Category: Biblical Principles

What are the general truths that should guide our thinking in all areas of life? Here are some possibilities.

Finney: Properly Communicating God’s Truths

  

Charles Finney explains in his Systematic Theology that there are different classes of truth, and that often Christians confuse them. I’ll begin with a statement he makes about the Bible that I believe is illuminating, then go on to his concern over how Christians communicate truth: The Bible is not of itself, strictly and properly a revelation to man. It is, properly speaking, rather a history of revelations formerly made to certain men. To be a revelation to us, its… Read more »

The Gosnell Verdict

  

In a week of breaking news coming at us like a whirlwind, none is more important to me today than the verdict reached yesterday in the Kermit Gosnell trial. The jury did its duty, which was by no means a guarantee. Gosnell was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, one count of involuntary manslaughter, and a couple hundred other counts dealing with the breaking of Pennsylvania laws regarding late-term abortions and other matters. We now come to the… Read more »

Finney on God’s Sovereignty & Spiritual Revival

  

Charles Finney, in his Revival Lectures, takes aim at those who just sit back and wait for God to move on men’s hearts. No, says Finney, God expects us to use all the means available to impress His truth on men. Here’s how he puts it: A revival is as naturally a result of the use of appropriate means as a crop is of the use of its appropriate means. I wish this idea to be impressed on your minds,… Read more »

My Personal Creed as a Christian & a Historian

  

Caught between two worlds, yet both informed by my Christian faith. What am I talking about? I am a history professor, what you would have to call a “professional historian.” That is one of my worlds. As an academic, I am devoted to research and accuracy in my teaching and writing. Historians generally don’t get involved in commentary on current events, and at least make some attempt at appearing “above politics.” Now, of course, much of that is pretense. For… Read more »

Truths That Need No Proof

  

The apostle Paul, in Romans 1 and 2, explains that God has made each one of us with an innate knowledge of Him and of right and wrong. We don’t grow up in a vacuum; there are some things we come to know because He has placed within us the ability to grasp them even without the aid of divine revelation. Paul called them the law written on the heart; the Founders of America referred to them as self-evident truths…. Read more »

Wood, Hay, & Straw

  

Jim Wallis, one of the leaders of what might be termed the Christian Left, has now come out in favor of same-sex marriage. Ever since his days as a member of the 1960s radical group Students for a Democratic Society, which was grounded in socialist/communist philosophy, Wallis has tried to walk a fine line in an attempt to marry [pun intended] Biblical principles with a humanistic, atheistic worldview. It has been as spectacularly unsuccessful as the same-sex unions he now… Read more »

The Sense of Sin

  

We live in an age when the idea of sin is dismissed as a relic of an outmoded religious system designed to suppress one’s desires for happiness. As we’ve seen so abundantly recently, in our entertainment media and all the way to the Supreme Court, equality has now been applied to same-sex relationships. Anyone who disagrees with this new enlightenment is archaic. Our society needs the message that is at the very ground level of Christian understanding: all men are… Read more »