One question I've heard frequently is:
"If God is love (1 John 4:16), then why doesn't God make my life perfect? Wouldn't that be a loving thing for him to do? Doesn't God want me to be happy, well-fed, safe, healthy, and rich? If not, then how can I …
In my past several posts, I have been building a case for why I believe that some sort of theory of Christian inclusivism is necessary if Christians want to believe everything the Bible says about which individuals will be eternally saved.
As a reminder, Christian inclusivism is the idea that …
As part of my preparation for my dissertation defence in August 2021, I was asked to think about why my doctoral research matters to the church.
At first glance, I admit that my investigation into why the eighteenth-century Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards believed that God predestines most people to hell …
In a previous post I talked about the 'problem' of believing that God is fully good and loving while accepting that sometimes God punishes people with death because of their sins, and how I make sense of that.
Another frequent accusation against God's goodness is that if God was really …
One of the frequent objections that atheists or opponents of Christianity frequently raise is about all those times in the Old Testament when God kills people, or tells the Israelites to kill certain people.
These critics claim that a God of love would never act like this, that it is …
There are some mysterious verses about suffering in the Bible, and how that suffering is possibly useful or even beneficial to Christians.
For example, in Romans 8:16-18 Paul writes:
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs …
Some Christians and even pastors shy away from the difficult topics in theology such as evil, suffering, reprobation, and hell. They say we shouldn't think about such awful things, and should focus on the positive parts of Christianity.
However, I am drawn to the challenge of these areas, all of …