Modernity and Christianity: Like Oil and Water? Part 2 In my immediately preceding post, part 1 of this series, I mentioned that I view modernity as a “blik”—a fundamental perspective, a way of seeing the world “as,” a world view. Of course, it is also a cultural “Zeitgeist,” a “spirit of the age,” a collection of socio-cultural habits shared by people and societies. I talked about how some Christians view Christianity and modernity as like oil and water—incapable of integration.... Read more

Modernity and Christianity: Like Oil and Water? Part 1 My immediately preceding post announced my forthcoming book about modern (and postmodern) theologies: The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction (InterVarsity Press, 2013). A major thesis of the book is that virtually every Western (and some non-Western) theology since the early nineteenth century is influenced in some way by the modern mindset. Even those like Charles Hodge’s that resisted innovation and claimed to be simply restatements in systematic form... Read more

What’s a blog for if one cannot use it to promote his books? The new InterVarsity Press catalog (“New Title Announcement/Winter 2014”) has just been published. It includes (on page 28) my forthcoming magnum opus The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction which will actually be about 710 pages in length (scheduled for publication in November). It’s a radical revision of Stan Grenz’s and my 20th Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age published in... Read more

An Arminian Ordo Salutis (Order of Salvation) I was recently asked here to provide an Arminian order of salvation (ordo salutis). First, what is an order of salvation? In theology the technical term is “ordo salutis.” From now on, here, I’ll simply refer to it as “ordo.” An ordo is an attempt to put into logical, not chronological, order the events that lead up to and take place in and follow a person’s initial salvation. Those are chronological terms, of... Read more

“Precious Moments Christianity” Some years ago evangelical author and speaker Charles Colson decried what he called “Precious Moments Christianity.” If memory serves me correctly that was in his book The Body. He may have also talked about it in other writings. After writing my blog post about “T.A.C.O.s” (Totalistic, Aberrational, Christian Organizations) I thought about whether there is an opposite danger to high-demand, abusive churches within evangelicalism. I believe there is. I’ll borrow Colson’s category of Precious Moments Christianity to... Read more

A Dip into the Depths of the Doctrine of God: Discussion of the Non-Competitive View of Divine and Human Agencies Recently I posted here an imaginary conversation between a Calvinist and an Arminian—about God’s sovereignty. At one point I inserted a common comment made by especially intellectually minded Calvinists about the non-competitive nature of divine and human agency. But it’s not only Calvinists who bring this up in discussions of God’s agency and creatures’. Some of the Christian thinkers I... Read more

Please be patient while my blog takes a brief vacation. May I suggest looking back at some past posts? Eventually I will get around to reading comments and responding as possible. Thank you. Read more

For 17 years I taught a course on America’s Cults and New Religions on the college level (and occasionally on the seminary level, too). I promoted the elective course to the student population as “Unsafe Sects.” For years I’ve thought about writing a book with that title. Have you ever wondered why you just don’t hear that much about “cults” in the secular or Christian media anymore? One reason is because “cult watchers” can be successfully sued for calling a... Read more

A Conversation between a Calvinist and an Arminian about God’s Sovereignty: Calvinist to Arminian: “You Arminians don’t really believe in God’s sovereignty.” Arminian: “You Calvinists don’t really believe in God’s love.” Calvinist: “Oh, but we do. You’re so wrong! The Bible is clear about God being love.” Arminian: “But you don’t believe God loves all people, so how can you believe, as the Bible says, that God is love?” Calvinist: “God loves all people in some ways but only some... Read more

My recent post on abortion brought about some interesting reactions. A few responding comments were well-thought-out, reflective, reasonable ones. Many, in my opinion, illustrated well the problem at the center of my message–people’s deeply entrenched, unreflective, extreme positions. (I don’t consider a position “reflective” unless it has taken seriously opposing views.) Some of the responses were simply knee-jerk and without merit in any civil discussion. Most of those I simply deleted. One response from pro-choice advocates struck a chord with... Read more