Ethics

A Vestige of Holiness: Why I Am an Evangelical

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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

The Triumph of the Therapeutic and the Subversion of the American Church

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“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

The Church Should Be Welcoming But Not Inclusive

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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 Western Church’s Conflict Over Same-Sex Marriage: What is at Stake

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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

Christian Ethics and Homosexuality: The Teachings of the Old Testament

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This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series Christian Ethics and Homosexuality

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

Christianity and Antisemitism

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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

Biblical Ethics and Slavery

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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

The Coherence of Christian Ethics, Part 2

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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

The Coherence of Christian Ethics, Part 1

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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 Use of Moral Arguments in Apologetics

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One of the most popular arguments for the existence of God is the moral argument for God. The argument runs as follows: In spite of the fact that this argument is very popular among Christian apologists, I do not think it is a sound argument. First, it is not at all clear that premise 1 … Read more