Christians have long wrestled with the subject of how God’s plans and actions in salvation interact with human responsibility and choice. And it is common for proponents of any theological system to appeal to the writings of theologians from the… Read More ›
One topic that’s of perennial interest to Christians is the question of how God’s role in saving people intersects with human choice. How does God’s sovereignty (or, more accurately, his providence) relate to human responsibility? The question arises because the… Read More ›
One of the apocryphal books I think is particularly interesting is the book called “The Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sirach.” It has also gone by a couple of other names, such as simply Sirach, Ben Sira, or Ecclesiasticus. It is… Read More ›
Recently I’ve been working my way through the Apocrypha. If you aren’t familiar with these, they are a collection of Jewish writings composed during the time between the Old and New Testaments (400 BC to the first century AD). The… Read More ›
In my recent deep-dive back into church history, one of the things I’ve been most interested in is learning more about what early Christian worship looked like. There’s certainly a lot we can learn simply from reading the New Testament…. Read More ›
In this new video post, I’m giving a quick introduction to what is likely the oldest church handbook in history, The Didache (aka the “Teaching” or “Instruction”). This short, ancient text gives us a fascinating window into the everyday practices… Read More ›
The history of Christianity is long and complex, but as I’ve written previously, there are a ton of reasons why it’s worth getting to know a little more about. Learning how the earliest Christians understood and lived out their faith… Read More ›
You know the old cliché: “Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.” And yet, sadly, when the subject of church history is brought up among many churchgoers these days, there’s not a lot of knowledge evident…. Read More ›
Beliefs about the nature of hell have always been diverse. This was the case even in ancient Judaism before and during the time of Jesus, as well as in early Christianity. For those who are curious, here’s a small sampling… Read More ›
So far in this series on women in ministry we’ve talked about my journey with the subject and why I interpret 1 Timothy 2:11-15 as not forbidding female pastors. In the last post I addressed some potential objections to women… Read More ›
