture
When ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh…
Scripture-ishTracking Down Sources
One of Abraham Lincoln’s famous quotations is “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.” This excellent advice from our sixteenth president helpfully…
Scripture-ishOn Reading the Bible
Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to…
Scripture-ishWhat Is Scripture About?
Communication is difficult. The point is proven time and again, and perhaps the people that are most familiar with the difficulty of communication are, on the…
Scripture-ishWhat Is Scripture For?
I have previously proposed the use of the so-called “steps of salvation” as an avenue for spiritual growth. The first step is “hear,” and this essay is a first…
Scripture-ishWas Paul Ever Married?
Some people think the apostle Paul might have been married at one point in his life. In fact, there was an early Christian tradition about it. Eusebius the…
Scripture-ishGrace and the Steps of Salvation
“There were two subjects we never heard about in church,” Joy Winn told me one evening. She was referring to her childhood and young adulthood, decades earlier…
Scripture-ishHumans vs. Machines
Is Artificial Intelligence going to kill us all in just a few years? That is a question making the news now, because some bigwigs in the AI world have claimed…
Scripture-ishSteps for a Spiritual Life
Some Christians are Bible people, and others are prayer people. This classification is my invention. I am not completely sure that it’s original with me, but I…
Scripture-ishThe Good I’ve Done
In my lifetime, I have done only one good thing. Maybe two. Definitely not three. When I stand before God and he asks for an account of my life—interrogating…
Scripture-ishNavigating Morality in a Fraught World
Near the end of Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis includes a chapter called “Two Notes,” a very brief chapter which essentially offers two long footnotes to the…
Scripture-ishOn Not Being a Tare
Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. (Matthew 15:13) People are sinners. Not some people; all people. Every single…
Scripture-ishDoes Christianity Make You Good?
In chapter 7 of The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom described the trouble she had finding a placement for a Jewish infant. Of course, this is during the Nazi…
Scripture-ishThe Gender of the Holy Spirit, Part 2
For Part 1, see here. Is the divine Spirit male, or female, or neither? People have thought of the Spirit in all these ways. Most churchgoers in America…
Scripture-ishThe Gender of the Holy Spirit, Part 1
Let me tell you what’s going to happen here. We’re going to talk about the gender of the Holy Spirit, and I’m going to use Guy N. Woods as a foil, and so I’m…
Scripture-ishBiblical Authorization for Celebrating Christmas
Okay, so we know that it’s sinful, displeasing to God, to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, but we saw last time that by the turn of the twentieth…
Scripture-ishChristians against Christmas
When I was young, Christmas happened the night before. We were a Christmas Eve family. Christmas Day—after the rush of discovering what Santa Claus had left…
Scripture-ishThe Apostle Who Lived
But now the time has come to go away. I go to die, and you to live; but which of us goes to the better lot, is known to none but God. —Socrates To live is…
Scripture-ishJuneteenth, A Holiday for White Americans, Obviously
The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them,and they are caught in the toils of their sin. (Proverbs 5:22) I have actually heard people say that Juneteenth is a…
Scripture-ishGospel of Life, Chapter 6, The Old Testament
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Scripture-ishGospel of Life, Chapter 5, The Samaritan Woman
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Scripture-ishLanguage and Theology
God said it, I believe, that settles it. But what does it settle? Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work…
Scripture-ishGospel of Life, Chapter 4, The "I Am" Statements
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Scripture-ishGospel of Life, Chapter 3, Signs
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Scripture-ishThe Minor Prophets: Twelve or One?
