Biblical topic study: love the Lord...

Hamilton Ramos

Hi power users:

I am trying to do a topical Bible study on the first and foremost commandment:

"You shall love your God with all your heart"

I tried typing in the topic box of the Biblical topic study:

Love the Lord, 1st commandment, first commandment, etc. and nothing.

Then I typed "love God" and a suggestion came in the way of "God's love"

I am surprised that there is no topical study for the foremost commandment, am I doing something wrong?

I noticed also that some persons from other traditions want to change that command to:

You shall worship God, or you shall serve and fear God, when I think Jesus Himself used clearly g:agapeseis in Mark 12:30.

Any suggestions to topically study "love the Lord" as in the first commandment?

In factbook there is an entry for the New commandment (love each other) but I think that is different from us "shall love God with our all" [paraphrase].

Thanks ahead of time for any input.

Edit:

I did find a workflow for "love the Lord" but in expository sermon. How can I know which topics are in which workflow, and why does it look like most references in the expository sermon are of OT?

Historical - spiritual context:

"...This was certainly the foundational command for God’s people. Notice the command was not to fear, sacrifice, worship, serve, work hard for, praise, or give; it was to love. It is instructive to us to realize that the “greatest” of all commands found in both the Old and New Testaments directs us to love. This, perhaps more than any other feature of Christianity, was meant to distinguish it from all other religions. Christ knows that for us to strive to love God first—before anything or anyone else—will keep our priorities in the right place. Once we put first things first in our life, the other things follow in the right order. Only a God of love would require love in return."

Blackaby, T. (2012). The commands of christ: what it really means to follow jesus. Nashville: B&H Books.

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Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

Suggest doing a topical study on The Shema plus can search for "The Shema" articles

Edit: Babylonian Talmud provides some context for Galatians 5:14 (suspect Torah teacher was expecting a similar answer when Jesus responded with The Shema when asked what is the greatest commandment)

Keep Smiling [:)]

Hamilton Ramos

Thank you KS4J.

have you taken a look at the following?:

https://projekter.aau.dk/projekter/files/281070062/Master_Thesis_of_Simon_Josias_Graf.pdf

TheOn, CalvOn, Theology and Calvinism ontologies respectively. Powerful stuff.

To my understanding Protege can be dowloaded free, not sure how to visualize the above ontologies, but according to the suggestions of the author in the above article, powerful theological information structure for searching and researching can be developed.

Blessings.

John Fidel

Hamilton,

In addition to the approach suggested by KS4J, you could approach the subject from a Bible reference such as Deut 6.5 or Matt 22.37 and use the Passage Guide, or create a custom guide that has the most important sections such as shown below:

I opened a second Bible with "send hyperlinks here" so I can compare texts without losing my main text. The Thematic Outlines section will provide you a complete outline study on Love, for God.

Hope this helps.

Francis

Just want to add one element of specificity to John's advice above: the Important Passages section should be particularly serviceable.

Set it to Type: Commentaries.

Start with the original passage as John suggested. Use the "From" option to see what passages are most commonly cited in commentaries on your passage.

Use the "To" option to see what commentary on other passages in the Bible cross-reference your passage most often.

Check other types such as "Shared Topics" or "Similar Commands" or use "All Types" and sort by rank.

Sean Boisen

Hi power users:

I am trying to do a topical Bible study on the first and foremost commandment:

"You shall love your God with all your heart"

I tried typing in the topic box of the Biblical topic study:

Love the Lord, 1st commandment, first commandment, etc. and nothing.

Then I typed "love God" and a suggestion came in the way of "God's love"

I am surprised that there is no topical study for the foremost commandment, am I doing something wrong?

You're not doing anything wrong, but your expectations may not match what we provide.

The keys (what you can type in the input box) for the Biblical Topical Study workflow are the same topics as you can enter for the Topic Guide and (a subset of) Factbook. Even though we've curated tens of thousands of concepts, we don't have a topic/concept for the first commandment itself. However, we have several related concepts, as you've noted.

Hamilton Ramos

Thank you John, totally awesome, I wonder if one can do a resource using pbb, putting together all the bits and pieces found in thematic outline, fact book, and other sections of the guides.

Hamilton Ramos

Thank you Sean.

Amazing work done in Logos. I just wish there was a simple way to gather all bits and pieces into one resource (maybe using pbb), and then have that as reference, with url to specific locations in resources for further reference.

I am really surprised that after 2000 years of academic work, no one has come (for example) with a resource that lists key propositional truths from the Bible, and maybe categorized in some way for easy reference.

I would expect that after so many years, more compendiums would be available and mostly using comparative skills. (the 4 views series gets close and so do the Lexham guides).

It would be great to have a tool to be able to add other info found in monographs that usually are not covered in detail in the comparing type resources.