I hear a lot of hand-wringing about the decline in church attendance in western nations, and I have often shared that concern. But Brett McCracken has redirected our concern considerably by looking at the situation from a different perspective than the one I often hear. He is speaking specifically of Christianity in the US, but […]
Category: Ecclesiology
Division in the church is a great scandal and a hindrance to our witness (Jn 17:20-23), but can the breaches possibly be healed, even between the truly believing portions of the church in its major branches? Pope Francis hopes so and plans to move it along. This is something that will bear watching, as we […]
A few days ago, I passed on the fruit of Roger Olson’s study of Mormonism which has convinced him that some Mormons are saved but that Mormonism as a theology is not Christian. Today, Olson gave Robert Millett “the final word (for now).” If this issue interests you, this is a piece you will want […]
Categories
Is Mormonism Christian?
Roger Olson has written a long post in answer to the question of whether Mormonism is Christian. That question will probably seem to many evangelicals to be hardly worth asking, but Olson’s answer is carefully nuanced and it grows out of much greater knowledge of Mormonism than most evangelicals possess. I commend the whole post to […]
Through the years, I have had a few conversations with members of Reformed churches about the wish of Calvinistic Baptists to be identified as “Reformed,” as in “Reformed Baptist.” Some of those Reformed or Presbyterian people have rejected as an oxymoron the name “Reformed Baptist” because Baptists do not follow a presbyterial polity or […]
Last year The Gospel Coalition ran an interesting series, in which they asked pastors and theologians why they changed their mind on baptism. Gavin Ortlund: Why I Changed My Mind About Baptism Sean Michael Lucas: Why I Changed My Mind About Baptizing Infants Liam Goligher: Why I Changed My Mind About Infant Baptism More recently, a piece by […]
Reasons for encouragement about God’s work in the Roman Catholic Church I listened to an mp3 conversion of the video from the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast recently, and I enjoyed it very much. You can watch it here: This year’s guest speakers were his Eminence Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston and Robert P. George of […]
I often encounter the statement that a person or church is “heretical,” and I am troubled at how loosely the word is used. “Heresy” is a serious technical term, and we need to apply the term carefully and properly. So I welcomed a recent post by Scot McKnight in which he defines the term. The […]
N. T. Wright devoted a large proportion of his massive tome, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, to the relationship between the church and Israel, and he argues for a total replacement, what is often dubbed “supersessionism.” Larry Hurtado posits that Wright is correct on a couple of very important points: Repeatedly, Wright takes the […]
“The church is like Noah’s ark; it stinks but you drown if you leave it.” I read that statement in someone’s blog post recently and it has been rattling around in my head as containing an important truth. That truth was fleshed out rather nicely in a Christianity Today article, written by Carolyn Arends (“Taste […]