Friends, I am delighted to share with you on this Christmas Eve a witty and incisive analysis of the American campus. If you ever wondered what in the world is going on there, here is your answer. Truth be told, Dr. Franck is a good friend.  But this should make my recommendation of this piece no less emphatic.   Read more

Yesterday I posted a very brief comment on the flap at Wheaton College over the political science professor who said Muslims and Christians worship the same God.  She was apparently influenced by evangelical theologian Miroslav Volf’s affirmative answer to this question in his book Allah and subsequent blogposts and lectures around the country. I answered in the negative, citing the differences between the two pictures of God in the Bible and the Qur’an.  I focused on the two sacred books because Volf did... Read more

Most evangelicals have been told that simply following tradition in spirituality is wrong, and that far better is to listen in my heart to what I think the Spirit is telling me.  Thus it is better to go by one’s “inner peace” than by traditional liturgy.  Spontaneous prayer is always better than liturgical prayer, either on Sundays or in the Daily Office. But there are several problems here: Jeremiah tells us that our hearts are deceitful (Jer. 17.9), and we know... Read more

When she said Muslims and Christians worship the same God? Here is the Christianity Today story on Poli Sci prof Larycia Hawkins’ suspension by the College. She was influenced by Yale evangelical theologian Miroslav Volf, whose book Allah argues that the God of the Bible is the same as the God of the Qur’an. Missiologist Harold Netland and I argued against Volf in our book A Trinitarian Theology of Religions. Volf says in his book that both the Christian and Muslim Scriptures... Read more

Top scholars will gather in Los Angeles on January 18 to discuss the growing threat to Israel and how Christians can respond. The conference title is “Evangelical Christians, Jews and Israel: Looming Threats To An Historic Friendship.” It features leading scholars from Israel (Malcolm Lowe and Petra Heldt), the leader of the Aramaic community in Israel (Shadi Khalloul), the author of Jesus the Jewish Theologian (Brad Young), an expert on anti-Judaism in the Church (Tricia Miller), the President of Tribe Media Corp. and the... Read more

It is often claimed today that Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank is a violation of international law—specifically UN Resolution 242. But is it? (more…) Read more

Why not? Because radical Muslims have been doing this to Christians for years, and not just in the Middle East.  And ISIS has been telling the world for several years what it will do in the name of the Prophet. So the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope should not be shocked.  And they should stop avoiding the obvious: these are Muslim acts perpetrated by Muslims in the name of Islam. So argues Judith Bergman in this compelling article. Read more

Good post yesterday by Richard Land with several important points. “Islam is not monolithic. The proof of this statement is illustrated by the fact that radical Islamic jihadism, the harshest expression of Islam (seeking to impose by force a world-wide Islamic caliphate) has, up to the present moment, killed at least four of their fellow Muslims for every non-Muslim victim.” “Public opinion polls reveal that perhaps as many as 10 percent to 20 percent of the approximately 1.6 billion Muslim... Read more

Even a casual reader knows that the Middle East is boiling over, and that by the time things cool off much about the Middle East will be different. But can anything good emerge from the hatred and mayhem now running amok?  And how can we understand what is going on over there? In the new journal Providence, Robert Nicholson has some intriguing answers to these questions. (more…) Read more

This is the key question. We can talk all we want about moderate vs radical Muslims.  But if “moderates” also say they want sharia law to displace all civil law in every country, or if they support violent jihad “sometimes” against unbelievers, or if they think Israel has no right to exist, then this is not a moderate Islam that can live at peace with non-Muslims. But now there is a strong resolution proposed by Muslim scholars who are true... Read more