Apparently my honest statement (in answer to a student’s honest question) that, if somehow it were revealed to me that God is as TULIP Calvinism says and as its good and necessary consequences imply, I would not worship that god, has stirred some people up to the point of questioning my salvation (and calling my religion humanistic). I don’t know if this will help at all, but I will clarify my statement this way: IF it were revealed to me... Read more

Recently I’ve been delving once again into deism, or what is more appropriately called natural religion.  (Deism has come to have connotations of belief in a distant, uninvolved and even uncaring God.  That wasn’t true of all who are lumped together as deists and the real sine qua non of “deism” was belief in natural religion, not a doctrine of God.)  I’ve been re-reading Locke (a precursor), Toland and Tindal (among others).  These men thought they were Christians.  Well, there’s... Read more

If you haven’t yet read the first part of this post, plesae go back and read it.  This won’t make much sense without that. So, my thesis is that not only SHOULD mature people, including Christians, think for themselves; they DO–whether they admit it or not.  Nobody thinks for someone else–as much as they might try to influence their thinking.  At the very least the choice whether to believe what another person is saying is one’s own and cannot be... Read more

Lately I’ve been re-reading and studying Immanuel Kant’s 1784 essay Was Ist Aufklarung? (What Is Enlightnment?)  It’s available all over the internet, just google it if you’re interested. I grew up in a church and denomination where it was Verboten to think for yourself–unless you were the great spiritual man of God du jour.  Even then, of course, nobody thought he or she (as in Aimee Semple MacPherson) thought for themselves; they received it right from God. I found Kant’s... Read more

Lest anyone think I hate Packer or disdain everything he’s written, I want to applaud him for one of the best basic theology articles I have ever read.  It’s so good I copied it and have kept it in my files for years (since 1986!).  The article is “What do you mean when you say ‘God’?”  (Remember article titles are assigned by editors and not by authors; that may not have been Packer’s preferred title.)  It was published in Christianity... Read more

Today I received an e-mail from a reader who asked why I didn’t mention J. I. Packer in either Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities or Against Calvinism.  That’s a good question. I didn’t, so now I will. To the best of my knowledge, the only lengthy, detailed treatment of Arminianism in print by Packer was his Introduction to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ in A Quest for Godliness.  It may be found at this... Read more

A while ago I posted here about “Did I kill Jesus?” based on a T-shirt I saw at the mall.  That led to some reflections about the atonement–a growing battleground among evangelicals.  Recently a leading evangelical pastor and author has declared publicly that “God killed Jesus”–meaning, I suppose, the Father killed Jesus.  That’s his way (I assume) of emphasizing the penal substitution theory of the atonement. Personally, I think some “friends of penal substitution” are its worst enemies.  In the... Read more

This is a guest post written by one of my students–Austin Fischer.  As you can see, he’s particularly bright (and not just because he agrees with me about most things!) and articulate.  I think he makes some very good points about the controversy surrounding Love Wins here.  However, just because I post a guest essay here does not mean I agree with everything in it (the standard disclaimer!) Love Wins? God Wins?  #LoveWins             As has been duly noted at... Read more

This has been one of my pet peeves for a very long time.  I’ve worked in or with many Christian organizations over the past thirty to forty years.  One thing I’ve noticed is a largely unnoticed tendency for Christian organizations such as churches, denominations, colleges and universities, etc., to adopt their organizational structures and behaviors from the business world. Let me offer a few examples.  The provost of a Christian college where I once taught insisted on referring to our... Read more

Another one of my evangelical Christian intellectual heroes passed away recently.  Arthur Holmes, long time professor of philosophy at Wheaton College and author of numerous books of Christian philosophy and apologetics, died on October 8 at age 87.  I only met him once (that I can recall) which was when I was editor of Christian Scholar’s Review.  He was, in many ways, the “guru” behind CSR.  Our approach to integrating faith and learning came largely from him.  One year he... Read more