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31 results for “Apostolic faith”
Clear searchAn unrequited love for the historic Church
…de because I love much of what I find within her, yet cannot call every later development apostolic. There is a particular accusation made against evangelical Christianity that I feel more deeply than might be expected. We are told that we are rootless individualists: Christians…
Read article →How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name
…al How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name Can a person possess true faith while showing no movement towards godliness? Can someone belong to Christ while remaining settled in the very iniquity from which He came to deliver us? These questions are often answe…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…ether Before stating where the positions divide, we should remember the truths upon which faithful Christians ought to stand together. There is one God, one Messiah, one gospel, and one way of salvation. Jewish ancestry does not justify anyone before God. Gentile ancestry exclude…
Read article →A sign of Israel's renewal, not Israel's disappearance
…through Israel as heralds of Israel's King, calling the covenant people to repentance and faith. Their appointment was therefore both hopeful and judicial. It announced renewal to those who received Messiah and exposed the unbelief of those who rejected Him. The existence of judg…
Read article →Irenaeus of Lyons · Early Christian theology and polemic · c. 180–190
…peaks of the catholic Church, the word means the universal or whole Church confessing the apostolic faith; it must not be treated as proof that he would endorse every doctrine or institution of the later Church which now bears that name. Test his arguments and his use of Scriptur…
View recommendation →What Jesus promised the apostles about Israel's future
…esus promised the apostles about Israel's future Peter once asked the question which many faithful disciples have quietly wondered: what will those who sacrifice for Christ receive? Jesus answered with a promise larger than personal reward. He spoke of His own glorious throne, tw…
Read article →How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination
…depend on pretending that the evidence does not exist or that examination is an enemy of faith. The manuscript record belongs in the light. Across the principal textual traditions, the same Jesus is presented: crucified, buried, risen, and Lord. The same gospel is proclaimed. Th…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
…a real crucifixion remains clear across a geographically dispersed church soon after the apostolic period. Second, the alternative he answers is not presented as a historical memory preserved by witnesses who saw Jesus escape. It is a doctrinal claim associated with a view of Ch…
Read article →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
…ess be used in its proper place. It displays the coherence and fittingness of Trinitarian faith, but it should not be asked to identify the Father, Son and Holy Ghost independently of revelation. Scripture supplies the controlling evidence: Jesus says that the Father loved Him be…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
…answers, and the preceding articles have supplied them. But Christianity is not the only faith carrying a burden of proof. Islam does not merely criticise Christian revelation. It presents another book, another prophet and another account of Jesus, then demands that the earlier…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…e when Abraham and Sarah could not naturally produce the heir. The choice magnifies God's faithfulness, not human boasting. Ishmael was blessed. But God immediately distinguished that blessing from the covenant line. God named Isaac as the covenant heir When Abraham asks concerni…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…some people distorted, concealed or fabricated religious claims is not evidence that the apostolic Gospel was universally replaced. Who were the People of the Gospel? The Qur'an does not address an imaginary community. By the seventh century, Christians had lived for centuries t…
Read article →Two accounts of judgement, mercy, and the sinner's hope before God
…slims believe in works; Christians do not.” Both traditions speak about judgement, mercy, faith, and obedience. The decisive difference is the cross. The scales in Islamic judgement The Qur'an repeatedly presents a weighing on the Day of Judgement. Surah 21:47 says that scales of…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…The witnesses must be brought together. The competing explanations must be compared. Each faith must be required to account not merely for the evidence it prefers, but for the whole body of evidence—including the facts which create difficulty for its own claims. This is the closi…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…ssover pattern; Christ is "our passover" sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7). Moses was faithful as a servant in God's house; Christ rules as the Son over His own house (Hebrews 3:1–6). Scripture names the fulfilment The matter does not depend only upon resemblance. Peter quote…
Read article →What Christ’s promise establishes—and what claims about infallible teaching still need to prove
