Is God Silent? Making Sense of “Divine Hiddenness”
Is God silent when we can’t sense him? Although many who seek God find him, others experience him as hidden and absent. What are we to make of this “divine hiddenness”? Often, we struggle to believe in and trust God, not necessarily because we fail to recognize His existence or suppress evidence of His existence, […]
Formation of the Old Testament Canon
How did we get our Old Testament? Who decided which books made the cut (and became “canon”)? Why are there differences between the list of books in Catholic and Protestant Bibles? Before we get into these questions, however, it is important to differentiate a couple terms: “Scripture” and “Canon.” “Scripture” can refer to any writing […]
Solving Arguments by Pointing to Context
I recall a dialogue I had with a high school classmate of mine. It remained friendly, but it was also a tense conversation regarding the similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam and between their respective texts, the Bible and the Qur’an. At a particular point in our dialogue, this old friend of mine shared […]
The Earliest Creeds in Christianity & What Conclusion They Point To
What are the earliest creeds in Christianity? There are church creeds such as the Nicene Creed (A.D. 325) and the Chalcedonian Creed (A.D. 451), but the earliest creeds go back much farther—to even before the writing of the New Testament. Within the New Testament writings (all written within the first century A.D.), we find creedal […]
God’s Existence: Can You Explain God Away?
God’s existence: is it something fixed in reality or something we can explain away? Here are some tools we might use to explain him away. Can you explain God away? There have been thinkers throughout history who have claimed to be able to explain God away. It’s no surprise that innumerable gods throughout history have […]
Exposing Our Self-Deceptions: Review of Daniel McCoy’s Mirage: 5 Things People Want from God That Don’t Exist
What’s the best way to expose self-deception? Daniel McCoy’s Mirage: 5 Things People Want from God That Don’t Exist is a concise work which exposes some of our most potent self-deceptions through colorful story, paraphrase, and metaphor. The reader gains an enlightened concern for several deceptions currently plaguing the church in Western post-Christian society. Yet, […]
Lessons from the Church in Germany: Tsunami
Q: Remind me of how influential German thinkers have been. Germany has always been on the cutting edge of various kinds of progress. For example, in the early 1900s, Germany was the most technologically advanced country in the world. Their engineering was way ahead of America’s and Britain’s. When I think of influential theologians, Germany […]
Lessons from the Church in Germany: Post-Christianity
*Editor’s Note: As a missionary in Germany for a decade, Brett Seybold has been a student of the trends of post-Christian Europe and how these trends affect the church in North America. Although Brett loves Germany, his sober assessment of the German relationship with biblical Christianity is realistic and contains many lessons for the North […]
