Some Thoughts about Evangelical Superstar Pastors and Evangelists and Why They Fall In recent weeks and months another American evangelical superstar pastor (also author and popular speaker) has fallen off his pedestal—if not completely at least partially and with a loud noise. As always when this happens, his followers and fans are divided. Some support him almost unconditionally while some accuse him of spiritual abuse, abuse of power and various misdeeds. It has all gone viral. This time, fortunately, the... Read more

An Arminian-Anabaptist Response to “A Church for Exiles” by Carl R. Trueman The August, 2014 issue of the journal First Things (online) contains an article by Westminster Theological Seminary church history professor Carl R. Trueman entitled “A Church for Exiles: Why Reformed Christianity Provides the Best Basis for Faith Today.” I suggest you read it before reading and considering my response here. (Simply “google” the title to find the article online.) I suggest reading the last paragraph of the article... Read more

Should Christians Fear Being “On the Wrong Side of History?” I cannot count the number of times I have heard people, including some Christians, say that Christians should adjust their view of sexuality (viz., become “welcoming and affirming” and support same-sex marriage) because, otherwise, they are going to turn out to be “on the wrong side of history.” That’s code for turning out to have been like our ancestors who defended slavery, oppression of women, and resisted the Civil Rights... Read more

God and Children: Would Jesus (God) Command Their Slaughter? Recently I posted here about God’s character and argued that God could not, because of his character, revealed in Jesus, command the merciless slaughter of children. Several conservative Christians objected, pointing to Old Testament texts of terror such as 1 Samuel 15 where God is reported as ordering the Hebrews to slaughter an entire tribe including infants. If there is anything in the Bible with which I struggle more than this,... Read more

I didn’t want that post (the immediately preceding one) to get too long, so I omitted one observation-experience that formed part of its immediate background. I mentioned the advice columnists who told the boy’s mother to take him to a doctor–assuming he was suffering delusions when he claimed to be seeing and hearing from a dead cousin about whom he knew nothing naturally. I confess that because of some of my own life experiences I am interested in the paranormal.... Read more

How Open Should Christians Be to the “Paranormal?” American popular culture loves the paranormal and almost anything can be lumped into that category and depicted for entertainment. But as much as Americans love to imagine ghosts, clairvoyance, and supernatural powers, most do not really believe in them. We are the opposite of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his fictional character Sherlock Holmes. Holmes did not believe in anything beyond reason and sensory evidence. He was, to all appearances, anyway, the... Read more

“Community: The Impossible Possibility” Roger E. Olson “To dwell above with saints we love, That will be grace and glory. To live below with saints we know; Now, that’s another story!” Why do I say that community is an impossible possibility? Simply because community is what we’re created for and yet we never quite achieve it. At least not in this world. Community is something almost everyone longs for and seeks and yet everything we call “community” falls short of... Read more

Intuitive Evangelical Theology versus Scholastic Evangelical Theology: “Classical Christian Theism” as Case Study I have long been impressed by how foreign scholastic evangelical theology is to even the most devout, biblically literate evangelical lay people. What do I mean by “scholastic evangelical theology?” I don’t know a better term for the “official” theology taken for granted and promoted as “orthodoxy” by many conservative evangelical systematic theologians. When I was in seminary we were required to read Calvinist Baptist Augustus Hopkins... Read more

Seedbed.com (out of Asbury Theological Seminary) has published my series of posts here called “Arminianism Q & A” as an E-book. It’s available at: http://seedbed.com/feed/arminianism-get-free-faq-ebook-roger-olson/ Please check it out. Read more

“God’s Will” In Calvinism and Arminianism Calvinists and Arminians agree that God “accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will” because so says Ephesians 1:11 and the entire testimony of Scripture. Both, however, interpret this differently. John Calvin, facing this verse (and his overall belief in divine determinism) and the manifest reality of evil posited that even the evil deeds of men are willed by God. (See Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, Ch. XVIII “God So Uses... Read more