There are few things that give me serious pause when it comes to understanding reality in light of the Bible and an orthodox Christian worldview. For the most part, I have achieved a kind of cognitive balance when it comes to the central claims of Christianity and the opposing views or counter evidence to those claims. Study, experience and overcoming personal trials have established in me an ever stronger epistemic certainty about the truth of the Christian faith. Of course,... Read more
In the history of the Christian Church, there are roughly three kinds of people to speak of when it comes to how one approaches pagan, or non-biblical, knowledge. The course the Church takes in a particular time and place in culture will often depend on which approach to pagan knowledge is assumed by the majority of the people in the Church at that time. Before I continue, however, let me define some terms. The Church, General Revelation and Pagan Knowledge By... Read more
A dead Christian is of no value to the Devil. Only a Christian who is still alive is worth Satan’s time and efforts. This is an obvious truth, assuming the particular, physically deceased person in question was indeed a true man or woman of God. For upon the physical death of the truly faithful and genuinely regenerate person, they enter into the presence of Christ and are forever secure from Satan’s attacks. But for those who still live, they are... Read more
“Grabbing for the gold (brass) ring,” has always sounded very American. The idea of unbounded opportunity and the willingness to exploit such opportunities has been near, if not central, to the American project. For generations, the United States was simply called “the land of opportunity,” and it seemed most people accepted this ascription at face value. In a very real way, this idea of a broad landscape of opportunity and the potential for personal fulfillment is what we know as... Read more
This is a Guest Post by my friend and colleague Logan Zeppieri. Logan holds an MA in Philosophy from Talbot School of Theology, a BA in Philosophy of Science and is a current graduate student in Clinical Psychology. His work includes political and business research, pastoral training, animation, and essay contributions to several publications like the Claremont Institutes, “The American Mind.” In response to overturning Roe v. Wade, there have been more nuanced responses than perhaps Oxford’s Bodelian library could catalog. But as the social... Read more
In a profound yet enigmatic book, Christ and Culture, theologian Graham Ward makes an incisive point about how technology in the modern era may be affecting our culture in ways we do not immediately see. In speaking about renewed, scholarly interest in the embodied nature of Christ’s incarnation, Ward points to a much broader “obsession” in “affluent locations around the world” with the body itself: This wider obsession that desires to turn the body into the most finely balanced sensorium... Read more
There is a scene from an old Seinfeld episode, one of the few Seinfeld episodes I remember, that is now quite striking given Friday’s SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Seinfeld was not a show I really got into (unlike Everybody Loves Raymond and Frazier), so I have only seen a few episodes. Of course these three shows are also the last TV shows I ever watched. This tells you how much TV I have consumed over the last 20 years (with the rare exception of... Read more
In a previous post, I wrote that the Evangelical mind was being split apart. This was in virtue of living amidst two competing camps of philosophical method. Here I address a different yet related issue. It is one causing not so much a bifurcation of the Christian mind, but a devastating fragmentation of it. The source of this fragmentation is the technology available to us, combined with our undisciplined use of it. The framing question is this: is our technology,... Read more
In his 1930 Church History for “upper high school & college courses and adult reading,” Father John Laux writes about two ways of knowing God that became more clearly delineated with the rise of universities in the Middle Ages. These two methods of approaching God eventually became known as “Scholasticism” and “Mysticism.” Of them, Laux correctly writes: Scholasticism and Mysticism are not opposed to each other. They should go hand in hand. If theology is treated merely as an affair... Read more
In this interview with Frank Harber of “Defending the Faith” ministries, I discuss my recent article “Is Christianity Abusive?” In this interview we talk about the following: The dramatic shift in culture and the need for a new approach to apologetics The reality of Spiritual Abuse The problem of defining Spiritual Abuse The difference between Spiritual and Religious Abuse The emergence of “Religious Trauma” help groups Could Christian doctrines be considered abusive? The nature of propaganda The early history of... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In