Many Christians today are disillusioned by their efforts to know God. Many may wonder if it is even possible. It is something we talk about in Church or small group often, but we rarely discuss how we know God and what that means. We go through the motions…church, home group, read the Bible sometimes, pray sometimes. Yet this is not what knowing God means, nor are these small gestures of devotion enough for our souls to truly connect with the... Read more
As Christians we have often heard the term “the wrath of God” and, in fact, many places in Scripture utilize that exact phrase or something very similar (Lev 20:26; Num 1:53, 16:46, 18:5, 25:11; Deut 29:20; 1 Sam 28:18; 2 Kgs 22:13; Ezra 5:12, Job 21:20, Matt 3:7; John 3:36 etc). But what does “wrath” really mean? Is our God an angry God, who looks down from on high hoping to find some reason to destroy us? Should we live... Read more
I never acted out much when I was a kid. I never smoked, drank, or went all the way. My dad raised me to believe in God and Jesus, though my mother was largely unconcerned with religion. I never really questioned God’s existence but for a brief stint in high school, when I asked questions in class like how Christ’s crucifixion could save anyone, along with other questions anyone with a rudimentary understanding of Christianity could’ve addressed. Even then, my... Read more
For several decades now, many in America have tried to find the central issue, the one, core feature, which is the source of division between the political Left and Right in our nation. Various theories have been offered. Some have made contradictory views on economics the central issue over which we are divided–the classical Marxist versus Hayekian Capitalist framework. Others have considered it a psychological question: some being more predisposed to think from the right hemisphere of the brain, the... Read more
In this article, I conclude my four-part series examining theologians of the 19th and 20th centuries who have most contributed to progressive Christianity. We have already interacted with Friedrich Schleiermacher, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Adolf von Harnack. In doing so, I have pointed out some of the weaknesses that exist in each of these theological views. Now I conclude with Gustavo Gutierrez, the most widely known Liberation Theologian, whose Marxist-inspired doctrines have made quite an impact in contemporary, progressive thought. Gutierrez... Read more
Recently, while reading a highly regarded commentary on the Book of Numbers, I realized a fairly common preaching “trope” I have heard for years from the pulpit was indeed quite erroneous. That trope, or “commonly repeated conventional view,” has to do with the reason God prevented Moses from entering into the promise land. It is an exegetical point that may not seem all that important. After all, we realize that Moses, like everyone, was a sinner. And, we know that... Read more
In this series I am looking at three different interpretations of history. In part 1, I discussed the view of history that claims history is an endless cycle of recurrence and repetition. This idea of an endlessly recurring world of either eternally repeating identical histories, or of endless, variant histories, has both ancient and modern proponents. The most famous of these were the Greek Stoics and the German philosopher Nietzsche. It is noteworthy that most Stoics, as well as Nietzsche,... Read more
This is the third of a four part series in which I explore theologians of the previous two centuries who contributed to the theology which today influences progressive Christianity. In the previous article we looked at a successor to the liberal theologies of the early 1800s, Walter Rauschenbusch. Here we explore one of Rauschenbusch’s contemporaries, the German theologian Adolf von Harnack. Adolf Harnack and “Theology from Below” Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) was a German theologian whose thinking and writing became... Read more
In this series, I am discussing three views of history. This is not to say I am writing about how to do history or about what counts as evidence in trying to come to a conclusion about a proposed historical event or person. This is a philosophical question about the nature of history: about the cosmic, natural and anthropological features of a “tensed,” or temporal, world. In other words this is a metaphysical question, albeit one related more to meaning... Read more
At a church in Southern California, not far from the U.S.-Mexico border, two Middle Eastern men made their way onto the stage. One of them, a Kurdish-American pastor, began to share his life story in Arabic, as the other, a minister from Israel, translated it into English. “Love Your Enemies” The pastor who shared his story is Azad Barwari. Over twenty years ago, Azad was a nominal Muslim, living over seven thousand miles away, in Iraqi Kurdistan. One day he... Read more
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