Parchment & Pen Blog

In honor of Reformation Day, I am once again submitting my Papal complaint. The primary reason that Catholics believe God provided the Roman Catholic Church as an infallible authority is for unity. Christ prayed in the upper room that His people would be one (John 17:21-22). This unification Christ prayed for would most certainly involve some degree of doctrinal solidarity. [...]

I am going to post a video here. However, as interesting as the topic of the video may be, it is not the subject of this post. In fact, you really don’t have to watch the entire video to understand where I am going. This video is about how much people know about things such [...]

For my church history class, I had to read Pastoral Theology in the Classical Tradition for a group discussion and report.  Andrew Purves examines texts considered classical to the pastoral tradition from five pastoral leaders through the church’s history and how they have understood and addressed their pastoral role.  One of the biographies was that [...]

Will is dressing up as a ghost for Halloween. I was shocked. He has his Indiana Jones costume that he wears everywhere. I thought at least he would choose the Storm Trooper costume. I have given up on him being a superhero (Batman, Vigilante, Green Lantern, or any other DC character). Sigh… but a Ghost? [...]

Friends of the Ministry, I have been teaching theology for over a decade now. I have been focused on The Theology Program and Reclaiming the Mind Ministries for the last eight years. My passion and excitement about making theology accessible has not diminished in the slightest. Two days ago I taught on dispensationalism to 150 [...]

In a recent debate on the topic of design, I expressed amazement at all the huffing and puffing by anti-design proponents. Though they assert that a design hypothesis is “unscientific,” they say things in other places that make me suspicious. That is, many of these naturalists express profound astonishment at the universe’s precision-tuning for life, [...]

I came across this question on Facebook the other day – “what site do you go to find the truth?”  Because I know this young man to be deeply committed to Christ and to pastoring youth, I took the question to mean “what site most represents Biblical truth?”  Immediately, I responded with a site that [...]

For my intro students… I often play this game with my kids that drives them crazy. Sitting in the room, with no one but us, while they are not looking I will slap them on the rear and act like I did not do it. They turn and say, “Daddy! I know you did that.” I say, “I did not.” ”Then [...]

John MacArthur on the “lie” of Evolution: “The evolutionary lie is so pointedly antithetical to Christian truth that it would seem unthinkable for evangelical Christians to compromise with evolutionary science in any degree. But during the past century and a half of evolutionary propaganda, evolutionists have had remarkable success in getting evangelicals to meet them [...]

Continuing with my series — “. . . And Other Stupid Statements” — I would like to register a complaint. In truth, I would like to register many complaints about the common Christian view of the afterlife, but I start here. This complaint is important because it not only represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the [...]

In Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007), Ed Komoszewski and I argued that one evidence that Jesus is God is that he is properly the object of prayer (John 14:14; Acts 1:24-25; 7:59-60; 9:14; 22:16; Rom. 10:12-13; 1 Cor. 1:2; 16:22; 2 Cor. 12:8-9; Rev. [...]

Andy Schlafly is political conservative advocate Phyllis Schlafly’s son. He’s a graduate of Princeton University (major in electrical engineering), and Harvard Law School. Schlafly is founder of the website Conservapedia.com, which boast more than 100 million page views, offers a full-blown conservative viewpoint on politics. Conservapedia.com is sponsoring a new Bible translation called the Conservative [...]