Software
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 What
a world we live in! If someone had told me twenty seven years ago when
I entered seminary that I would one day be able to carry an entire theological
library around in a little attache case I would have laughed at them —
out loud! But here I am riding shotgun while my wife drives us to Houston
with a laptop computer that contains, you guessed it, an entire theological
library! I used to be impressed that Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley read
their Greek New Testaments while riding horseback, but not anymore. I am
traveling at the speed of (well I’d better not say) and reading not only
my Greek New Testament, but my Hebrew Bible and a large number of theological
and Biblical study aids that help me understand the Bible better. For this
amazing ability I have the folks at Logos Research to thank! A number of
years ago I reviewed their premier Bible study program, Logos 2.0, and
declared it to be the Rolls Royce of such software. Well, nothing has arisen
to topple it as king of the mountain and, looking out to the horizon of
future computering, nothing will any time soon. Logos still boasts the
pinnacle in electronic theological and Biblical studies.
Let me tell you a little about it. I use the words “a little” because there is much more to this program than a short review can cover. Still, I would like to hit the high point features that make the Logos Scholar’s Library the very best of its kind. I’ll begin with an overview of the product and then take you, the reader, through a step-by-step exercise in doing a Bible study using the Logos Scholar’s Library exclusively. First and foremost, I should mention that this electronic library features the Logos Library System (LLS) software, which is the very best on the market. Once you purchase the Logos Scholar’s Library you get lifetime upgrades to the system! The Logos Scholar’s Library contains all the contents of the Logos Bible Reference Series Deluxe,
I should add that I did have to add the New American Standard Bible since it did not come with the Library. But the Library does include such tools as a Concise Theology by J. I. Packer, John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, the Encyclopedia of 7,700 Illustrations, geography tools, Bible dictionaries, photographs of the Holy Land, Bible introductions, several commentary sets, a biographical study entitled, Who’s Who in Christian History, and a number of other tools. Several additional sets would have proved invaluable: the full set of the church fathers, Calvin’s Commentaries, and Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle. I would add to this the entire published works of Jonathan Edwards as he is by far the greatest theologian ever to grace American soil. Perhaps the folks at Logos will see the value of these works and add them in future editions of the Scholar’s library. However, even without these standards, this is a powerful tool for Biblical studies. We shall now attempt a study using only the Logos Scholar’s Library. Since I am working on a sermon about the nature of God, I’ll kill two birds with one stone and devote our exercise here to an investigation of God as a Trinity. Since the word Trinity does not appear in the Bible, but is a theological term used by scholars to put a handle on a Biblical concept. We will not do a strict word study of the term Trinity, but investigate the concept itself. It will help to consult a theology book or a theological dictionary to find out what the concept Trinity actually means and then see if is is found in the Bible. After a couple of mouse clicks in the Logos Scholar’s Library, I discovered this brief statement which I copied and pasted into this study:
Is there more that we should know at this point? Probably so. And further investigation will indicate that the Church fought a bloody battle over the Trinity in the 3rd and 4th centuries. This is evident when we click on Who’s Who in Church History and study Athanasius. There we find that he was the chief proponent against Arius, who denied that Jesus was God and thus repudiated God as Triune. We also learn that the Nicene Creed established the Trinity as a test of orthodoxy in the 4th century. We might also consult Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religions (16th century) and the Westminster Confession of Faith (17th century) and note that not only is the “Trinity” a doctrine near to the heart of Roman Catholicism, but of those in the Protestant Reformation as well. Still, the proof of the pudding in any theological doctrine is whether it is taught in the Bible. This is not to discount theologians and theological creeds, but in the end they are secondary sources and are below the Bible as authorities for truth. So, how can we find out whether the Bible actually teaches that God is three Persons in one essence? The Logos Scholar’s Library enables a student to do just that! We will need to do a word study on the Trinity but, again, since the term itself is not found