Being a Pentecost Christian: The Spirit & Inspiration
What do we mean when we say that the Bible is the Word of God? We mean that while it was written by men, it was not the product of their independent and fallible thoughts. It was inspired by God…
Tag Apologetics
Braving Hard Passages: Baptism for the Dead
I have always taken comfort from the fact that if Peter could find some of Paul’s saying as hard (2 Peter 3:15-16), so can I. One hard saying in the Apostle Paul’s writing is his remark in 1 Cor. 15:29…
Sexual Identity: Saboteurs at the Door
The 17th century minister and Scotsman, Alexander Nisbet said, “the most dangerous heretics have many followers; every error they introduce turns out to be a friend to some lust in the heart of man.” Case in point: Several years ago,…
Sexual Identity: The Way We Were and Who We Are: Our Identity Crisis is Re-railed into Christ
In her book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert,[1] Dr. Rosaria Butterfield compares her Christian conversion experience to “an alien abduction or a train wreck.” As she shares about her very public Christian “coming out” while a tenured university English…
Sola Scriptura
On January 1 1519, Ulrich Zwingli became the pastor of the principal church of Zurich, Switzerland. When he preached through the New Testament from the Greek, the Reformation began in that city. Zwingli taught salvation by grace and justification by…
Sexual Identity: What Does the Bible Say?
Unspoken assumptions make the argument. Debates become fruitful when unspoken assumptions get clarified. Many of us are accustomed to calling these assumptions presuppositions—controlling beliefs that determine how we think. In a culture that has largely accepted the belief that the…
Sexual Identity: An Ontological Problem
Over the last several years, some in the church have argued that a person may be oriented toward homosexuality but not act on the inclination or tendency. That may or may not be the case. However, the burden of this…
William Tyndale and Sola Scriptura
William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament, first published in 1526, was met with sharp disapproval in England – not only because it was common knowledge that Scriptures should not be placed in the hands of the uneducated masses,…
History: Why Read It?
Why should history have to make a case for itself? No one questions why we should study mathematics or science. The humanities are always having to justify their existence in a way that is not expected of other disciplines. Even…
Book Review: Puritanism and Natural Theology
Wallace Marshall, Puritanism and Natural Theology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016), 144pp. Wallace Marshall’s Puritanism and Natural Theology ably demonstrates that Puritanism in general not only theoretically developed but pastorally utilized a robust natural theology. More provocatively, he shows that they…