The year 2018 marked the sixteen-hundredth anniversary of the excommunication of one of Christianity’s most famous heretics: the fifth-century monk Pelagius, who gave his name to “Pelagianism,” the set of beliefs that denies the doctrine of original sin and the need for grace in order to live . . . . Continue Reading »
Two years after a study found most Evangelicals hold views condemned as heretical—especially on the Holy Spirit—an update has been released. And the numbers are in some ways even worse. So who—or what—is to blame? Continue Reading »
Many would like to domesticate Mormon strangeness, what Richard Mouw recently called in these pages its “ill-considered and defective elements” (“Mormons Approaching Orthodoxy,” May 2016), in the hope of promoting a more productive Evangelical-Mormon dialogue. They consider Joseph Smith’s . . . . Continue Reading »
I’m spending time this Lent with the Creed. I hadn’t gotten further than the first sentence before remembering something St. Peter said.“False prophets,” complained Peter, “appeared in the past among the people, and in the same way false teachers will appear among you. They will bring in . . . . Continue Reading »
Skimming through a stack of books recently, I found myself reading a testimonial of sorts from James D. G. Dunn, the great New Testament scholar who coined the phrase “the new perspective on Paul.” Having logged decades of ministry in various Methodist contexts, Dunn tries to explain what it . . . . Continue Reading »
The Gospels obviously tell the life story of a human being. Jesus was born. He lived in subjection to his parents, grew up, learned a trade, made friends and enemies, walked the dusty roads of Judea, climbed mountains, and sailed the Sea of Galilee. He wept at the grave of Lazarus, passionately . . . . Continue Reading »
Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness by richard b. hays baylor, 177 pages, $34.95 I n the heady days of the early Christian Church, Marcion was considered a very dangerous man. In the second half of the second century, bishops and theologians all over the Christian . . . . Continue Reading »
Douthat's critics smack of PhDeism, the worship of credentials. Why should a well-read Catholic writer need a degree in theology to write about Catholicism?
When Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia, recently presented the Pope with a now infamous “Communist Crucifix”—sculpted in the form of a Soviet-style hammer and sickle—it marked a low point in Bolivian diplomacy. To offer such a “gift” to the Pope was not only exploitive, but a profound insult to the millions of Christians murdered by Communists. It was also a reminder of how Marxism has infected, and often poisoned, Latin American Christianity through aberrant forms of liberation theology. Continue Reading »