From Roger E. Olson: Thus, this speaker is arguing that ALL evangelicals (well, there may be a few exceptions) recognize AT LEAST ONE BOUNDARY around evangelicalism: the necessity of a born again experience.  Anything that threatens that is anathema. This blog is dedicated PARTLY, at least, to exploring the reality of evangelicalism and evangelical faith.  This is an interesting proposal from an astute scholar of evangelicalism who has taught in two evangelical institutions for twenty-some years.  My own thought is that while evangelicals do want to preserve and promote the born again experience (however exactly conceived–whether instantaneous or a process) … Continue reading Theological Question of the Day: What makes someone “evangelical”?

While reading For Calvinism by Michael Horton, I came across the following quote: A libertarian view of human freedom insists on nothing less than the ability to choose anything. However, this means that the will is free not only from external compulsion but from the person who is exercising it! In other words, it assumes that the will is independent of the mind, preferences, character, and heart of persons (pp. 43–44). By contrast, Horton, like most Calvinists, subscribes to a compatibilist view of human freedom in which freedom is understood as freedom from external compulsion. What choices free people make … Continue reading Theological Question of the Day: What Kind of Freedom Did Adam and Eve Have Before the Fall?

Some atheists argue that religious belief has its origins in cognitive functions such as hypersensitive agency detection device (HADD). Justin L. Barrett describes HADD this way: “our perceptual and conceptual systems readily attribute minded agency with little provocation—even in conditions in which we reflectively think that such attribution is in error.” For example, we hear a twig snap in the woods, think a predator must be near, and start running. From an evolutionary point of view, HADD is beneficial, even if it generates false positives, because it is better to run from an imaginary predator than to be dinner for … Continue reading Theological Question of the Day