Baptism and Membership

I became baptistic while at a Presbyterian seminary, and then a few years later, while at a Baptist church, realized I wasn’t a mainstream Baptist on the issue of church membership. (Its funny how being immersed in a different perspective can help you realize where you stand.) The traditional Baptist view is that baptism following [...]

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What’s new about Pentecost?

A question I have been reflecting on since my second year of seminary is, “what’s new about Pentecost?” In other words, in what ways is the activity of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 continuous with the Spirit’s work throughout the Old Testament, and in what ways is it new and unprecedented? The question is [...]

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Philemon and Slavery

You often hear people in our culture reference the Bible’s alleged endorsement of slavery, and it seems like they usually have in mind Paul’s instruction in Ephesians 6:5-9 and Colossians 4:1. Usually the point is to somehow undermine the Bible’s authority or show it is out-dated. There are lots of responses that I think can [...]

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Some Thoughts on Christian Smith’s The Bible Made Impossible

I’ve been looking a bit at Christian Smith’s The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism is not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (BrazosPress, 2011). I agree with many aspects of Smith’s critique. While I consider myself to have a high view of Scripture, I have broadened a bit in my understanding of all that this [...]

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Face to Face with God

Here’s another great quote from Lovelace’s Dynamics of Spiritual Life, concerning the often neglected role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. The metaphor in the third paragraph below is particularly interesting and challenging: This failure to recognize the Holy Spirit as personally present in our lives is widespread in the churches [...]

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