Part One Any Old Port in A Storm We’re still on the ‘Conversations on the Porch’ objection to the first of my Forty Reasons why the OT is not reinterpreted by the NT, since according to my three protagonists, if this first one falls, they all fall. There are always stock passages that are referred to by proponents of reinterpretation. For example, 1 Peter 1:10-12 says this: Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of …
Blog Posts
A little while back Fred Butler told me that he had passed on my Forty Reasons article to a group of brethren connected with a network called Bible Thumping Wingnut. These men are proponents of New Covenant Theology and host a podcast called ‘Conversations on the Porch.’ They decided to spend some time on a critique of my article. This series of posts is my belated rejoinder to what they had to say. First off, I have to admit …
A review of Douglas Axe, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed, New York: HarperOne, 2016, 304 pages, hdbk. Readers of Stephen Meyer’s two important books, Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt, will know the name of Douglas Axe. Axe’s work on probability theory and gene folding feature quite prominently in those works. This book is a compliment to Meyer, but it is also a companion to William Dembski’s books like The Design Inference and No …
Part One Universal Salvation When I speak of Young’s universalism I am not referring to the belief that Jesus Christ provided an atonement for every sinner; a position which I hold. I am instead talking about the liberal theological teaching that God will save everybody, whether or not they have placed their trust in His Son. Because of the author’s encounters with hurt and pain it is understandable that he has searched for a god who is safe and accepting. …
A Review of Wm. Paul Young, Lies We Believe About God, Simon & Schuster, 258 pages, pbk Wm. Paul Young is best known as the author of the astoundingly successful book The Shack. He has also written two other works. All his books deal with pain and suffering and seek to offer hope. Unfortunately, Young’s brand of hope, although it presents itself as Christian, and indeed has been understood as such by many, is not anchored in the biblical portrait …
The following was written in response to a seminary teacher who wanted to know my opinion on Biblical Theology texts. My Thoughts on Biblical Theologies The first thing to say is that the definition of Biblical Theology is elastic. We have an idea of what it is but perhaps because of the various ways of actually doing it the works on BT can look quite different. For that reason i have tried to include a few varieties in my list, …
This is an older post acting as a stop-gap until I can get my laptop fixed. The computer I’m using is so slow that this post should be considered a near miracle. Everybody knows it. The Bible is composed of two parts: what we have come to call the Old Testament and the New Testament. Too, most people understand that by the Old Testament we mean the 39 books of the Protestant Bible. These are the same books which in …
The First Twenty 21. Saying the NT must reinterpret the OT also devalues the OT as its own witness to God and His Plans. For example, if the promises given to ethnic Israel of land, throne, temple, etc. are somehow “fulfilled” in Jesus and the Church, what was the point of speaking about them so pointedly? Cramming everything into Christ not only destroys the clarity and unity of Scripture in the ways already mentioned, it reduces the biblical covenants down …
I have been made aware that a group of New covenant theologians have discussed some my list of forty arguments for not reading the New Testament back into the Old Testament. I intend to write a Response soon. But I thought it worthwhile to repost the original list. I have yet to encounter a serious attempt to refute these Reasons. Introduction It seems to be almost an axiom within contemporary, evangelical Bible interpretation that the New Testament must be allowed …
I am in the middle of several things right now, but I had the idea of rehearsing a recent interchange with some CT’s and adding a few reflections. I think it typifies what I tend to run into when trying to communicate my reservations about CT. I kick it off with a remark made by my main interlocutor about God’s way of communicating. He declared that, God may do other than what the original audience understood. God’s promises will …
