Calvinism and Assurance of Salvation (or Not) Here is a very interesting, and I would say “insightful,” message sent to me by a Christian worker with young people (some of who are being drawn into Calvinism by the Young, Restless, Reformed Movement). He gave me permission to post his thoughts here without identifying him. A bit of background for those not already steeped in the Calvinism-Arminianism debate. Calvinists have often claimed that only their theology provides true assurance of salvation—because,... Read more

An Almost Forgotten 20th Century Christian Theologian: Christoph Blumhardt Christoph Blumhardt was born in 1842 and died in 1919. He was a German Lutheran minister raised in a family steeped on “Baden-Württemberg Pietism”—a particular type of German pietism. His father Johann was also a Lutheran minister. Both father and son were famous in Germany, throughout Europe and Christoph in America and throughout the world. Their fame began with a months-long exorcism carried out by Johann. This was unexpected; Johann did... Read more

Does God Speak to People through Dreams? An African (and Personal) Christian Perspective Over the many years I have been teaching Christian theology in four universities (including one secular university where I taught undergraduate courses as a doctoral student but some of the undergraduate courses were of a Christian theological nature) I have encountered many examples of Christians who believed that God somehow or other “spoke” to them through a dream. Most of these people were from what we now... Read more

Torture Again: Why It Is Always Wrong and More I know that I have written about torture here before, so some of you long-time readers of my blog may be bored with the subject. But it has been quite a long time since I wrote about it. And there’s a specific reason for this new post about the subject. I recently read a news wire report about President Trump’s appointment of a woman to lead the American Central Intelligence Agency... Read more

What Is “Original Sin?” And Where Has It Gone (In American Christianity)? I fully realize that I have written about this here before, but many of you, my newer readers, have surely not read my musings about this historic doctrine of the Christian faith—one that seems to me to have largely died away, again, especially in American Christianity. First, an anecdote. I invited a pastor-theologian of a major “mainline” Protestant denomination to speak to my church history/historical theology class about... Read more

Final Thoughts about Church Discipline (for Now) Again, as with the previous post about this subject here (March, 2018), this particular conversation is for evangelical Protestant Christians only. Others can ask questions, of course, but the invitation is to discussion among evangelical Protestants (especially church leaders and influential lay persons) about “church discipline.” As before…please keep responses brief and to the point and avoid revealing any identifying information about individuals or congregations. *Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own... Read more

This blog post is intended ONLY for pastors and lay leaders of evangelical Protestant churches—especially in the U.S. I will invite theologians and biblical scholars to join in the discussion as well (so long as they also consider themselves evangelical Protestants). Please keep your comments relatively brief. This is not an invitation to post sermons or essays here. These are my musings and questions only; they should not be interpreted as speaking or asking for anyone else. I have been... Read more

Is It True that “What’s Good for Business is Good for America?” There it was again—in an editorial of a newspaper—the cliché I’ve heard all my life: “What’s good for business is good for America.” As a Christian theologian I have spoken out against folk religion which consists of unconsidered, unreflective clichés. Is there such a thing, perhaps, as folk economics? The editorial was promoting the election of “pro-business” candidates for public office. For that particular editorial writer “pro-business” meant... Read more

Remembering Billy Graham (1918-2018) On Wednesday, February 21, American evangelist Billy Graham passed away just months before his one hundredth birthday. By all accounts he had been an invalid for a few years which is probably why the national media did not spend as much time reporting on his life and death as they did when Pope John Paul II died. I remember thinking to myself, while watching the lengthy and elaborate journalistic and media encomiums for the pope, “I... Read more

Would You Be Mad at God if He Saved Everyone? Another way of getting at the same thing is to pose this question: “What if, somehow, by some means, you became convinced that God will, eventually, save all people? Would you be angry at God and would you drop evangelism?” What’s the point of the question? Well, it is to measure the actual “temperature” of a person’s Christianity. Over the years I have posed this question to many Christians. Usually... Read more