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52 results for “Christian doctrine”
Clear searchWhy the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God
Not Three Gods Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God The Trinity is often rejected before it is accurately defined. “The Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God,” the objection runs. “That makes three…
Read article →R. V. Sellers · Theological biography and history of doctrine · 1928
…r beyond the familiar catchphrases about Nicaea and into the far less tidy world in which Christian language about Christ was still being argued, tested, and refined. Sellers shows that councils, bishops, imperial favour, personal conflict, and genuine theological conviction were…
View recommendation →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
…ion to love and freely express it when He creates. That answer should be taken seriously. Christianity does not need to prove the Trinity by defining love in a way which makes every alternative logically impossible. The biblical case is stronger than that. Jesus does not leave us…
Read article →How the Law reaches its goal and appointed end in Christ
…aw reaches its goal and appointed end in Christ Few sentences have carried more weight in Christian discussions of the Law than Romans 10:4: "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." —Romans 10:4 Does Paul mean that Christ terminated the La…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
Have Evangelicals Become Neo-Gnostics? History, Heresy, and the Temptation of Private Christianity The accusation identifies real evangelical deformations—secret-key religion, escape rhetoric, elite conversion status, and churchless faith—but fails when it becomes a historica…
Read article →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
…revealed by what it does when the beloved is undeserving and the cost is real. Islam and Christianity both speak of divine mercy, forgiveness and love. A fair comparison cannot begin by pretending that the Qur'an presents Allah as merciless or that Muslims worship a deity who ne…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…. Worldly sorrow may attempt to pay for sin through self-punishment. It may withdraw from Christian fellowship, prayer, Scripture, and anyone who speaks of grace. It tells us to hide from God until we can somehow make ourselves worthy to return. But we cannot cleanse ourselves be…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…ry 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 without a Church, readers without rulers, minds pursuing private illu…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…nd some of it while misunderstanding the rest? Did our words awaken a familiar picture of Christianity assembled from school lessons, political arguments, religious hypocrisy, painful experiences, and things Christians themselves should never have taught? The question is not whet…
Read article →J. C. Ryle · Doctrinal and pastoral essays · 1874
…e writing is rarely obscure. Ryle's directness, pastoral seriousness, and ability to make doctrine intelligible turn the collection into far more than a record of nineteenth-century Church of England debates. Ryle writes openly as an evangelical Churchman defending a particular p…
View recommendation →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…Prophet The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels Islam honours Jesus in ways which Christians should acknowledge accurately. The Qur'an calls Him the Messiah, describes Him as a word from God, affirms His virgin birth and attributes extraordinary signs to Him by God's perm…
Read article →What Christ’s promise establishes—and what claims about infallible teaching still need to prove
Does Matthew 16:18 Establish Church Infallibility? Few promises offer Christians greater assurance than these words of Jesus: “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” — Matthew 16:18 The Church belongs to Christ. He builds…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…The Council of Nicaea has become a screen upon which almost every conspiracy about early Christianity is projected. Constantine invented the Trinity. Jesus was voted into deity. Paganism defeated biblical Christianity. The emperor chose the books of the Bible. Reincarnation was…
Read article →Dave Hunt · Devotional theology and biblical exhortation · 2000
I recommend An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith because it refuses to separate Christian belief from Christian living. Hunt ranges across the gospel, faith, love for God, discipleship, doctrine, the Church, and the believer's heavenly hope, but the recurring appeal is…
View recommendation →Not escape from the body, but its redemption
…of the Resurrection Not escape from the body, but its redemption Many people imagine the Christian hope as an endless disembodied existence: the soul released from the body, leaving the physical world behind and becoming something more like a ghost than a human being. Christians…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
The Sum of These Things Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence “Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Ma…
Read article →Tertullian · Apologetic, doctrinal, and practical treatises · c. 197–220
…His Apology and related appeals confront Roman governors with the injustice of condemning Christians without hearing their case, while his doctrinal works answer opponents with close argument and a profound regard for Scripture. He can also be searching on the practical demands o…
View recommendation →Irenaeus of Lyons · Early Christian theology and polemic · c. 180–190
