In American evangelicalism it has become commonplace to hear of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (d. 1945) as a heroic, patriotic evangelical fighting liberalism and Nazi extremism.  Bonhoeffer was a brilliant and brave pastor-theologian who rightly stood against many evils in Nazi Germany, but he wasn’t a conservative evangelical.  We can learn many things from him, but we... Continue Reading

I’m saying everybody really secretly relies on God, but they won’t admit it. And what happens is that the regularities, the lawful regularities of the entirety of probability theory and the entirety of its application in various realms in life depends on these lawful regularities. They’re there, but the person who doesn’t believe in God,... Continue Reading

Sanctification is an extensive thing: it spreads to the whole man.  “The God of peace sanctify you wholly” (1 Thes. 5:23).  As original corruption has depraved all the faculties, the heart, mind, and will, sanctification is the renewing of all the faculties.  Therefore in Scripture it is called a “new man,” not a new eye... Continue Reading

It had been many years since I had read Basic Christianity, but somehow that didn’t sound right. Are young people—or were they in the 1950s—really opposed to anything that “looks like an institution”? They didn’t seem opposed, for example, to universities back then. So I took down my old copy of the book, a 1971... Continue Reading

You see, as I sat on that plane early in the morning, I was a bundled knot of anxiety, fear, worry, and sadness. I was worried about my son’s ear and how it would handle the flight. I was anxious about all the details that go with travel. I was grieving over broken relationships with... Continue Reading

“I have long advocated treating ancient texts, biblical or from elsewhere in the Near East, as ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ rather than ‘guilty until proven innocent.’  In other words, if a text, be it Egyptian, Assyrian, or Hebrew, makes a claim that X happened at location Y, or King A built a temple at site... Continue Reading

“One Nation Under God” is a perceptive and peaceable volume. Throughout the material the authors thoughtfully interact with several thinkers, to include Lesslie Newbigin, N.T. Wright, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard John Neuhaus, Abraham Kuyper, and Richard Mouw; and have crafted a handy, useable resource for Christians as we think sanely about our Nation, elections,... Continue Reading

Heath traces the devastating impact of sin in every dimension of human existence and carefully distinguishes between three different ways we experience sin — the sinful world we live in, personal sin, and the sins of others. As Heath says, “typically, counseling is a complex combination of each of these contexts.”   I’m conscious that... Continue Reading

“Heaven Is For Real: A Book About Heaven From The Perspective Of A Four Year Old Who Had A Near Death Experience And For Some Reason We Believe Him More Than The Bible”   What would happen if Christian publishers were actually honest with their book titles? You’d probably end up with books like this.... Continue Reading

Lee-Barnwell pleads that our theology of ministry for both men and women “should be able to show how the ministry of leaders points toward God, not the leaders themselves, and highlights the power of the cross, not just personal areas of competence and responsibility”(168). What I see so often is clamoring of the loudest and... Continue Reading