Thoughts on Christianity and other random parts of my life. I wrote a journal for years before I started blogging and this blog is a natural extension of my journey.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."
-- John 3:16 (ESV)
I grew up in the Cumberland Presbyterian church. My friend Laird says it is Arminian in theology. I believe that is an over simplification, however, the congregation that I belonged to in Lebanon, Missouri definately believed in the "who-so-ever-will" doctrine. In most sermons I heard growing up there was a section near the end where the preacher would explain that you had a choice to make, that Jesus was standing there at door of your heart knocking, waiting for you to open the door to your heart. I developed a theology of the will. I believe without reservation that we were free to choose or not choose God and this would determine our eternal state. When I got to High School my geometry teach had a us do an exercise which he called "writing your own math, language or game". In essense, what you wou...
I got the ultimate spam. It is not that I really liked what was written in the e-mail but the address list was impressive. Some of 256 names were unfamilar to me, but the institution domain names were impressive. denverseminary.edu Wheaton.edu calvinseminary.edu fuller.edu Given that some really well known people were on the spam list, I'm assuming that many of these others who were not recognizable to me were none the less, heavy hitters. But those I did know are as follows: Alister McGrath Douglas J. Moo G.I. Williamson RC Sproul Jr RC Sproul John W. Macarthur John Piper Richard L. Pratt Phillip R. Johnson Since I got grouped with these greats on the spam list, I guess I should be flattered to get such spam.
I wrote a paper about the Emerging Church for seminary several years ago. At the time, Emergent and Emerging were not used in the same distinction as they are now. I see them as different forms of the same root, but usage dictates meaning, not history or assignment of meaning. There is an excellent article about the Emergent and Emerging church at the blog Reclaiming the Mind Ministries called Would The Real Emerger Please Stand Up . It is not clear to me where the chart came from but I find it helpful. I'm including these charts from the post here. This first chart shows the range of beliefs in Christianity. I would guess that the author would not be attempting to show that each grouping is as large or historically important as the next one, just the spectrum of belief conveniently boiled down to nice categories. Then he zooms into a section to further discuss the messiness of it all. I'm not quite sure everyone would like their assigned categories, but of course that i...
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