Innocent until Proven Guilty? Or Guilty until Proven Innocent? All my life I’ve heard the mantra “innocent until proven guilty” as one expression of our American justice system. It means, of course, “until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law by a jury of one’s peers.” And, I learned, as I grew older, there are exceptions. A defendant can, for example, plead guilty or he can request his case to be heard and decided by a... Read more

What Do I Mean by the “Supernatural?” My new book The Essentials of Christian Thought mentions throughout the necessity of the dimension of the “supernatural” for Christianity. To my way of thinking, a Christianity without the supernatural is not authentic. The book is an exposition of what I call “narrative biblical metaphysics”—an attempted archaeology of the Bible’s implicit perspective on reality. I acknowledge, of course, that the Bible is not a book of philosophy or even theology; it is a... Read more

Does the New Testament Church (“Ekklesia”) Exist Today? As everyone who has read my blog for very long knows, one of my favorite Christian theologians is Emil Brunner (1889-1966). When I was in seminary (1970s) his three volume Dogmatics was widely used as the primary textbook for courses in systematic theology in American seminaries—including the one I attended and graduated from. Later I discovered that is Dogmatics was really mostly a compilation of his thoughts in earlier monographs on theological... Read more

Announcing My New Book: The Essentials of Christian Thought: Seeing Reality through the Biblical Story by Roger E. Olson (Zondervan)   Today I received in the mail two “advance copies” of my latest book entitled The Essentials of Christian Thought: Seeing Reality through the Biblical Story (Zondervan, 2017). Here is what theologian Alister E. McGrath of Oxford University says about it: “Olson offers his readers a timely and powerful defense of a distinctively Christian metaphysics and teases out its implications... Read more

The Main Point of the Christian Doctrine of Sin: We Are All “Damaged Goods” My previous two essays posted here are about the Christian idea of sin—especially the Christian idea of the “fall” into sin. My main focus in them was “fallenness,” not individual sins themselves. Traditional Christianity of all tribes and types has always emphasized a distinction between sin as a condition of being fallen away from communion with God and from our true nature and sin as individual... Read more

Sex, Money and Power: How We Confirm the Biblical-Christian Doctrine of “Original Sin” Whether or not the Adam of Genesis 3 and Romans 1 (among other biblical references) was an actual historical person from whom all people are descended is debatable and probably will always be debated—especially in light of modern science. I will not say it doesn’t matter; what I will say is that what matters more is the traditional biblical-Christian belief that all human beings—with the one exception... Read more

Is belief in a 'real, historical Adam' necessary for authentic, biblical, orthodox Christianity and, if so, how does one reconcile that with modern science? Read more

A Great Irony: Contemporary American “Conservative” Christianity Is Really Liberal! I find one of the greatest ironies of contemporary American Christianity here: What usually is called “conservative Christianity” is really a form of liberal Christianity. So, as usual, it is important to define our terms. Here by “conservative Christianity” I mean that socio-political expression of Christianity sometimes called the “Religious Right” and often given the misnomer “evangelicalism” by the media. By “liberal Christianity” I mean that historical-theological type of Christianity... Read more

Is There Anything We Can Take for Granted (that All Americans Agree about)? A Challenge Call it nostalgia if you wish, but I remember a time when there were at least some beliefs one could take for granted—some beliefs that one could express and expect agreement. At least in America. True, some of them were false and badly needed correction. On the other hand, I worry about a cultural condition in which no such consensus exists about anything. One of... Read more

Are There “Wicked Problems” in Theology? I only recently became aware of the social-scientific concept of “wicked problems.” According to a 2012 article in The New Yorker (www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/something-wicked-this-way-comes) the concept was created by two social scientists in 1973. In brief, using my own words, a wicked problem is one that seems intractable because solving it appears to create as many or more problems. Examples often given of wicked problems are: poverty, prison reform, health care, etc. The idea is not... Read more