Parchment & Pen Blog

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 [...]

One of my best friends that I grew up with asked me a very hard question about God. I want to share this with you. Let me back up first so you can see the context from which this question was sprung on me—and it was “sprung” on me.  My friend was not a Christian, but [...]

Christians have different presuppositions that they bring to their theology. This does not make it right or wrong, but we must understand that the unexamined presupposition is not worth having. Our view of history is no different. It is a presupposition that we bring when asking the question What does it means to be “orthodox”? [...]

I have argued in previous installments of this series that in John 10:28-30 Jesus claims to be “one†with the Father in the exercise of the divine prerogative and power of giving eternal life to the people of God and preserving them against any spiritual attack. Christ’s use of the monotheistic statement of YHWH in [...]

Up to now, I’ve been sharing what I think the Orthodox Church has to offer the non-Orthodox community. Now it’s time to turn the tables. My evangelical passions prompt me to suggest that the time has come for us Orthodox to rediscover the evangelical character of our own faith on its own terms not on the [...]