Essays
Scientific Support for the Open View
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Open Theism
Topics: Defending the Open View
If a position is true, every avenue of reflection ought to point in its direction. What follows are two more “pointers” to the view that the future is at least partly open (indefinite, composed of…
Neo-Molinism and the Infinite Intelligence of God
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Open Theism
Topics: Defending the Open View
Classical Molinism holds that, since God is omniscient and knows all truths, he knows not only what every agent will do in the future, but also what every agent would have done in every other…
Five Brief Philosophical Arguments for the Open View
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Open Theism, Philosophy
Topics: Defending the Open View
Introduction I believe that sound philosophical arguments support the open view in which God doesn’t foreknow the future free decisions of humans. My main reasons for holding this view are biblical and theological, but since…
Finding an Alternative Jesus
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Jesus
Topics: Jesus: Lord or Legend
The “Newly Discovered” Jesus One of the most common, and most disturbing, refrains heard in the media’s coverage of contemporary radical views of Christ is that New Testament scholars have recently “discovered” new sources of…
The Jesus Seminar and the Reliability of the Gospels
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Gospels, Jesus, New Testament
Topics: Jesus: Lord or Legend
The Jesus Seminar The primary driving force behind the popular media’s present preoccupation with liberal views of Jesus has been the Jesus Seminar. This Seminar, first convened in 1985 by Robert Funk, is a gathering…
Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Resurrection
Topics: Jesus: Lord or Legend
Trying to get around the Resurrection While Jesus’ life, claims, and miraculous ministry set him far apart from all other human beings, it is his resurrection more than anything else that stamps him as the…
Is Jesus Unique?
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Jesus
Topics: Jesus: Lord or Legend
The Search for a Non-Unique Jesus Built into the naturalistic assumption that drives the liberal New Testament search for the “man behind the myth” is the notion that, whoever Jesus was, he cannot have been…
Getting Free From the Sin of Sodom: Living With Outrageous Generosity
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Kingdom Living, Wealth and Responsibility
Topics: Following Jesus
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. Erich Fromm Jesus, the poor and the greedy Though it’s often missed by American…
Racism: Why Whites have Trouble “Getting It”
Category: Essays
Tags: Diversity, Essay, Kingdom Living, Racism, Social Issues
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
I’m a member of a special task group on racial reconciliation that consists of a dozen or so pastors from around the Twin Cities. We’ve been meeting periodically for the past year or so in…