Of course, at one level, everyone limits Christ’s atonement: some limit its scope (it is for God’s elect only); others limit its efficacy (it does not save everyone for whom it was intended). Thus, it’s not whether one will limit Christ’s atonement; it’s just how. For this reason, I propose a more positive and less... Continue Reading

The evidence is more than clear. Communism, socialism, and progressivism have each made huge comebacks, re-entering political discourse blatantly and, just as importantly, very quietly, over the past decades. Even the very words “socialism,” “communism,” and, especially, “progressivism,” have reacquired respect and a semblance of dignity in many circles of public thought and discourse.  ... Continue Reading

Almost everyone has a moral compass of some sort. For some, it can be so damaged that a person celebrates evil as if it were good. Consciences can be marred. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit renovates our natures so that we can again will and choose what is good, honorable, and right.   Over the last month,... Continue Reading

 I know what I like to believe about our church, but if it’s not an objective doctrinal issue (that your old church denies and we affirm or vice versa) it is a subjective matter. ‘My last minister wasn’t very pastoral’ is hard because, much as I’d love to believe our church would be better, fact is... Continue Reading

If we want to properly understand any given verse of the Bible, we need to set it within its wider context. After all, words spoken to a single prophet in ancient Israel have a very different context than words spoken to an entire congregation in New Testament Rome. These different contexts mean the very same... Continue Reading

Believers like Elisabeth Elliot, Joni Eareckson Tada, and Gerald Sittser have astonished the world, declaring the sufficiency of Christ even in the hottest fires. Elliot buried two husbands: one was murdered on the mission field and the other died of cancer after four years of marriage. Tada, a quadriplegic who was injured in a diving... Continue Reading

I personally cannot remember a time anyone mentioned to me they were studying through Obadiah in their devotions. I cannot even remember the last time I heard a sermon on Obadiah—if at all. I am willing to bet you could say the same. Perhaps, that’s because Obadiah is hard to understand.   Lost somewhere in... Continue Reading

How is it fair to blame Pentecostal/charismatic Christians for misunderstanding cessationism when the only cessationists they know deny the abiding reality of so-called sign gifts of tongues, miracles, and prophecy more because they are afraid of the unusual than because of a well-developed, biblical argument?   “They worship that way because they don’t have the... Continue Reading

I am agnostic on the topic of “conversion,” though I suspect the subject is more diverse and complicated than political soundbites let on. But I’m not agnostic about the new JAMA Psychiatry study. There are at least four good reasons for being leery of the results appearing therein.   In a “study” that arrived to much media... Continue Reading

If he does not find his community in a subtle, organic, local manner—as revealed through the slow unveiling of tradition, especially in the English common law—the human person will create artificial and, often, gargantuan community. Since the breakdown of the medieval synthesis—in which all things held together through the unity of one faith in one... Continue Reading