…ncapable of sin. Its doctrine of infallibility concerns protection from error in teaching faith and morals under specified conditions. It includes certain definitive teachings of the pope and of the bishops in communion with him. The Vatican’s own summary makes these distinctions…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…l evidence. The clay birds appear within an imaginative collection written well after the apostolic period. That collection contains many episodes which neither Christians nor Muslims would readily accept as reliable history. The Qur’an then selects one of its most memorable mira…
Read article →Sir Robert Anderson · Biblical and apologetic argument · 1897
…Him? Anderson refuses the easy answer that every unanswered prayer is caused by defective faith. He places the apparent silence of heaven within his reading of the biblical programme and argues that God's patience is not absence, weakness, or indifference. Even where readers ques…
View recommendation →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…he sentence revoke God's covenants with Israel, or does it pronounce judgement upon the unfaithful rulers and generation then entrusted with the vineyard? The immediate context identifies Jesus' targets. The parable identifies what they had corrupted. The chronology of what Jesus…
Read article →Divine judgement, the character of God, and the promise of escape
…rist does not merely promise preservation from one harmful event. He promises to keep the faithful from an hour which comes upon the whole inhabited world for the testing of earth-dwellers. The object of deliverance is the period itself. The phrase "keep thee from" can be debated…
Read article →What the historical evidence proves—and what it does not
…t in the nineteenth century. The conclusion then follows that pretribulationism cannot be apostolic. Two questions are being confused. Did the early Church possess a settled system identical to modern dispensational pretribulationism? No. Did Darby invent the resurrection of dead…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…says that He was made like His brethren, suffered when tempted and became a merciful and faithful high priest (Hebrews 2:17–18). The same epistle says that He was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). These are not scenes performed by God behind a huma…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…Understanding why Scripture identifies Jesus as the eternal Creator helps us preserve the faith, strengthen our trust in God, answer objections wisely and know Christ more truly. Suggested excerpt: Ambrose argued that Scripture says the Word “was,” not that “He was not.” But does…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…s of a merely political nationalism. They include forgiveness, holiness, deliverance, and faithful service before God. Israel's true hope was always spiritual as well as national. Jesus later promised the Twelve that in "the regeneration" they would sit upon twelve thrones, "judg…
Read article →The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing
…enteenth-century translation. It is whether the event denoted by that term appears in the apostolic text. It plainly does. The rapture is the living believer's participation in the resurrection The most important clarification is that the rapture is not a rival to the resurrectio…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…eformations—secret-key religion, escape rhetoric, elite conversion status, and churchless faith—but fails when it becomes a historical genealogy or a substitute for doctrinal argument. Imagine a Christian whose faith is assembled from prophecy videos, private impressions, confere…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…excusing indefensible words nor forcing every ancient writer into a modern category. The apostolic starting point was Jewish The earliest Church did not think of Christianity as a Gentile religion which had displaced Israel. Jesus and the apostles were Jewish. The first believer…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…that it was wrong, and attempt to repair some of the damage—yet still not turn to God in faith. Judas returned to the priests, but the text never shows him returning to Jesus. He confessed his sin to men who could not cleanse his conscience. When they coldly answered, “What is t…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…whom all things were made. The one who died upon the cross is the Lord of glory. To speak faithfully, we need to distinguish Christ’s two natures without dividing Christ Himself. Who He Is and What He Is The basic distinction is not as difficult as its theological vocabulary may…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…'s covenant world Jesus was not a Gentile religious founder who arrived with an unrelated faith. He was born to a Jewish mother, circumcised on the eighth day, presented at the temple, and raised in obedience to the law of Moses (Luke 2:21-24). Paul summarises His historical sett…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…ertainty of restoration rests not upon Israel's political strength but upon the Creator's faithfulness. Ezekiel sees a nation brought back to life Ezekiel's vision of dry bones is sometimes applied generally to spiritual revival. The prophet himself identifies the bones: "Son of…
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