…nfessing 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 Scripture as carefully as those of any other teacher. Scripture Gnosticism Incarnatio…
View recommendation →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…m it. The People of the Gospel are told to judge by what God revealed within it. Yet when Christians open the Gospel they possessed for centuries before Muhammad, they find the Son who shares the Father's glory, gives His life as a ransom, is crucified under Pontius Pilate and ri…
Read article →Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation
Is the Beatific Vision the Whole Christian Hope? Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation The beatific vision is the Christian teaching that the redeemed will see God and find their perfect happines…
Read article →Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ
The Earth's Great Sabbath Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ The Christian hope for creation rests neither in human effort nor in escape from the material world. The creation groans for the return of its rightful King, the revelation of the sons of God, a…
Read article →How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name
…resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some." —2 Timothy 2:17–18 False doctrine was spreading and the faith of some was being overturned. From the human point of view, the situation looked unstable. People who spoke as Christians were leading others away from t…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…Christ and the Church. The resulting history is neither simple nor flattering. Some early Christian writers defended essential truths: Jesus is Israel's Messiah, the law cannot justify, Gentiles are full heirs in Christ, and the Old Testament finds its goal in Him. Yet those trut…
Read article →Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints
When Do Persecuted Christians Receive Rest? Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints In his presentation Why I Reject a Pre-tribulation Rapture, Michael Brown identifies 2 The…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…Origen’s difficult position helps us distinguish what Scripture teaches from the language Christians gradually developed to defend it. Primary passages: John 1:1–3; John 5:17–23; John 8:54–59; John 17:5; Colossians 1:15–17; Hebrews 1:1–12; Isaiah 44:6, 24 --- In the previous stud…
Read article →Jesus and the fountain of living water
…system." He does not send the thirsty to a place, a ritual, a priesthood or a technique. Christian truth matters, Christian fellowship matters and Christ commands His people to be baptised and to remember Him together. Yet none of these is the fountain. They have life only becau…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
…r an objection. It should enlarge our worship. The Incarnation is not merely a difficulty Christianity can survive; it is glory Christianity alone can proclaim. The Maker entered His creation. The eternal Son made our nature His own. The One whom the heaven of heavens cannot cont…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…ent comes. The future of Israel is therefore not a specialised controversy at the edge of Christian doctrine. It tests how we understand the faithfulness of the God upon whose promises the Church itself depends. The opposing case deserves to be stated fairly Most thoughtful super…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world To many Jewish people, Christianity appears thoroughly foreign. Its historic centres became Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, Geneva, and countless cities far from Jerusalem. Its Scriptures have been used to justi…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…in. Some may combine physiology, memory, medication and expectation. Scripture also gives Christians a category of spiritual deception, though we have no warrant to label every unusual experience demonic. The evidence usually does not permit us to reconstruct the cause of a parti…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…cultural vacuum. It appeared in a world alive with biblical names, Jewish interpretation, Christian preaching, sectarian disagreement, devotional legend and stories carried across languages by travellers, merchants, clergy and ordinary believers. That observation does not disprov…
Read article →The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing
Every Christian Should Believe in the Rapture The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing The rapture is often treated as though it were an eccentric event invented by dispensationalists…
Read article →Divine judgement, the character of God, and the promise of escape
…pe The claim that the Church is not appointed to wrath is sometimes answered too quickly. Christians plainly suffer. Jesus promised tribulation in the world. The apostles endured imprisonment, violence, loss, and martyrdom. Across the world, believers still suffer precisely becau…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…of calling upon the One in whom people must believe. Paul elsewhere explicitly describes Christians as those who call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Corinthians 1:2).[^20] There is an alternative. Since God appears in verse 9 as the One who raised Jesus, and since Joe…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…confessed that He knew all things. He suffered, bled and died, although God is immortal. Christians rightly believe all these things because Scripture plainly teaches them. The difficulty begins when we try to explain how they can all be true of the same Christ. It is common to…
