On Friday, November 18, many of us gathered in San Francisco to celebrate the life and contribution of theologian Clark Pinnock.  Five of us read papers about Pinnock, including his daughter Sarah who teaches theology at Trinity University.  Other presenters were Scot McKnight, Linda Mercadante and John Sanders.  Below is some of what I said about Clark, one of my theological heroes, who passed away last year: “Clark Pinnock pioneered a new way of being an evangelical in theology.  I... Read more

Recently I received a brochure from an evangelist I admire.  He is well known in certain Christian circles.  I have myself traveled some distance to hear him (he also sings with his wife in a duet and I like the kind of music they perform. It reminds me of the church I grew up in.  He has also written many songs performed by other singing evangelists). The brochure quotes me and that is why I’m responding here.  But I don’t... Read more

I have always wanted to avoid laying down some guidelines about this blog because, after all, it’s mine and I can do with it what I please.  However, to save some people time and frustration, I’ll reveal some rules of thumb I use in deciding whose comments to post.  I haven’t enforced all of these consistently, but I am going to try to from now on: 1) This blog is for constructive dialogue, civil conversation.  When people come here they... Read more

A Parable (Not an Allegory) Once upon a time there was a small country involved in a civil war; a coalition of freedom fighters was trying to oust the evil dictator who had ruled the country with an iron fist for decades. The dictator was a ruthless autocrat who arbitrarily used his secret police to arrest people in the middle of the night; most them simply disappeared and nobody ever saw them again.  The purpose seemed to be to create... Read more

Apparently my honest statement (in answer to a student’s honest question) that, if somehow it were revealed to me that God is as TULIP Calvinism says and as its good and necessary consequences imply, I would not worship that god, has stirred some people up to the point of questioning my salvation (and calling my religion humanistic). I don’t know if this will help at all, but I will clarify my statement this way: IF it were revealed to me... Read more

Recently I’ve been delving once again into deism, or what is more appropriately called natural religion.  (Deism has come to have connotations of belief in a distant, uninvolved and even uncaring God.  That wasn’t true of all who are lumped together as deists and the real sine qua non of “deism” was belief in natural religion, not a doctrine of God.)  I’ve been re-reading Locke (a precursor), Toland and Tindal (among others).  These men thought they were Christians.  Well, there’s... Read more

If you haven’t yet read the first part of this post, plesae go back and read it.  This won’t make much sense without that. So, my thesis is that not only SHOULD mature people, including Christians, think for themselves; they DO–whether they admit it or not.  Nobody thinks for someone else–as much as they might try to influence their thinking.  At the very least the choice whether to believe what another person is saying is one’s own and cannot be... Read more

Lately I’ve been re-reading and studying Immanuel Kant’s 1784 essay Was Ist Aufklarung? (What Is Enlightnment?)  It’s available all over the internet, just google it if you’re interested. I grew up in a church and denomination where it was Verboten to think for yourself–unless you were the great spiritual man of God du jour.  Even then, of course, nobody thought he or she (as in Aimee Semple MacPherson) thought for themselves; they received it right from God. I found Kant’s... Read more

Lest anyone think I hate Packer or disdain everything he’s written, I want to applaud him for one of the best basic theology articles I have ever read.  It’s so good I copied it and have kept it in my files for years (since 1986!).  The article is “What do you mean when you say ‘God’?”  (Remember article titles are assigned by editors and not by authors; that may not have been Packer’s preferred title.)  It was published in Christianity... Read more

Today I received an e-mail from a reader who asked why I didn’t mention J. I. Packer in either Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities or Against Calvinism.  That’s a good question. I didn’t, so now I will. To the best of my knowledge, the only lengthy, detailed treatment of Arminianism in print by Packer was his Introduction to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ in A Quest for Godliness.  It may be found at this... Read more