“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”[1] The beginning of any academic or even detailed discussion on the problem of evil has to begin with God’s original intention for mankind. A beautiful garden, perfect relationships between people and with their creator, and no death. Obviously this is a very different portrait […]
Category Archives: Apologetics
Heavy Hearts: A Christian Response to Suffering – Part 1
Unexpected events. Unspeakable tragedies. Unimaginable pain. If this past weekend in Orlando, and really this life, has taught us anything it’s that suffering is a part of the human experience. But why? If there’s a God, and if he’s good, why is there so much agony and evil in this world? Discussions about suffering can […]
The Passion Translation: The Bible of Bethel and the NAR
**Note: Since the original post of this article (in 2016), due to the scrutiny and pressure from many academic scholars, there have been dramatic revisions made to The Passion Translation. On one hand this is a good thing. On the other hand, it serves to show just how much personal interpretation/theology was woven into this […]
Dear Classmate: On Your Notion of Science as Fact
Dear Classmate – I have found the discussions about religion in our assigned reading to be very interesting. It’s not my goal to create a debate, but since it feels as if I may the only one who has a different perspective on the matter, I guess I should attempt to articulate “the other” perspective. […]
Hell, That’s Not Fair
The idea of a real place called Hell makes a lot people uncomfortable. It can also be a very personal and emotional subject, and has recently received a lot of attention from differing perspectives in books like Love Wins by Rob Bell and Erasing Hell by Francis Chan. While I do recognize the precarious nature of […]
Well, It’s True For Me – Moral Relativism Part 3
For the preceding discussion on this topic, please see parts one and two. So far we have covered the different aspects of moral relativism. We will turn now to the opponent of ethical relativism, objective morality, to see what stability in understanding it can offer. This is not the first time in history that a […]
Well, It’s True For Me – Moral Relativism Part 2
For the preceding discussion on this topic, please see part one. When we left off last time, we saw that individual subjectivism failed in every way. Now we must examine the other vein of moral relativism, conventionalism. Conventionalism is the second form of relativism; and on this view morality is attached to culture. Thus, it […]
Well, It’s True For Me – Moral Relativism Part 1
In addition to the challenge of balancing classes, jobs and the new-found freedom that comes with college life, many Christian students, upon entering a secular university, find it difficult to defend their worldview as well. Is everything relative? Is it close-minded and judgmental to believe in truth that is true for everyone? Can something be […]
Free Will and Suffering
It is not uncommon in light of so much pain and suffering around us for people to wonder why God didn’t choose to create a world without evil. If God is supremely powerful and loving, it seems, we reason, that evil wouldn’t exist. Since evil does exist, that same reasoning suggests, perhaps God is not […]