Does God Always Get His Way? I suspect that question would surprise most Christians and atheists alike. Most atheists I read seem to operate on the assumption that Western monotheism includes God’s absolute sovereignty such that whatever happens is God’s will. Most of them fall back on some version of the problem of evil to attempt to sweep away belief in God as impossible (because no one expressly questions God’s goodness). But Christians (I’ll limit my comments here to Christians... Read more

Evangelical philosopher Jerry Walls is posting a series of talks on Calvinism on youtube. You can see them simply by typing “Jerry Walls” into the search box at www.youtube.com. The first two of the three part series are there under the title “What’s Wrong with Calvinism.” Of course, I agree with him entirely. As a philosopher, his focus tends to be on logic, pointing out how inconsistent Calvinism is. Read more

Clark Pinnock and the Postconservative Turn in Evangelical Theology Roger E. Olson             Evangelical theology has gone through several paradigm shifts and has fragmented into different paradigms.  Sometimes it’s difficult to tell what they all share in common beyond calling themselves “evangelical.”  However, I will work with the Noll-Bebbington proposal that evangelicalism is marked by biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism and activism without going into detail about these common features or family resemblances.  I have proposed adding “respect for the Great Tradition... Read more

Needed: A New “Progressive Orthodoxy” for the 21st Century: Part Three (Final) of Series about Horace Bushnell In the first two installments of this three part series I talked about what Gary Dorrien calls Bushnell’s “liberal-leaning experiment in progressive orthodoxy” with special focus on the 19th century theologian’s theological method. Here I want to suggest some ways in which Bushnell’s progressive orthodoxy can be helpful today. As in Bushnell’s time and place (New England in mid-19th century), Protestant Christianity in... Read more

Remembering the “Progessive Orthodoxy” of Horace Bushnell Part Two Bushnell was self-consciously a mediating theologian. He stood against the stream of New England Unitarianism and the accommodating liberalism while at the same time resisting the rigid orthodoxy and incipient fundamentalism of neo-Puritanism and the Princeton Theology (Alexander and Hodge). He strongly defended belief in the supernatural, including Jesus’ miracles (although he felt no need to defend every biblical miracle story), while at the same time defending the need to adjust... Read more

Remembering the “Progessive Orthodoxy” of Horace Bushnell Part One One thing I like to do here is point readers back to neglected theologians. As a historical theologian I find many “new” proposals in theology are not that new. Often they echo theological ideas of the past even as their promoters advance them as new. There’s some truth to the old sayings that there’s nothing new under the sun and that history repeats itself. In fact, sometimes it becomes downright wearisome... Read more

When I look back over my life and career, I can confidently say there was no more important influence on my theological development than Dr. Ralph Powell who passed away at age 96 on August 7 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He was not a theological genius (in the usual sense of the term–a great innovater) or productive writer (I think he had one or two scholarly articles published). But he was one of the best teachers of balanced, sane,... Read more

So What’s Wrong with Panentheism? Recently I suggested that Jonathan Edwards may have been guilty of panentheism. I won’t explain why again here; if you’re interested please go back and read that post. At least one commenter asked why that’s a problem in light of Paul’s quotation in Athens of a Greek poet. He referred to God as the one “in whom we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) Was Paul affirming panentheism? What’s wrong with panentheism?... Read more

Homo Sapiens (Naturalis) and The Creator-servant’s Universe-The Revelation: The Biblical Story of God and Us in Brief By Bev Mitchell Homo Sapiens (Naturalis) Homo sapiens, the ones who know, the conscious ones, the self-conscious ones. We sense that we are on a journey, that we have a story and are in a story, that we are part of that story. We know in our conscious selves that we have come from somewhere and are going somewhere. We resist the thought... Read more

A No Longer Preliminary (and Yet Not Final) Report on Leithart’s Defending Constantine A while back I posted a preliminary review of Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom by theologian Peter Leithart (InterVarsity Press, 2010). At that point I had read only half the book—up through Chapter 8 “Nicea and After.” Then I expressed some qualms about Leithart’s argument and especially the last paragraph of Chapter 8 (p. 189). Referring to some of Constantine’s... Read more