Follow Up to Previous Post: Was Slavery Always Morally and Ethically Wrong Even When It Was Legal? My immediately preceding post here asked about a foundation for human rights. I argued there that some vision of transcendence is necessary to establish and maintain human rights; human rights cannot be constructed socially and remain absolute. Human rights are discovered, not constructed. (Of course there are rights so-called that are socially constructed but I am not asking about those. I am talking... Read more

What Is the Foundation (If Any) of Human Rights? We hear much talk (in Western cultures especially) about “human rights.” People tend to take it for granted that human beings, at least those already born, have certain “inalienable” rights. The American Declaration of Independence declares inalienable human rights to include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Over the centuries, however, many more basic and inalienable human rights have been discovered. Some are debatable; some are taken for granted. They... Read more

Did Jesus “Sort” People? According to a mainline Protestant pastor, writing a guest column in a local newspaper, there is “overwhelming evidence” that Jesus did not require faith statements from individuals. The essay is pointedly against “sorting” people—even within churches. According to this seminary-trained pastor, Jesus simply accepted people with love and so should the churches. Atheists and agnostics are mentioned—as people who should be included within churches. The thrust of the column, as I interpret it, is that Jesus... Read more

What Do We Owe the Dead? A Question of Ethics A couple years ago I purchased a volume of essays and sermons by one of my favorite 19th century Christian theologians—Horace Bushnell. (I have written about him here before.) The volume is well over a century old but in good condition. One of the sermons in the book is titled “What Do We Owe the Dead?” It was preached at the dedication of a Civil War memorial and cemetery. My... Read more

A New Name for an Old Fallacy: “Assailment-by-Entailment” I receive a lot of e-mail from total strangers. Some of it is very helpful. Recently Nathan King, professor of philosophy at Whitworth University (Spokane, WA) e-mailed something very interesting and helpful. Along with his friend Robert Garcia (philosophy, Texas A&M) King has developed a name for one of the most common fallacies in theological polemics. (Of course it can be used and almost certainly is in many other fields and disciplines.)... Read more

Is It Time for American Christians to Bow out of the Culture Wars? Part 2 If you did not read Part 1 (the immediately preceding post) please do that before reading this one. This “Part 2” builds on Part 1 and assumes its content. The question on the “table” is whether Christians in America and other post-Christian societies ought to abandon attempts to manipulate the “levers of power” (legislation) for specifically Christian or specifically religious moral ideals. Using an old... Read more

Is It Time for American Christians to Bow out of the Culture Wars? Part 1 First, what do I mean by “the culture wars?” Well, of course, in the broadest sense there have always been culture wars. Anyone who knows anything about American history knows it. There have always been struggles between different religious and political groups over public and private morality, what is shameful, sinful, what should be legal, illegal, etc. One of the “biggest” was the “war” over... Read more

Idolatry on a Billboard? For some time now I have been warning anyone who will listen that many American Christians are in grave danger of committing the same extreme error that “German Christians” made in the 1930s when they put Hitler and the National Socialist Party on a pedestal and treated him as a new messiah and it as a new revelation of God to save the German people. That is, they included Hitler and the Nazi Party within what... Read more

Can a Calvinist Honestly Say “God Loves You” to Everyone? Recently a leading American Calvinist pastor-theologian has asked and answered this all-important question on his blog: Can a Calvinist (and he means himself and those who agree with him) honestly say “God loves you” to everyone and anyone? I have answered this question in Against Calvinism (Zondervan) and here, on my blog, before. But I’ll go at it again—for those who haven’t read what I have said about it before... Read more

Is “Calminianism” Really a Thing?   Recently I received in the mail a pre-publication copy of an article that will appear in the forthcoming Mixed Blessings: The Dictionary of Blended Religion by author Tim Stewart. (When it is published I will announce that here. In the meantime you can follow its progress toward publication at http://www.mixedblessingsdictionary.com .) The article I received is entitled “Calminian” and the first paragraph is as follows: “A Christian who affirms a combination of Calvinist and... Read more