Are Some Things Impossible to Believe? Lewis Carroll’s White Queen tells Alice that sometimes she has believed six impossible things before breakfast. That led some later wits to quip that faith is believing six impossible things before breakfast. Lately I’ve been re-reading Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology (having read it many years ago).The first volume was first published in the early 1870s. I wonder if Hodge had read Through the Looking Glass which was published in 1871? Or perhaps Dodgson (Carroll’s... Read more

Below is an essay written by a friend. I have only altered it to correct spelling and mechanical errors (e.g., to put a space between words where one was missing). I judge this an incisive explanation of something significant happening among evangelicals today. In fact, I have said here before that I now believe there are really two evangelicalism–the one focused on in this paper and traditional, mainline, moderate evangelicalism (the “Billy Graham coalition” including the National Association of Evangelicals,... Read more

About “Judging God’s Morality” Recently an acquaintance asked me if I am guilty of “judging God’s morality.” He explained that his reason for asking is my answer to my student’s question “If it were revealed to you in a way you could not doubt that God is as Calvinism says, would you still worship him?” My answer was “No.” Apparently this response caused my acquaintance some consternation. I responded that I didn’t see why. He further explained that it seemed... Read more

And here we go again…another case of Calvinist misrepresentation of Arminianism Twenty years ago I picked up and read the first issue of Modern Reformation magazine. It was a special issue on Arminianism. On the cover was a reproduction of a popular tract that showed a ballot with a sinner’s eternal destiny at stake in the election. God voted for the sinner; Satan voted against him and he got to cast the deciding vote. Every article in the issue blasted... Read more

I have an essay all ready to post here and was going to do it today. It’s about the current issue of Modern Reformation magazine and an article in it that misrepresents Arminianism. I’ll post it next time (Lord willing). One commenter today inspired me to share a story of God’s intervention in my life recently. I know some aren’t going to believe it, but I don’t really care. I think sharing stories of God alive and well and at... Read more

Egalitarianism (with regard to marriage) is the view that in a marriage husband and wife should agree before any decisions are made or actions taken that affect the family (whether that be just them as a couple or includes children). Whether one or the other is called “the leader” of the family is irrelevant (although, of course, most contemporary egalitarians do not like that designation especially for the husband!). I judge that a couple has an egalitarian marriage insofar as... Read more

Truth, Authority and Roles “He who begins by loving Christianity, better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection) Consider this little essay background explanation of why I am against complementarianism and hierarchy in general. Hierarchy, including complementarianism, emphasizes roles and “authority over” and “submission to” based on them. In other words, to put it bluntly, hierarchy is the manner... Read more

Following up on my earlier post about evangelical complementarianism… I now see that it is possible to interpret the evangelical seminary dean’s comments about Eve being “cursed in her role before the fall” as NOT implying that she was cursed before the fall. The syntax of his sentence is tricky. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt here because it seems to me to say that Eve was cursed before the fall would be very strange indeed... Read more

A colleague sent me this link. He knows I am deeply interested in denominations and in the concept “evangelical.” See: www.usatoday.com/news/graphics/pew-religion-08/flash.htm (I tried both keyboarding it here and copying it here from the actual web site but in neither case would it display as a hyperlink.) Here are some things that grab my attention (not that they all necessarily surprise me): 1) The states where the greatest portion of the population identifies as “evangelical” (mostly in the South) are also... Read more

And now…the other extreme from “Christian feminism” Recently here I critiqued contemporary radical Christian Feminism while applauding egalitarianism. By “radical Christian Feminism” I mean the approach to theology that begins from women’s experience and resymbolizes God away from the predominantly male images of scripture to  female images treated as superior to male images for their social value (e.g., in promoting equality rather than hierarchy). I regard the theologies of Rosemary Ruether, Letty Russell, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza and Elizabeth Johnson as... Read more