Worldview

Don’t Tell Young Women in Your Church to Avoid College

Don’t Tell Young Women in Your Church to Avoid College

There’s a young man I know from Christian circles somewhere in the U.S.—I’ll call him Kyle or Gerald or Edward, or maybe something a little more derogatory—who posted what I can only call an anti-girls-going-to-college meme on Facebook. It argued that Christian...

Bavinck: A Critical Biography by James Eglinton

Bavinck: A Critical Biography by James Eglinton

Bavinck: A Critical Biography My rating: 5 of 5 starsHerman Bavinck's fame as a theologian has been steadily growing in my circles—especially since the Dutch Translation Society began putting out his Reformed Dogmatics in English in 2003. All four volumes sit proudly...

Honesty and Dishonesty; Inerrancy and Errancy

Honesty and Dishonesty; Inerrancy and Errancy

An ex-evangelical acquaintance of mine recently posted a link to an academic journal article critiquing inerrantist biblical scholars. It contained this paragraph: Well, turnabout is fair play, especially with insufferably tendentious arguments. (I'm sorry: I believe...

Brand New Biblical Worldview Book for 6th Graders

Brand New Biblical Worldview Book for 6th Graders

A brand new book I wrote this past year, Basics for a Biblical Worldview has just been released. It's a sixth grade biblical worldview textbook for BJU Press. For this project I was privileged to rejoin as a freelancer the team I was on at BJU Press for nine years,...

Does “By Faith We Understand” (Heb 11:3) Have It Backwards?

Does “By Faith We Understand” (Heb 11:3) Have It Backwards?

A Christian friend who struggles with doubt recently wrote me asking why I chose the name of long-time blog, byfaithweunderstand.com. Today I was thinking again about those four words “by faith we understand” and I feel a physical reaction to it. It’s hard to swallow...

Christianity and Liberalism and Homosexuality

J.I. Packer’s first book, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God, published when he was 32 years old in 1958, provides a brilliantly simple analysis of the three major approaches to Christian religious authority that were then, as now, on offer. Briefly, they were…. 1)...

Inherited Sin and COVID-19 Epistemology

Inherited Sin and COVID-19 Epistemology

One of my walking buddies at work is a statistician who does data analysis for our company. Of statistics, I guess. I always enjoy talking to him; I like the way his mind works. I’ve long been interested in epistemology, the question of how we know—how we justify our...

Counsel for a Friend

Counsel for a Friend

I’ve become a counselor for a number of young men who have realized that they can no longer in good conscience remain tied to King James Only institutions. Almost without exception, the ones who have reached out to me have shown genuine graciousness and gratitude...

Have You Ever Doubted the Christian Faith?

Have You Ever Doubted the Christian Faith?

A young aspiring pastor recently asked other pastors in a Facebook group what kinds of doubts they’ve had about Christianity, and what they’ve done with those doubts. I replied… I went through a several-month period of doubt during my senior year as a Bible major at...

Answering Moe the Internet Bully

Answering Moe the Internet Bully

Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes fame was sometimes targeted for abuse by a bully, Moe. Unfortunately, Calvin's clever retorts usually came to him hours after Moe's initial taunts. I've got a parallel situation: a minor instance of woke bullying was directed at me a few...