The argument is that it is not about history. Well, yes, it is. It’s about sordid, depraved history that does not deserve to be memorialized in public but hidden in the dark recesses of a museum. Instead of tearing them down lawlessly as we did Saddam Hussein’s statues, they deserve to be dismantled with liturgy, memory, repentance, and public dedications to reconciliation, peace, and justice. Source During his infamous press conference this Tuesday, as he vehemently defended his claim that... Read more

Race tension is intractable in the USA, but that does mean there isn’t hope — for there is. The place to begin is in the church, and it is in the church that we have the opportunity to embody a multiracial body of Christ and “experiment” with a radical kind of living — not by accommodating or tolerating but by loving and celebrating diversity in a unity in Christ. You may well know Paul’s  famous verse … In Christ there... Read more

Yesterday I received a letter from a reader asking about plagiarizing sermons, and the writer made it clear when the subject came up many in the room thought it was not only acceptable but there were no moral issues at work. The issue is not professional ethics or intellectual property. The issue, the reader said to me, was about “authentic spirituality.” My response follows, but here’s the big one: What do you think of using the sermons of others? (Without attribution.)... Read more

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Chapter 15 of Alister McGrath’s book A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology is entitled “An Emergent Creation and Natural Theology.” This chapter presents some rather interesting ideas. First McGrath returns to Augustine – not to his cosmology or science, but to his view of God’s creative power. According to Augustine God’s creative activity encompasses both an act and a process. While Augustine applied his ideas in the context of the understanding of his day, which... Read more

Why did it take so long for orthodox Trinitarians to recognize or at least call out the non-orthodox views of the complementarian Trinitarian theory of the Trinity? That is a question asked by Kevin Giles in The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trinity. A conference at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 2008 (Grudem, Ware, McCall, Yandell) confused many … previously mentioned reviews by Aimee Byrd and Rachel Miller… an event at Southern Seminary (Grudem, Ware, Sanders,... Read more

We must remember the worst of our history. That does not mean we have to idolize it in the town square. Read more

Just over a year ago complementarianism as we knew it began to crack open. The story of its crack-up is told by Kevin Giles, The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trinity. I remember the events because I routinely reposted the major critical posts and read the responses by such folks as Denny Burk, Owen Strachan, and others. Now to the story of what Giles calls the “civil war.” On June 3, everything changed. Civil war broke out in... Read more

There is a trend — let’s give it a positive spin — in seminaries that seminary education is not so much any more about educating pastors or providing education for future pastors. In fact, the trend is otherwise, but I am proud to say Northern Seminary is still focused on churches, on church ministries, and pastors. I am the director of a Master’s in New Testament in Context program that focuses on helping pastors or future pastors be better teachers... Read more