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Why Religion Won’t Go Away

We are witnessing a shift away from the secularization (the diminishing influence of religion) of the 19^th and 20^th century. The 21^st century is shaping up to be postsecular.

The Problem of Universals and the Textual Transmission of the New Testament Documents

I’ve just finished reading The Heresy of Orthodoxy. I highly recommend it as an antidote to the skepticism of New Testament critics such as Bart Ehrman. In fact, I am using the book as one of my texts this summer for a class I am teaching on Apologetics.

The Heresy of Orthodoxy

I’ve been reading Andreas Kostenberger’s and Michael Kruger’s The Heresy of Orthodoxy. This book is a scholarly response to a view that has been recently popularized by Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels, a view originally advanced by the German theologian Walter Bauer (1877-1960).

There cannot be just one true religion, can there?

Earlier, I did a series of post on defeater beliefs to Christianity and I want to add to that series and consider again a common objection to Christianity: “Christianity cannot be the one true religion!” or (as it is commonly suggested), “all religions lead to God.” The suggestion is that no one religion has a monopoly on the truth AND if you say that one (that is, Christianity) does, you are intellectually deficient (at best) and quite possibly morally deficient as well. Let’s consider if this charge can hold up under scrutiny.

The Gadfly and the Unexamined Life

In an earlier post, I claimed that we are all philosophers—there is not choice in the matter—the only choice is whether we are good or bad philosophers. In this post, I want to consider the cost of being good philosophers (that is, lovers of wisdom and passionate, relentless pursuers of the good, the true, and the beautiful) in this broken world. What might that cost be? If Socrates is our guide, it is being misunderstood, unjustly accused, and perhaps (gulp), a bit of hemlock.

Men without Chests

Here is a handful: A culture that denies the existence of objective value (that is, beauty, goodness, and justice are merely in “the eye of the beholder” and not “out there” in the world) will inevitably produces “men without chests.” And without “chests,” humanity will disintegrate—our thinkings and willings will be at cross-purposes and we will become empty, hollow at the core, fragmented, and unable to living a flourishing life.

What comes after Postmodernism? Answer: Paganism

Over the past 10-20 years there has been a lot of worry about postmodernism. In its most extreme, postmodernism represents an unlivable and illogical relativism that cannot be sustained. Then there was the “emergent church worry”—Christians such as Brian McLaren and others who seemed to appropriate too much of the postmodern confusion and import it into a hip and supposedly forward (yet ancient) kind of Christianity.

The revolution of the human heart brought on by Jesus

I just finished reading A Heart for Freedom, the story of Chai Ling, one of the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising in Beijing. Her story is a gripping account of the heart’s longing for freedom, purpose, justice, and significance. It is also a picture of the fact that the only true revolution is the revolution of the human heart brought on by Jesus.

We are all philosophers

None of us has a choice in the matter: we are all philosophers. Each of us, whether we admit it or not, have formed beliefs about God, our world, and the self.

Why be good? Plato and the Gospel

In Plato’s Republic, one of the central questions is Why be good? On the face of it, it seems that being immoral or unjust is more profitable than being good. If so, then no one is willingly good—and perhaps then we have found a pragmatic reason for religion—fear of divine wrath keeps the immoral masses from perpetrating evil acts. I say this is exactly backwards—and Plato’s own answer to his question points us in the right direction.