Read article →How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination
…How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination Christians sometimes hear a sweeping objection: the Bible may once have contained God's word, but generations of copying changed it so thoroughly that nobody can now know what it originally…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
Did Jesus Really Die? The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an Christianity and Islam cannot both be correct about the death of Jesus. The Gospel declares that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, was buried and rose bodily from the dead. His…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
Is the Qur'an a Miracle? Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation Christians are frequently placed on the defensive. Has the Bible been corrupted? Did Jesus really claim to be God? Was He actually crucified? Has the doctrine of the Trinity compromised mono…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…xpressly records that God heard Ishmael, protected him and promised to make him fruitful. Christians have no reason to erase what Scripture affirms. But blessing is not the same as covenant election. God named the covenant heir before he was born. He repeated that choice after hi…
Read article →The Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…s not possess. But they do not remove the problem. Daniel 9 existed within Judaism before Christianity. Its prophecy places the cutting off of an anointed figure before the destruction of the city and sanctuary. Jesus appeared during the Second Temple period, was recognised as th…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…n precisely the direction of the attitude Paul forbids. The passage does not accuse every Christian who interprets the Church as Israel of personal arrogance. It does establish that the metaphor was designed to prevent Gentile believers from treating Jewish exclusion as proof of…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…final abomination before his decreed destruction. The pronoun alone should not carry the doctrine. Hebrew can resume a more distant subject, and covenant language understandably attracts a messianic interpretation. The cumulative context is stronger than the grammar by itself: a…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…the date of a system's formulation does not determine whether its interpretation is true. Christian theology repeatedly developed more precise vocabulary when questions forced believers to bring biblical truths into a coherent account. Later systematisation can clarify Scripture…
Read article →What the historical evidence proves—and what it does not
…roves—and what it does not The historical objection is often stated in absolute terms: no Christian taught the rapture before John Nelson Darby devised it in the nineteenth century. The conclusion then follows that pretribulationism cannot be apostolic. Two questions are being co…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…rument through which God acted? The problem is not confined to careless modern preaching. Christians were struggling with its underlying questions in the early fourth century, even as they defended the eternal deity of the Son. Eustathius of Antioch saw one danger with unusual cl…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…ent of that reception in John 6 is faith—not the physical mechanism of a sacrament. Early Christian witnesses including Tertullian and Augustine reached the same conclusion from the text. Their testimony is not offered as an infallible authority alongside Scripture. It demonstrat…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
…roof. Neither is it a decisive refutation of imminency. Expectancy without prediction The doctrine has often been damaged by date-setting. Predictions have failed, charts have been treated as revelation, and excitement has sometimes become irresponsibility. None of that is requir…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation In an article published by the Christian Research Institute, Hank Hanegraaff argues that the pretribulation rapture has no biblical basis. He presents it as a system in which God has two unrelated peoples and destinies, C…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…emain with Him for ever. His concern is pastoral. Some Thessalonian believers feared that Christians who had died would miss the Lord's coming. Paul assures them that the dead will be raised and that the whole company will be reunited in Christ's presence. He concludes, “Wherefor…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…d saving work within history? --- More than twenty years ago, during the early part of my Christian walk, one sentence in Scripture troubled me: “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” — Psalm 2:7; Acts 13:33 Acts appeared to connect this “begetting” with Christ’s resur…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…aders assume the answer is obvious. The New Testament applies the language of election to Christians, so the elect in Matthew 24 must be the Church. If they are gathered after the Tribulation, the passage appears to place the rapture there as well. The first premise is possible.…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15:50-54). The question is not whether Christians should believe in that gathering. The question is where it belongs within the wider prophetic programme. Pretribulationism gains its strength from several strands which converge.…
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