This semester, I have assigned and read out loud the following passage from John Feinberg’s book, Where is God? The book is about Dr. Feinberg’s experiences of suffering. His wife was diagnosed with Huntingdon’s, an incurable and horrible disease. The question he deals with in the passage below is not limited to those who suffer. It is a question for any Christian. What precisely is the relationship between justice and grace? “…something was still wrong. There seemed to be a basic unfairness about our situation. Put simply, why was this happening to us, and not also to other people? Wasn’t it unjust of God to ask us to bear this…
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Progressing from Progressivism: Why I Moved on from the New Kind of Christian.
Back in the nineties, for a few years, I was a progressive Christian. Now, I am not. Why? In this post, I will tell you about five beliefs I uncritically held as a progressive Christian and why I was wrong. Epochism First, we believed that newer is better, and we thought we could predict the future on the basis of changes that had happened in the past. Thus, we predicted that there would be a new, better kind of Christianity and that old versions would become obsolete. I remember countless conversations in which we would discuss the inevitable demise of certain forms of Christianity, particularly conservative forms of evangelicalism. We’d…
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Truth and Theological Method.
How should we do theology? The answer to this question comprises a theological method. A theological method describes how one goes about doing theology. Theological Reflection (TR) is a recently developed theological method. Its roots are in theologies that stress a particular cultural context as the starting point for theology. Over the last few decades, TR has become more mainstream, making its way into seminaries and influencing some in the evangelical community. In this post I want to explain the method of TR and argue that to make it the dominant method for the theological task is a mistake. TR Begins and Ends with Experience All methods have to start…
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Why Christianity Won’t Go Away
Supposedly, Christianity will go away. We will evolve and move on. Infuriatingly for some, it’s not going away that easily. Today, we remember a day when Jesus was supposed to go away. But, things did not go as planned. Crucifixions were supposed to be smooth and orderly. Everyone played their part to make sure the punishment was carried out with maximum efficiency and elegance. But this was no ordinary crucifixion. Things had already been going off the rails. Pilate couldn’t find a crime but gave in to the crowd’s call for Jesus to be crucified. Jesus himself was not displaying the normal characteristics of the guilty. But surely the day…
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Original Sin: Disposition or Ability.
Since the fall, human beings are said to be born with original or inherited sin. By whatever means we inherit this problem, we have it innately. We do not acquire it sometime in our lives. Paul tells us that Adam’s sin affects the whole human species (Rom 5:12). Luther wrote, “all men are full of evil lust and inclinations from their mothers’ wombs.” Calvin wrote that original sin is “a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused into all parts of the soul, which first makes us liable to God’s wrath, then also brings forth in us those works which Scripture calls ‘works of the flesh’ (Gal 5:19).” The doctrine of…
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Language and Fellowship
“Aphasia, the loss of language following a brain injury, is devastating, and in severe cases family members may feel that the whole person is lost forever.” (Stephen Pinker, The Language Instinct, 2). Is fellowship possible without language? I don’t mean without the constant presence of language. Two people might not talk for a while but feel close to one another, but what if they never spoke to one another. What if, in the very nature of things, no one spoke? I suppose we could not know what our fellowship would be like. Would we be able to communicate in some way – by looking at each other? Perhaps we really…
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Voices in Our Heads?
James Krugel is Professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard University. Krugel suggests that neuroscience can lend some understanding to biblical scholarship on how human beings might hear the voice of God. In a recent interview, Krugel suggests that the ancient worldview of the prophets included the idea that the mind could be penetrated by spiritual entities: The human mind could be penetrated by outside forces. Not only by God—who is sometimes depicted as going inside people, “probing their kidneys and heart” to find out what they’re really thinking—but by various sorts of “spirits.” Some of them were benign, but others were wicked spirits dispatched by Satan to take over. They…
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Defending Penal Substitution: A Reply to Abbot Tryphon
Abbot Tryphon argues that the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement is heresy. Tryphon calls the view “pagan” view in which “we are forced to view our God as some sort of angry deity needing to be appeased by a blood sacrifice.” Tryphon’s main argument is that if we accept the penal substitutionary view, then we are forced to accept two consequences, both of which are false: “The major problem with this teaching can be seen in the fact that had Christ died for our sins against God the Father, thus causing a division of God, with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity laid waste, with God pitted against God.…
