Parchment & Pen Blog

I am the product of a sub-emerging evangelical theological conversation which recognizes the validity of both the postmodern and modern ethos. Go ahead, label me! But read me first. Those who are like me find themselves in an ocean of hope and despair holding on to two anchors at once. The modern anchor sinks because of [...]

A few items: Parchment and Pen: One Year Later It has been one year (give or take) since I started the Parchment and Pen blog. Many people said “Don’t do it!” It will eat up your time. They were certainly right; It does eat up a lot of time. But I think that it has [...]

Leadership is a hot topic today. Colleges and universities and seminaries and churches and Christian organizations of all varieties are developing leadership programs. I cite my own denomination, the Christian Reformed Church. To celebrate its 150th anniversary, it is raising millions of dollars to launch a leadership institute. My alma mater Baylor University has recently [...]

As many of you already know, I love Chuck Swindoll. Thoughts of him always reignite a passion for the Gospel. His example and leadership have stablized me many times as I stumbled on the evangelical road. In 1993, living a dichotomist life of bar-hopping, womanizing, and Sunday night church attending (just before Sunday night penny [...]

According to N.T. Wright, justification is a subset of election, which, in turn, is an issue of ecclesiology. Justification therefore is intrinsically tied to being a part of the covenant community. Jews were by definition part of this community and, because of this, they were justified de facto. In Wright’s understanding, the Jews of Paul’s [...]

Is the Roman Catholic Church unorthodox?   From the perspective of a Protestant understanding of “orthodoxy,” relations to other traditions can vary. Protestants can be found who believe that any deviation from the developments and articulations found in the Reformation, particularly with regard to justification by faith alone, amounts to abandoning the Gospel completely. The question [...]

Here is an ALR New Release about the CSNTM find: DALLAS, March 25, 2008 - Normally, two or three New Testament manuscripts handwritten in the original Greek are discovered each year. Last summer, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) found a treasure trove of them during a trip to Albania. The Center, [...]

In my last post on hyper-Preterism, I pondered whether hyper-Preterism is a false Gospel. This post is simply meant to be an interlude as to where I presently stand. As I may have said before, I have had very little contact with hyper-Preterism. I don’t even know anyone personally who believes such. In a lot of [...]

John Piper has proven once again that underneath his passionate commitment to exposition and inspiration, his thinking, judgment, and exegetical rigor is not clouded by emotional commitments and traditional brick walls. Piper represents that rare combination between the pastor, theologian, and exegete. His most recent work The Future of Justification is a scholarly defense of the Gospel in [...]

In a recent episode of Theology Unplugged (solo version), I made a comment that I was challenged to reconsider through an email correspondence. My statement had to do with my position concerning the viability of full or hyper-Preterism as a Christian option. Hyper-Preterism is the belief held by some (a growing number) in the Church concerning [...]

In his book The God Delusion, the new atheist Richard Dawkins asserts that Yahweh is truly a moral monster: “What makes my jaw drop is that people today should base their lives on such an appalling role model as Yahweh and even worse, that they should bossily try to force the same evil monster (whether [...]

My view of what I call “progressive orthodoxy” allows for maturation and development in our understanding of orthodoxy. Here is the definition I gave in the last blog: Progressive Orthodoxy: The belief that the ultimate authority for the Christian faith is found only in the Scriptures (sola Scriptura) and that orthodoxy is a progressive development [...]