Christian Theology in a Post-Theological Church World First, it is important to define terms. By “Christian theology” here I mean the discipline that explores and explains Christian beliefs in a scholarly way—using critical thinking while acknowledging Christian sources as the material of the discipline. Those Christian sources are traditionally recognized as the Christian scriptures (Bible), Christian tradition, and contemporary culture. These traditionally exist in a hierarchy in terms of authority, but various Christian theologians express them and use them in… Read more

How Christian Institutiosn of Higher Education Should Respond to Faculty Members Whose Research Results Are Controversial First of all, before attempting to answer the implied question with a proposal, I have to say that there are many kinds of Christian institutions of higher education. Here I am ONLY referring to ones that claim academic integrity and excellence. And I am ONLY referring to ones that WANT that claim to be taken seriously. Academic integrity requires academic freedom. On the other… Read more

What God Can, Can’t, and Won’t Do This is a follow up essay to my immediately preceding post and all the caveats (rules, guidelines) included there (and in previous blog essays) hold for comments to this one. Please read that immediately preceding essay about Process Theology. This one builds on it. It seems to me important to distinguish between three things about what God does and doesn’t do. First, however, I want to make clear that I am a believer… Read more

Why Process Theology Is an Alternative to Christianity This past Sunday (March 3, 2019) my local city newspaper included on its editorial page a column by a local pastor urging that an “outmoded” idea of God be discarded in favor of a better one. It read like a sermon, so I assume it was some version of one she preached to her congregation. She began by mentioning the Transfiguration narrative because it was Transfiguration Sunday. But that was her text… Read more

Ethics and Toxic Masculinity In recent months there has been a renewed interest in and use of the concept “toxic masculinity”—largely due to this recent spate of male sexual predators who are celebrities. And the #MeToo Movement (which I fully support). So what is meant by “toxic masculinity?” There are many definitions and descriptions of it. But they all seem to have one thing in common—that many boys and men are socially conditioned to repress feelings of sorrow and empathy… Read more

Should Boys and Girls Wrestle Each Other? A Case Study in Sex and Cultural Gender Confusion For those of you who have not read about the case I will summarize it briefly without naming names or offering information that might identify the participants. (I don’t want to add to their grief over the publicity to which they have already been subjected by the press.) The case: A high school boy who is a member of a wrestling team is required… Read more

Is There “No Possibility” That God Exists? Thoughts about Stephen Hawking’s Final Declaration In his last book Brief Answers to Big Questions (Bantam, 2018) physicist Stephen Hawking argued that not only is there no proof of God’s existence but that “there’s no possibility of God.” (See “Stephen Hawking’s Final Book Says There’s ‘No Possibility’ of God in Our Universe” at “Live Science” at https://www.livescience.com/63854-stephen-hawking-says-no-god.html . According to this article, to his dying day Hawking believed science has disproven God’s existence…. Read more

Our God Reigns (But How?) (A Sermon) One of our favorite truths is that “our God reigns.” The Bible clearly tells us and our experience confirms—that God is the ruler over all. I whole heartedly affirm that great truth—but with one reservation, qualification. It has to do with another biblical theme: that God has adversaries. What I mean is that, according to the biblical witness God does not always yet get his way in everything. The Bible confronts us with two… Read more

Follow Up to Spiritual Warfare Essay: What about True Multiculturalism? Two brief explanations: First, for most of my thirty-seven years teaching career in American Christian higher education I have heard much about the need for multiculturalism, cultural engagement, diversity, and acceptance of non-western ways of life. A great deal of pressure is exerted on faculty members of institutions of higher education, both religious and secular, to draw on “two thirds world” cultures (as well as women’s experience and African-American and… Read more

Have American Christians Simply Given Up the Biblical Theme of Spiritual Warfare? First, to ward off expected critical responses, let me just say that this subject is fraught with pitfalls. During the 1970s, for example, American evangelical Christianity was shaken by various “deliverance ministries” that went to extremes with exorcisms and methods of “spiritual warfare” that were unbiblical and even superstitious. It is my thesis that the popularity and fallout of this extreme movement led (again) to throwing the baby… Read more