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The Problem with Evangelical Theology: Testing the Exegetical Foundations of Calvinism, Dispensationalism, Wesleyanism, and Pentecostalism Ben Witherington III Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016 (2005), 978-1-4813-0421-4, $39.95, xi + 321 pb (this review appeared in the most recent issue of JSNT). This is a revised and expanded edition of Witherington’s 2005 book, which as well as discussing Calvinism, Dispensationalism and Wesleyanism, covers Pentecostalism. The author finds each of these major evangelical theologies to be exegetically weak in places, especially where... Read more

According to the folk in Foynes, Irish coffee was invented here. Why was it invented? Well perhaps you’ve heard it rains a wee tad in Ireland. The nice folk in Foynes finished the tour by giving us lessons in how to make Irish coffee, and then each of us got a sample! One of our brave lads on the tour, named James (we called him King James), volunteered to learn and be the guinea pig…. I can attest that Irish... Read more

One of the more amazing, and lesser known, spots in all of Ireland is the little seaside village of Foynes. It’s not on the major tour routes and stops like Blarney Castle or Galway or Dublin. But it certainly deserves a visit, because the first Transatlantic passenger flights landed in the bay next to this little town, and also because here is where Irish coffee was apparently invented. The first Transatlantic flights that were not pure solo flights, were in... Read more

‘The Third Nero’ is the fourth novel in the Flavia Albia series, and in various respects it is the best of the four. It is a novel that those who are interested in the setting of the Book of Revelation should read, for here we find a rather paranoid Rome, frightened by various wars, and especially by the prospect of attack by the warriors of Parthia with their famous archers, and equally frightened by their own paranoid megalomaniac Emperor, Domitian,... Read more

If the Gospel of Christ has not the power to make bad persons good, we can shut up shop at once. We have nothing else to do. If it can be seen and known in this town that Christ can take lives that are evil and make them pure; lives that are pointless and make them powerful; lives that are hopeless and sorrowful and make them glad with a peace that passes all understanding—then this city is going to sit... Read more

It is the most natural thing in the world to want something to be proud of, something to glory in. You can see this quite clearly the whole string of compensations which modern life has to provide for people. In modern life, because that is what we know best and also because much modern medicine today means the giving to people of drugs and stimulants for which they clamor, I say you can see it in the artificial compensations of... Read more

(St. Patrick statue) Whenever the Church bases its own life and validity of its ministry on a line of succession connecting it with Augustine of Canterbury or Peter of Rome it is committing the same blasphemy against the sovereign freedom of God to choose his people in creative love, from generation to generation. Of course, the claim to an unbroken succession is bad history, but it is worse than that, it is bad theology. John Wesley called the so-called “apostolic... Read more

(Elvet Methodist Church where CKB often preached in Durham) If God had been intending to coerce all human beings into accepting the risen Jesus by a manifestation of unmistakable supernatural power, he might have saved himself the trouble and pain of the Incarnation. Why go through all the motions of the ministry of Jesus if in the end all people were to be dragooned by main force into the right camp? Practically, and that is not quite the same as... Read more

And what matters is this—if you think, and there are no difficulties in this, of a world that has gone wrong, there are two ways of putting things right that simply would not work. One is that God should simply step in and stop all the folly and wickedness at a blow. Of course, he could; but to do so would mean that we human beings were not being treated seriously as moral and responsible beings. The other is that... Read more