Category: Theology
-
salvation
I haven’t posted in awhile, in part because of the holidays and in part because my creativity was spent after sprinting to complete the manuscript for my forthcoming book on faith and doubt. I don’t want to say too much about it now, except that I think there is a need for a book on…
-
disrespecting Scripture
One of the most perplexing traits of Love Wins is its cavalier attitude toward texts. Whether it was contradicting Jesus’ parable of the ten virgins, mistranslating the Greek term for eternal, omitting Revelation 20:11-15 from its chapter on hell, or wrenching one line from Martin Luther until it meant the opposite of what Luther clearly…
-
proud moment
Sometimes I wonder if my kids are internalizing enough sound doctrine, but what happened tonight leads me to think it’s getting through. My fourth grade daughter had a speaking part in our church’s kids musical, “In a Galilee Far, Far Away.” The musical was cute and carried a good message, but I wonder how God…
-
what’s the difference?
The blowback from last week’s controversial column, “The War on Men,” got me thinking. I cover the complementarian/egalitarian issue every semester, and it’s been a long time since anyone switched sides because of their understanding of Scripture. Both sides seem dug in at this point—there may be less undecided voters on this issue than there…
-
they get us
Coming on the heels of The New Yorker’s essay on Rob Bell, Newsweek has an insightful article on the fading bloom of Rick Warren. Now if only someone would write a feature piece on Joel Osteen, most of my theological nemeses will be covered. I’m looking at you, Gary Meadors.
-
trinity and simplicity
I woke up this morning with last night’s class discussion still on my mind, so I thought I’d share it with you and see if anyone has a special insight. Here’s the problem: I believe that the Trinity is fully one and fully three, and following the lead of the Athanasian Creed, I tell students…
-
right with God
My assignment this month for Our Daily Journey was to write a devotional from Ephesians, and it occurred to me that this might be a good time to mention the controversy around justification. I don’t know if anyone has ever written a devotional on the New Perspective on Paul (one of the Sprouls might have),…
-
evil
I just visited Twitter to respond to a friend’s tweet, and after five minutes I think I contracted ADD. That site is nuts! In the spirit of our diminishing attention spans–Look, squirrel!–I will now attempt to say something meaningful about the problem of evil in an Our Daily Journey devotional that is approximately 300 words.…
-
year of living
We are in the middle of another media blitz for “A Year of Living” book. Since Alan Jacobs wrote A Year of Living Biblically, evangelical Christians have been inspired to write The Year of Living Like Jesus and now A Year of Biblical Womanhood. This phenomenon puzzles me, because I would think that any Christian…
-
God’s will and Republicans
One of the ironies of this election season is that while President Obama and the Democrats hold a most extreme position on abortion (why doesn’t Romney ask about partial birth abortion?), the Republicans seem bent on proving that they are the ones who can’t be trusted on this issue. The latest gaffe occurred last night…
Mike Wittmer 