About the Articles on this Site
A few explanatory comments to help you understand the material we are publishing on this site.
Capitalization Conventions
Of course, we always capitalize “God” and “Jesus Christ”. That is simple English spelling – proper nouns get capitals.
A more vexed issue is whether to capitalize pronouns too – “Him” and “His”, or other nouns that relate to things belonging to God. Should we type “his will” or “His will” or “His Will”, for example? Should we refer to the son of God or the Son of God?
We note there is no clear accepted approach on this, but after looking at a selection of the best known and best respected Bibles, it seems that most do not capitalize pronouns. For example, the KJV, NIV and ESV all do not capitalize pronouns, and they seem to be the three most widely accepted Bible versions, and spanning over 350 years of typesetting convention. We find it comforting that there hasn’t been a recent trend to either add or remove capital letters, but rather a generally consistent approach over the centuries.
Other less-well known versions that follow a similar style convention include ISV, Douay-Rheims (which is slightly older than the KJV), Darby and NLT.
On the other hand, NASB generally capitalizes pronouns, and HCSB does, more or less, but with some inconsistencies. Less well-known capitalizers include the Berean Study and Literal Bibles and the Weymouth New Testament.
So our general approach is to conform with the consistent style within the KJV/NIV/ESV/etc and not add gratuitous capitalization.
Saying (and Writing) the Name of God
We wrote a couple of paragraphs on this point, and then realized it deserved a fuller treatment. As a result, we created a separate article that now runs 2700 words in length on this interesting point.
The short answer is we feel it is good not bad for us as Christians to proudly and worshipfully say the name of our God (ie Jehovah, and sometimes expressed in other forms too). The longer answer can be read in our article “Saying and Writing the Name of God“.
Biblical Citations and Authorities in General
Generally we try to walk a balanced line of compromise between doubling the length of an article by filling it with Biblical quotes, some of which may be obtuse and individually only weakly persuasive, as one extreme, and by making unsupported assertions at the other extreme.
Some things are so universally accepted as to seldom or never need to be backed up by citations. Does anyone need to be presented with ten or twenty cited verses to confirm that Mary was the mother of Jesus, or that Jesus is the son of God? Unless we’re doing a ‘back to basics’ examination of why these (almost) universally accepted truths are indeed correct, we can probably omit a need to establish these fundamental points which you and we almost surely already agree upon.
But whenever we’re moving away from such key core elements, we try to always point to the Biblical basis for our assertion. On occasion, we suspect we might be lazy, and there might be statements that would be more readily accepted if supported by Bible quotes; and if you ever feel there is something we’re saying that just hangs out there, unsupported, please let us know and we’ll add support from scripture to the claim.
Most of the time we provide pop-up links to the verses we are citing (the splendid service provided for free by Faithlife/Biblia.com can’t be over-praised); at other times, if we feel it helps rather than breaks up the article’s flow we choose to include some or all of the verses either in the text of our article or in separate quote boxes.
The pop-up links generally use the English Standard Version, and that is indeed one of our preferred Bible translation. When we’re actually displaying the text, we may occasionally use a different version if we think it more fairly explains and expresses a thought, and we often used the Amplified Bible (AMP) because of the way it incorporates synonyms and alternates directly into the text rather than leaving them as footnotes or requiring us to simply trust their choices. We always show which version we are quoting from.
On the other hand we do not “shop around” the different Bible versions to try and find a version that has a completely different interpretation of a key passage.
Simple or Complex Errors
We sometimes note, even long after publishing an article, errors of one sort or another within the article. Perhaps we typed the wrong link to a Bible text to support a statement. Perhaps in editing we missed out or messed up a paragraph. Or maybe we just made a really minor typo. These errors are minor, but sometimes we have realized we omitted a major block of commentary that would better explain an issue, and those are more important, and more embarrassing too. We never wish to present you with incomplete or inaccurate information.
So, if you see anything that seems wrong, that either means that it is wrong, and should be corrected, or is unclear, and should be clarified. In both cases, please do let us know.
We feel a heavy burden of obligation to ensure that everything we offer to you is as fair and full as it should be, and welcome feedback, both positive and negative, to help ensure that we do indeed fairly discharge this obligation.
