Parchment & Pen Blog

It’s that time of year again . . . time for top ten lists of every sort. The only lists I care about are those of the top ten books of the year. As with every year, so too in 2012, it’s hard to keep it to ten. So I didn’t. My list this year, [...]

This past week I came across a statement by Marvin Olasky concerning the national election on Tuesday: “Sinful humans with all our quirks will decide who controls the White House and Congress. But under a sovereign God, the election is no crapshoot.” You may not find comfort in the truth of that statement, but I [...]

I’m hearing more and more these days about the purported therapeutic value in “forgiving God.” For those who have suffered greatly, healing comes, at least in part, when we are enabled by God’s grace to forgive those who have sinned against us. On occasion we also hear of the importance of forgiving “ourselves” (which, I [...]

Michael, Thanks for your careful approach to this question. I appreciate your desire to properly honor our common heroes of the faith throughout these past 2,000 years of church history. But I have to say that I remain utterly unmoved and altogether unconvinced by your appeal to this argument from the life of the church [...]

The exclamation mark after the number Ten should be noted. As you will shortly see, I failed miserably in my attempt to restrict the list to precisely ten books. Perhaps I should have titled this article, My Top Ten Categories of Books of the Year, insofar as I’ve included several volumes that tend to fall [...]

Who was responsible for the death of Jesus? Who was responsible for the nails that tore into his flesh and for the crown of thorns that pierced his brow? Who was responsible for the humiliation and ridicule to which he was subjected? Who killed Jesus? One way to answer this question is by pointing the [...]

There has been considerable response to my earlier post entitled, “Bell’s Hell and the Destiny of those who’ve never heard of Jesus.” One issue that came up repeatedly was my denial that there is any such thing as an “honest atheist.” Perhaps a bit more explanation of what I meant is called for. Do honest [...]

In a recent interview with Sally Quinn of The Washington Post, Rob Bell again muddied the waters over the question of the fate of those who’ve never heard about Jesus. In doing so he also greatly misrepresented the evangelical answer to this question. Here are his words: “If, billions and billions and billions of people, [...]