Creating this post was a bit of a challenge. I want to faithfully represent the position of Robin Parry ("Gregory MacDonald") in his book The Evangelical Universalist, but I obviously can't reproduce it here. Parry clearly lays out his thinking (and so presents his...
free will
The Limits of Divine Omniscience
That's the focus and/or question in this article (entitled: The Limits of Omniscience). I thought it was an interesting thing to have you all read on the heels of the election and predestination discussion. The last paragraph nicely highlights the issue, but you'll...
Election and Salvation, Round Three
I decided to throw together a short video (9 minutes) to try and better explain/illustrate what my take on this topic is. I reference my thoughts on baptism therein -- how it is divorced from salvation, just as circumcision was -- and so it might be useful to skim...
Election, Salvation, Unbelief, and Eternal Security
Here we go. You'll note by the end that I really don't care for (or feel the need) to frame these issues they way they are typically framed. Election and Salvation The major point of my previous post on election was that it was not to be understood as synonymous with...
Back to Election
Well, I'm finally over oral surgery, the holidays, and the beating I received this past weekend in the Naked Bible fantasy football league. (And that hurt more than the surgery). Time to get back to election. As indicated in my previous posts on this, I think the...
The Election of Israel and Its Meaning
I want to take this topic in shorter, manageable posts. My goal is to take you through my thought process in shorter increments than usual. This topic seems to require it. We'll start in the Old Testament. Anyone can tell from a lexicon or the list of verses I posted...
Choosing Election
Okay, it's a bad pun (are there really any good puns?). I've decided that it's time for the Naked Bible to weigh in on election. I've hinted at this a couple of times, but I figure it's a good way to have 2010 go out with a bang and start the New Year running. (Yes, I...
Stephen Hawking’s Category Confusion
It just goes to show that smart people can be awfully blind to obvious things. Mathematician John Lennox does a nice job here at showing how Hawking's recent dictum that God didn't create the universe is incoherent -- and nothing new.
God and Haiti
The impact of the catastrophic earthquake last week in Haiti is still rippling through the small, impoverished country. The scale of the tragedy is still building to its full crescendo of horror. But even now the calamity prompts questions concerning the whereabouts...
God’s Sovereignty and Nature’s Freedom
I liked this article since parts of it resonate with my own view of sovereignty and free will (the latter does not rule out the former) blogged long ago here at the Naked Bible. Genuine freedom is part of humanity because it is a communicable attribute we receive as...
The Ends, Not Necessarily the Means (Sovereignty and Free Will Addendum)
I've been thinking about the last couple of exchanges on the predestination / free will topic. It's occurred to me that there's an element of my position that I haven't specifically included in posts that would be helpful. It's something I allude to in Chapter 4 and...
Predestination and Free Will: A Summary of The Naked Bible Position
Well, I never figured that we'd be getting into this topic so early, but we did. I'm not going to post any more comments to the post that started all this; time to move on. However, I thought it would be advisable to post a summary of my thoughts on the subject for...
God and Disaster
I just saw this on John Hobbins' blog, Ancient Hebrew Poetry. John's a friend of mine, and his blog is a good one. He writes: Eastern Orthodox theologian David B. Hart blasts away at all the latter-day comforters of Job, who, in the wake of the disasters that have...