Category: Christian Worldview

This is the final post of a five part series. Like today’s coerced obedience to the state religion of “tolerance,” so Rome demanded that its citizens show their allegiance to the empire by worshiping the deity of dead emperors and the “genius” of the living emperor (“genius” was loosely defined, somewhere between an external soul…

This is part four of a five part series. A third lesson from Tertullian’s Apology is that he didn’t merely defend the Christians from Roman calumnies but he aggressively put the Romans back on their heels. For instance, the Romans accused the Christians of committing incest, but Tertullian noted there is a better chance that…

This is the third post in a five part series. The second lesson to learn from Tertullian’s Apology is that character counts. A recurring theme in the Apology is that Rome was hurting itself by hurting the Christians, who were its best and most loyal citizens. Tertullian said the Christians contribute to the empire by…

Yesterday’s post introduced Tertullian’s classic defense of Christianity. This week I will post one lesson each day from his Apology, an open letter to the Roman emperor. I should mention two caveats. First, Tertullian was firmly planted in what H. Richard Niebuhr called the “Christ against culture” camp. He famously said, “What has Athens to…

The backlash against Indiana’s religious freedom bill doesn’t look good for people who wish to be left alone to practice their sincerely held religious beliefs. Money talks, and if enough money walks, Indiana may be compelled to eliminate the constitutional freedoms of both religion and speech (both are at stake here). Here is the key…