Category Archives: Church History

Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God (Seuss)

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What if Jonathan Edwards memorable sermon “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God” was written in the style of Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat? It might go something like this:

EdwardsInTheHatTo Fall In Due Time

We sat there in church.
We listened so well.
The preacher stepped up
to tell us about hell.

With tales of horror,
that sound like Stephen King,
We sat on the seat edge
with sweat that did cling.

The preacher he taught,
about our feet sliding.
Explaining the text,
no truth was he hiding.

To walk in a place
so slippery and wet.
A most foolish idea
you are sure to regret.

You’ll fall down
down
down
down
into a wide gaping pit.
And you will not like it.
Not one little bit. Continue reading →

Tertullian on the Problem of Evil and Free Will

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This is part of a series of posts that captures the early church views on free will and determinism. The idea for this series was motivated by Calvinist claims that their view was held by the early church.

Tertullian

Tertullian

Tertullian (160-225), a 2nd century theologian lived in North Africa, wrote numerous works explaining and defending Christianity. We explored his views of orthodoxy (or the Rule of Faith) already, in this post we will look at how he approached the problem of evil.

One of his works is The Five Books against Marcion. In Book 2, Tertullian explores the problem of evil because Marcion (the heretic of Pontus) was wrestling with how a good God could be the author of all the evil in the world (i.2).

The problem of evil, as stated by Marcion and presented by Tertullian goes, something like this (ii.5): Continue reading →

A Machete Order Reading of the Bible (NT)

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Imagine if you had a free weekend and decided to watch the set of Star Wars movies. There is great debate about the order in which one should watch the Star Wars movies. Should one watch them in the order in which they were released (IV, V, VI, I, II, III) or in historical order (I, II, III, IV, V, VI).

Rod Hilton has proposed an order called – machete order, which preserves the surprise relationship between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker as well as allow for the entire viewing to end on the celebratory high note of beating the Empire. This order has a very “epic” poem approach that “tells the story better”.

I was recently posed a question  about reading the Bible all the way through. Continue reading →