Bill Pratt | April 6, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt This is a very commonly asked question. Rather than answer this question myself, I point you to Wintery Knight’s blog post yesterday where he quotes from John Piper’s 50 reasons Jesus had to die. Please read this post and discover again how incredibly awesome Jesus is! Happy Good Friday!
Category: Cross, Theology |
9 Comments »
Tags: death of Jesus, Easter
Bill Pratt | December 18, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt The heretical German Christians, in 1933, galvanized Dietrich Bonhoeffer and another German pastor, Martin Niemoller, into action. They produced a statement that spelled out their grievances with the German Christians. The statement contained the following four points: First, it declared that its signers would rededicate themselves to the Scriptures and to [...]
Category: Theology |
1 Comment »
Tags: Aryan Paragraph, Barmen Declaration, Confessing Church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoller, Nazism, Pastors' Emergency League
Bill Pratt | December 16, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 2 we discovered the “German Christian” movement, a group that wanted to conform Christianity to German nationalism. In part 3, we complete our survey of this heretical campaign. Again, we draw heavily from Eric Metaxas’s biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Recall that the German Christians sought to radically reinterpret and [...]
Category: Bible Interpretation, Theology |
3 Comments »
Tags: Eric Metaxas, German Christians, Ludwig Muller, Nazi
Bill Pratt | December 15, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1 we saw the plans that the National Socialists had for the German Lutheran Church during the 1930′s and 1940′s. In parts 2 and 3 we will review how the church reacted to the attempted Nazification of their doctrines and beliefs. Again, we draw heavily from Eric Metaxas’s excellent biography [...]
Category: Bible Interpretation, Theology |
10 Comments »
Tags: Doris Bergen, Eric Metaxas, German Christians, Nazi
Darrell | December 13, 2011
Post Author: Darrell I have long cherished the story of the Lord’s appearance to Moses in the Burning Bush from Exodus Chapter 3. I am sure you know the story. Moses left Egypt and set up his home in Midian. The Lord appeared to him in the midst of the burning bush in an effort [...]
Category: Eastern Orthodox, Theology |
7 Comments »
Tags: Burning Bush, Consuming Fire, Eastern Orthodox, Mary, Virgin Mary
Bill Pratt | December 9, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt One of the most important historical facts about the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer was his reaction to the Nazi take-over of the Lutheran state church in Germany in the 1930′s. Eric Metaxas, in his magnificent biography of Bonhoeffer, devotes an entire chapter to Nazi theology. The program developed by the Nazis to [...]
Category: Theology |
8 Comments »
Tags: Adolph Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas, Heinrich Himmler, Martin Bormann, Nazism, Reinhard Heydrich
Bill Pratt | December 7, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Well, yes, of course, but that’s not the view of all pastors who call themselves Christian. I just finished Eric Metaxas’ brilliant biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and I was struck by Bonhoeffer’s view of the liberal churches in Manhattan during the early 1930′s. In a fascinating season of Bonhoeffer’s life, he visited New [...]
Category: Theology |
2 Comments »
Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas, Union Theological Seminary
Darrell | November 9, 2011
Post Author: Darrell Many of those in the Protestant and Catholic traditions are familiar with the Penal Substitutionary Theory of the Atonement (hereafter referred to as Substitutionary Atonement). However, I have found many to be unfamiliar with the predominant atonement view held by those in the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is commonly called The Recapitulation [...]
Category: Eastern Orthodox, Theology |
18 Comments »
Tags: Athanasius, Atonement, Eastern Orthodox, eastern orthodox church, Irenaeus, penal substitutionary atonement, recapitulation theory, substitutionary atonement
Bill Pratt | August 12, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1 of this post, we looked at Edward Feser’s first 2 gradations of conceptions of God. In this second part, we will finish looking at the last three gradations and than talk about why this is important. Grade 3: God is not an object or substance alongside other objects [...]
Category: Philosophy, Theology |
30 Comments »
Tags: Anselm, Augustine, Edward Feser, The Last Superstition, Thomas Aquinas
Bill Pratt | August 10, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Is God a bearded old man living in the sky somewhere or is he completely unknowable? Both of these conceptions of God are held by various religious believers. When presenting a Christian conception of God on this blog, we have striven to follow the traditional, mainstream views of the church as [...]
Category: Philosophy, Theology |
3 Comments »
Tags: Anselm, Augustine, Edward Feser, The Last Superstition, Thomas Aquinas