Thoughts on ethics, society, politics, religion, philosophy, theology, and everything in between
“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27). There are three main ways of understanding this teaching of Jesus. The first, Christian pacifism, understands this command of Jesus, the Lord of the universe, as something to be obeyed in every aspect of our … Read more
Liberals and Conservatives Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt[1]As an atheist psychologist, Haidt has no theological agenda. His goal is simply to research and understand the psychology of how human beings make moral judgments. has identified six basic types of moral concern, grounded in six different types of moral intuitions that are innate to the human mind: … Read more
In the year 1054, the Great Schism occurred, dividing the Eastern Orthodox Church from the Western Church down to the present day. In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation resulted in a further division of the Western Church into the Roman Catholic Church and various Protestant churches. In a previous series on this blog, I … Read more
All orthodox Christians–Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox–believe in the doctrine of the Trinity: that there is one God who exists eternally as three distinct “Persons”: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Although implicit in the New Testament, the doctrine of the Trinity was not fully formulated and articulated by the Church until the fourth century. … Read more
Evangelicalism is a renewal movement within Protestant Christianity which arose from the eighteenth-century revival movements of John Wesley and George Whitefield. Committed to historic Christian orthodoxy, evangelicalism has four main characteristics: biblicism (affirming the supreme Authority of Scripture), conversionism (affirming the need for personal conversion to following Jesus in order to be saved), activism (affirming … Read more
“Verily there is that which is more contrary to Christianity, and to the very nature of Christianity, than any heresy, any schism, more contrary than all heresies and all schisms combined, and that is, to play Christianity.” – Soren Kierkegaard Over 50 years ago, sociologist Philip Rief’s insightful work The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses … Read more
At one of my previous churches, the congregation held a lengthy discernment process regarding whether we should change the church’s moral teachings about a particular sin. Throughout this process, the two words that people repeated again and again were the words “welcoming” and “inclusion.” In spite of the fact that no one was able to … Read more
The ethical status of homosexual behavior continues to be one of the most controversial theological issues in the Western Church. Some denominations adopt an “affirming” position and give their blessing on same-sex marriages, other denominations hold firmly to the traditional position, and other denominations divide and split over the issue. I have already discussed the … Read more
Before examining what Jesus and the apostles have to say about the topic of homosexuality, we should first examine the teachings of the Old Testament on the topic, since this provides the background for understanding what the New Testament authors have to say about it. There are two Old Testament texts which explicitly forbid homosexual … Read more
Apologetics is a reasoned intellectual defense of the reasonableness and coherence of the Christian worldview. God’s word tells us to “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Pet 3:15), and apologetics is an attempt to do this in a … Read more