in the Bible, we must go at it another way. A reasonable approach is to search for a key word that would establish God as Triune. There are three main factors taught by the dictionary we consulted. The first is that God is one. There are several ways we might approach the “oneness” of God through word study. We will search the word “one” to see if it is used to describe God. After accessing the Bible of our choice, we enter a search field and type in “one” and press “search.” When I did this, I found that the term “one” occurs almost 3,000 times in the Bible. I could look up each occurrence, but this would take up the better part of a day! So, it is time to once again consult the New Bible Dictionary. Since we have left it open (just in case we needed it), the dictionary is only a mouse click away. Unfortunately, while the article we consulted states that God is One, it does not seek to prove that Biblically. So we try Easton’s Bible Dictionary which references several Scriptures that teach that God is one. It is important to establish the oneness of God because the doctrine of the Trinity does not teach three gods as three persons, but one God in three Persons. Having established that the Bible teaches that God is one, we must now find out whether it ascribes to more than one person the title God. If so, then the one God is three in Person and Trinitarianism is established. Again, a word search is in order. Since everyone agrees that the Father is God, we must focus on establishing not only the personality, but also the deity of the Son and Holy Spirit. How would we determine that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are persons? We could consult one of the Bible dictionaries or theologies, but for the sake of this review, let’s try a word search again. Since it is obvious that only persons teach, we need only to find Jesus and the Holy Spirit as teachers to establish that they are indeed persons. So, we search the term “teach” in the Bible of our choosing in Logos Scholar’s Library and look up the references. The first NT reference is Matthew 5:2 which depicts Jesus as teaching. Thus we have established that Jesus Christ is a person. What about the Holy Spirit? By simply scrolling down we find John 14:26 where Jesus says that He will send the Holy Spirit to teach the disciples. We might also look for personal pronouns referring to Jesus and the Holy Spirit to fortify our understanding of their personage, but we will now move on to establish whether they are divine. The simplest approach is to search the term God and see if it is ever ascribed to them, but such an approach is much too cumbersome, for the term God occurs almost 3,400 times in the Bible. Again, it will be advisable to use a shortcut to point us to specific Bible texts that teach the deity of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. By looking up God in the Harper’s Bible Dictionary, we find Jesus referred to in John 20:28 where doubting Thomas actually calls Him God. By accessing the Greek text in Logos Scholar’s Library, we learn that Thomas employed theos to denominate Jesus as God. Since this is the normal word for God in the New Testament, there can be no doubt that Thomas realized and proclaimed the deity of Jesus. But what about the Holy Spirit? Is there a text to indicate that He, too, is divine? Another shortcut is to look at the Concise Theology by J. I. Packer who references Acts 5 where Peter calls the Holy Spirit God. Again, the Greek NT shows that theos is ascribed to the Spirit as it was the Son. A quick look at the Matthew Henry commentary included in Logos Scholar’s Library confirms what we have discovered and thus affirms the doctrine of Trinitarianism. The purpose of this review has been to show how handy is Logos Scholar’s Library. I applaud the folks at Logos Research Systems because they have included enough tools in this package to enable students and scholars alike to do some serious Biblical and theological study. Had we time and space, we could take an excursion to the Holy Land via Logos’ maps or we could study any number of Christian hymns. One can read the whole Bible in Hebrew and Greek or take a basic course in how to study the Bible. This is a resource that every serious student of the Bible should acquire. The cost is $429.97, a great bargain considering all the tools that are included. I purchased most of them in book form before getting Logos Scholar’s Library and paid much more than twice a much. Even if this were not such a bargain, I can’t possible take all those tools and use them to study in the car on the way to Houston! I predict that Logos Scholar’s Library will become a required resource at seminaries serious about Biblical studies. Check out the Logos products including this product at www.logos.com or call (800) 875-6467.
Tim Hoke, MBA ThM, is a 1979 graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary who majored in New Testament Greek. He has been in pastoral ministry since 1979 and has pastored Faith Presbyterian Church in San Antonio since 1990. |