Does Love Ever Coerce? My Response to The Uncontrolling Love of God by Thomas Jay Oord The book’s whole title and publication information is: The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence by Thomas Jay Oord (InterVarsity Press, 2015). I title this post “My Response” because in the book Oord specifically mentions me as someone with whom he disagrees. I hope readers will keep this in mind when I disagree with Oord. I do not take... Read more

A National Registry of People of a Certain World Religion? *Nothing contained in this post should be interpreted as expressing the ideas of anyone other than this blogger’s. This blogger here, as always, speaks only for himself, not for any institution, organization or person(s) with which he may be affiliated.* According to some news reports (including the New York Times), a leading American (U.S.) presidential candidate has openly suggested the formation of a national registry of all persons in the... Read more

Thanksgiving Thoughts In the United States this Thursday, November 26 (2015) is a holiday called “Thanksgiving Day.” I won’t bore with the history except to say it commemorates the survival of the English settlers, usually called “Pilgrims,” of Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts in 1620. After a harrowing voyage from the “old world” to “New England,” they held a feast and gave thanks to God. Very few people, even in the U.S., remember who those “Pilgrims” were. Although there were others among... Read more

My Response to “An Assemblies of God Response to Reformed Theology” The Assemblies of God denomination is one of the largest, if not the largest, evangelical Christian denomination that is historically-theologically primarily, if not exclusively, Arminian in theology. I grew up Pentecostal but not “AG.” However, the Pentecostal group I belonged to as a child, youth and young adult was very similar to the AG in doctrine and practice. In fact, there was an attempt in the 1960s to merge... Read more

Alister McGrath’s Parchman Lectures at Baylor’s Truett Seminary (November, 2015) As I recently announced here, British evangelical theologian-philosopher-scientist Alister McGrath delivered the annual Parchman Lectures at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary the week of November 16-20, 2015. McGrath is, in this blogger’s opinion, one of the most important voices in contemporary Christian theology and philosophy. (If you are unsure about this claim, go back to my previous blog post entitled “An Evangelical Superstar Scholar: Alister McGrath.” Unfortunately, due to my teaching... Read more

An Evangelical Superstar Scholar: Alister McGrath This week (November 17-18) I am privileged to meet, hear, and interact with British evangelical superstar theologian-philosopher-scientist Alister McGrath (b. 1953). Here is his brief description according to Wikipedia: “Alister Edgar McGrath is a Northern Irish theologian, priest, intellectual historian, scientist, and Christian apologist. He currently holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, and is Professor of Divinity at Gresham... Read more

Where Calvinists, Lutherans, Arminians (and Some Catholics) Agree The subject is “salvation” from beginning to end–from the first stirrings of desire for communion with God to glorification in heaven and everything spiritually good in between. About what do Calvinists, Lutherans, Arminians and at least some (maybe all right-thinking) Catholics agree? It’s all gift. We disagree among ourselves about whether God’s good and precious gift(s) of salvation–conviction and calling, conversion, repentance and faith, forgiveness, reconciliation, regeneration, justification, adoption, union with Christ, infilling... Read more

This week I was visiting Messiah College in Pennsylvania and speaking at its annual Sider Institute conference. The Sider Institute is devoted to the study of Pietism and Anabaptism–two of three “ingredients” in the Brethren in Christ denomination with which Messiah College is affiliated. I spoke to the conference attendees about “In Defense of Denominations” and “How Denominations Can Survive (If They Should).” I also met with various groups of Messiah students, faculty and administrators as well as with small... Read more

The “Catastrophe of Nominalism” Long-time readers of this blog will already know that I agree with Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) that the rise of nominalism in especially Western cultures has been a “catastrophe.” (See several of his many massive volumes but also his brief manifesto entitled The God Question and Modern Man [1967].) According to Balthasar, nominalism led to secularism which in term led to “forgetfulness of beauty” and ultimately the de-humanizing of “man.” In my own... Read more

According to Patheos and WordPress my blog has just passed the one thousand mark–one thousand blog posts since my blog was “adopted” by Patheos. Before joining Patheos it existed independently at www.rogereolson.com (which will still work). I don’t have a record of how many posts I made there–before this blog came into the Patheos family. Chances are, if you want to know what Roger E. Olson thinks about almost any subject philosophical or theological, you can simply “google” my name... Read more