Thoughts on ethics, society, politics, religion, philosophy, theology, and everything in between
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
Antisemitism is prejudice against and hatred of Jewish people. One of the most frequently made moral charges made against Christianity is that it is antisemitic. While Christianity teaches that Christians should love all people, many argue that Christianity actually produces hatred against Jews. If true, this would be a major contradiction within Christianity that would … Read more
One of the most common criticisms of biblical ethics antichristians make is that the Bible supports slavery. However, it is a gross misrepresentation of biblical teaching to claim that the Bible “supports” slavery just because there is no explicit condemnation of slavery in the Bible. In this post, I will briefly examine what the Bible … Read more
Biblical Ethics: Violence In the book of Psalms, there are a number of imprecatory psalms, in which the psalmist calls on God to smite his enemies. The most infamous of these is Psalm 137, which ends by saying, “O Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy is the one who pays you back for what you … Read more
In a previous apologetics series on this blog, In Defense of Christian Ethics, I responded to a number of common objections to the reasonableness of Christian morality. These next few posts will supplement that series, responding to a number of additional objections to the coherence of Christian ethics. Divine Command Theory Critics of Christian morality … Read more
The Torah, Isaiah, and Modern Biblical Scholarship Traditionally, Christians have believed that the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) was in its entirety written by Moses. However, in the modern period, critical biblical scholars began to call this belief into question. A number of passages in the Torah contain historical details from after the … Read more
New Testament Christianity was not the only form of early Christianity. In the second and third centuries, there were other Christian groups–the Gnostics, the Ebionites, the Marcionites–which were regarded as heretics by orthodox Christians. Antichristian skeptics often argue that the existence of these various early forms of Christianity means that we cannot know what the … Read more
According to historic Christian orthodoxy, Jesus is God Incarnate, fully God and fully human. But is this what the earliest Christians believed? Skeptics often argue that it was not. The skeptical narrative runs something like this: the earliest Christians had a low Christology, believing Jesus to be just a man. Then, Christians started making grander … Read more
Jesus told His disciples, “Some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power” (Matt 16:28; Mark 9:1; Luke 9:27). He declared that people would “see the Son of Man [a reference to Himself] coming in clouds with great power and glory” (Mark 13:26, … Read more
The idea that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises to His covenant people Israel is central and foundational to the message of the New Testament. The New Testament is filled with citations and allusions to Old Testament Scriptures, seeking to show that Jesus is the Messiah, the hope of Israel who brings Old Testament … Read more