One subject that brings even fundamentalists and liberals together is the criticism of systematic theology. For instance, many of us were reared to suspect that if someone clearly embraced some particular system (e.g., Calvinist, Arminian, or Lutheran), then that would probably lead to the suppression of biblical teaching wherever specific passages didn’t easily fit into […]
Every age, as C. S. Lewis once observed, is especially prone to make specific mistakes; and so we need to try to identify the characteristic errors of our age so that we can strive to avoid them. One of the worst errors among Christians in our time is a tendency to reject systematic theology. As […]
Today, especially in academic settings, it is regularly assumed that the Christian Scriptures can no longer be taken at face value, as they were for the first eighteen hundred years of the church's life. For many, it seems obvious that something about our contemporary experience prohibits us from reading the Bible straightforwardly as a faithful […]
Christian theologians have always viewed Scripture as the authoritative repository of true Christian faith. As J. N. D. Kelly, in Early Christian Doctrines, states: Christianity came into the world as a religion of revelation, and as such claimed a supernatural origin for its message…. God Himself, all the early theologians acknowledged, was the ultimate author […]
Most American Protestants, whether liberal or evangelical, are egalitarians when it comes to the reading and study of Scripture. They tend to be committed to the American proposition that "all men"-and women-"are created equal" not simply because they are patriotic or democratic but also because their doctrine of Scripture drives them to it. The logic […]
In the dead of night, when most people are savoring the final hours of a good night's sleep, some teenage boys were wide awake and about to experience the final moments of a tragedy. A powerful motorcycle, a bold dare, youthful folly, a dark slippery street, and a tree converged in time to send our […]
At last year's National Religious Broadcasters convention, Michael Horton sat down with Kay Arthur to discuss Precept Ministries and the Inductive Bible Study method that Jack and Kay Arthur have taught to thousands of people every year, since the 1970s. This interview is excerpted from the original interview, which was recorded for the White Horse […]
In 1996, Atlantic Monthly ran a story on the most recent novelty within American Christianity: the so-called "megachurch movement". Here is part of what caught the Atlantic reporter's eye and explains the popularity of such churches: "No spires. No crosses. No robes. No clerical collars. No hard pews. No kneelers. No biblical gobbledygook. No prayerly […]
What would it take to produce a 3,000-entry encyclopedia of a movement as diverse and ephemeral as American evangelicalism? A lot of ambition and more than a little audacity. In other words, it would take Randall Balmer. Balmer is a religious historian at Barnard College who has authored several books on American evangelicalism, such as […]
Good reference books are like any other good tool, they are as useful as they are well designed and executed. One occasionally sees an advertisement for a new tool which either did not previously exist or is an improvement on an existing one. Some new tools, however, cause the consumer to ask, Why this product? […]