Should you read the Minor Prophets as if these twelve different prophetic voices together constitute a single book? I have a definite answer to this question…
Scripture-ishGospel of Life, Chapter 2, Introducing the
Buy the book at 21st Century Christian. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes…
Scripture-ishGospel of Life, Chapter 1, Introducing Jesus
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Scripture-ishThe Minor Prophets in the Septuagint
The Minor Prophets were translated into Greek probably sometime in the second century BC, probably either in Egypt or Palestine, and apparently all by a single…
Scripture-ishGospel of Life, Introduction
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Scripture-ishThree Buckets of Forgiveness
This essay is based on a sermon I preached several weeks ago. The video for the sermon is at the end of this post. I have continued to think about these…
Scripture-ishSt. Bernard's On the Love of God (Chapter 3)
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com
Scripture-ishSt. Bernard's On the Love of God (Chapter 2)
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com
Scripture-ishThe Minor Prophets in the Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain much material relevant to the study of the Minor Prophets. There are eight Minor Prophets scrolls from the Dead Sea Scrolls, plus…
Scripture-ishSt. Bernard's On the Love of God (Chapter 1)
Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Love of God This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes…
Scripture-ishThe Minor Prophets in Masoretic Manuscripts
The medieval Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible are called Masoretic because they contain the Masorah (“tradition”), which includes elements such as the vowel…
Scripture-ishThe New Birth of Freedom
In what is perhaps the most famous speech in American history, maybe the greatest speech in American history, the sixteenth president of these United States…
Scripture-ishThe Blind Patriarch
And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. And some of the…
Scripture-ishA Eulogy for My Dad
Three years ago, my dad—Timothy Louis Gallagher—passed away in the hospital in Madisonville, Kentucky. This is the eulogy I delivered at his funeral a few days…
Scripture-ishWhat Is a Beatitude?
This essay is the text of a presentation I made on October 2, 2025, at The Light Network Conference, which convened at the Henderson Church of Christ in…
Scripture-ishSpeaking in Tongues
I have no experience with speaking in tongues. First of all, though I can read a few languages for academic purposes, I speak only a single language. (I’m not…
Scripture-ishOn Church Unity in the New Testament
Programming Notes Voiceover. I suppose you have noticed that I have started recording voiceovers for these Substack essays. I’ve been doing it for a while…
Scripture-ishNavalny and Courage
Alexei Navalny died on February 16, 2024, and a few days later (Feb 21) I spoke briefly about him in a chapel service at Heritage Christian University. If you…
Scripture-ishThe Resurrection Body
At the Resurrection, when our bodies come out of the ground and are reconstituted and transformed into whatever a spiritual body is so that they are fit to…
Scripture-ishBaptism among the Eastern Orthodox
The Eastern Orthodox Churches regularly baptize infants by immersion—three immersions, to be precise. Why do they do this? Why not sprinkle? And why do it to…
Scripture-ishThe Three Amigos and the Christian Life
What is your favorite scene from the classic 1986-film The Three Amigos? It’s an impossible question, because there is a plethora of great scenes. There’s the…
Scripture-ishDid Jesus Pray for His Abusers?
According to the Gospel of Luke, while hanging on the cross, Jesus prayed for the people participating in his execution. Father, forgive them; for they know…
Scripture-ishThe Bible Against Slavery?
I am no expert on slavery. I am not an ethicist. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person with an interest in how Christians should think through…
Scripture-ishMore Notes on Eugene Boring's Disciples and the Bible
I return now to Eugene Boring’s book Disciples and the Bible (1997), which I recently read and wrote about here. There was so much of interest in this book…
Scripture-ishRace Relations in Churches of Christ, Part 2
Here is part 1. Several Christian groups in America before the Civil War separated the races into different congregations, white congregations and black…
Scripture-ishRace Relations in Churches of Christ, Part 1
A few years ago, while writing a series of lessons for Bible classes at the Sherrod Ave. Church of Christ, I drafted an essay on race relations within the…
Scripture-ishHistorical Criticism in the Stone-Campbell Movement
I recently read the book called Disciples and the Bible (1997) by Eugene Boring, owing to my interest in biblical interpretation within the Stone-Campbell…
Scripture-ishPsalm 2 as Psalm 1: Medieval Jewish Evidence
In this post—the last in the series—we cover the ancient evidence that some ancient people did, indeed, consider Psalm 2 (as we call it) the first psalm. How…
Scripture-ishI Wondered What Sort of a Person She Was
Near the end of her 1971 biographical book, The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom describes her time in the Ravensbrück concentration camp (northeast Germany, at…
Scripture-ishPsalm 2 as Psalm 1: Patristic Evidence
In previous posts in this series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), I have looked at the history of numbering the psalms. The jumping off point has been Acts 13:33…
Scripture-ishLessons from a Local Weatherman
Phil Connors started February 2 as a jerk, despised by everyone who knew him, and he ended the day universally beloved, a town hero. What lessons can we learn…
Scripture-ishOne Spirit
This post is the second and final essay (for the moment) on the Holy Spirit. The prior post has a brief preface explaining the origins of these essays…
Scripture-ishThe Holy Spirit
I recently wrote this brief lesson on the Holy Spirit, for a church Bible class book that will appear later this spring or summer. That book will be the 2026…