What a year 2020 has proven to be. Such “normal” issues that American evangelicals have had to face over the last half century or so—moral decline attended by the subsequent propagation of naive utopian solutions, increasing political polarity, a diminishing public square, social fragmentation, a deteriorating educational system, rising fear and anxiety—seem to have wildly […]
(PART SIX OF A SIX-PART SERIES) We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the […]
Christian missionaries are witnesses, warriors, and ambassadors in exile. It is common to view missions in terms of tasks such as proclaiming the gospel or, with modern trends, incarnating it. (1) There are problems we encounter when we limit ourselves to these words. Proclamation is something we send out, but with global work not all […]
The summer storm clouds of 2020 overshadowed parts of the United States and the so-called Western world with a tempest of self-recrimination. Ardent believers in a secular ideology of antiracism—guided by a desire for human equality—toppled statues of historic figures, defaced long-established monuments, called for the removal of employees who uttered or Tweeted offensive things, […]
The church is the crowning achievement in the work of salvation planned by the Father, accomplished by the Son, and brought into reality by the Spirit (Eph. 1:3–14). The Father’s “plan for the fullness of time” is to sum up all things in heaven and earth under the headship of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:10). This […]
Interestingly enough, as liberal theologians reach the end of their careers, they often plunge into a study of Eastern religiosity. Examples include John Hick, D. Z. Phillips, Ninian Smart (some years ago, in 1993, Phillips, Smart, and I were featured speakers on the same university religion panel at the California State University at Fullerton), (1) […]
Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a FutureBy Gavin OrtlundCrossway Books, 2019218 pages (cloth), $21.99 Think back to the 1980s television show Family Ties. Readers born since then may be surprised to learn this was Michael J. Fox’s start as a Hollywood celebrity. In this sitcom, the actor (who went […]
The First One Hundred Years of Christianity: An Introduction to Its History, Literature, and DevelopmentBy Udo Schnelle and translated by James ThompsonBaker Academic, 2020688 pages (cloth), $60.00 Few eras of history are more captivating for Christians than the earliest years of the church. The apostles spreading the gospel across the Roman Empire. A church free […]
Contemporary Theology: An Introduction; Classical, Evangelical, Philosophical & Global PerspectivesBy Kirk R. MacGregorZondervan, 2019416 pages (hardcover), $34.99 MacGregor’s volume attempts to serve as an overview of various currents and tributaries feeding the body of current theological waters; as far as I can tell, it is pitched to serve as a textbook for something like a […]
In the early 1970s, farm activist Jim Hightower warned of “the McDonaldization of America.” In Eat Your Heart Out (1975), he argued that “bigger is not better” and that major fast-food chains were creating a dangerous homogenous pattern of consumption. This would not only destroy smaller farms but would also leave the nation nutritionally starved. […]
