Parchment & Pen Blog

The history of the church is not only a tale of positive growth and development of doctrinal knowledge and practical wisdom. It’s also a dramatic account of the conflict between orthodoxy and heresy . . . facts and fiction . . . truth and error . . . righteousness and sin. You’ve probably heard it [...]

Just get two or three believers together for a Bible study and you soon realize that not everybody interprets the Bible exactly the same way. Sometimes they come to completely opposite conclusions. Other times they emphasize certain passages or doctrines more than others. Even when we follow the same rules of methodical Bible study or [...]

Cicero wisely said, “To remain ignorant of what has happened before you were born is to remain always a child.” Imagine if during every summer break a student forgot everything she had learned during the previous school year. After kindergarten, her mind is wiped clean. Then, after struggling through first grade and barely keeping up, [...]

When I was a kid, throwing together what experts described as a healthy meal was easy. We had it down to the four food groups: grains, meats, dairy, and fruits & vegetables. We knew that to have a balanced diet, we should never have too much of one group . . . or too little [...]

Several years ago, a childhood friend of mine contacted me with some questions about the history of the early church. He had read some non-Christian fiction as well as seen programs that presented a distorted view of early Christianity. He knew I had spent over a decade and a half studying church history, so he [...]

Prior to the eruption of World War II, between 1925 and 1935 a frantic France fortified the long border it shared with Germany. The “Maginot Line”—named after the man who conceived the idea—included a network of bunkers, forts, tunnels, and fortifications for thousands of soldiers. For all practical purposes, the Maginot Line was impenetrable. The [...]

Picture Christianity throughout its history as a giant tree that has continually grown for numerous generations. Some of its branches have gone one way, some another. Some are more in line with their roots in the apostolic church and the straight trunk of the first few centuries. We might call this trunk the “ancient catholic [...]

The Lord’s brother, Jude, urged Christians “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). The Greek verb translated “delivered” refers to a sacred trust or tradition. Paul described this tradition as he handed it down to the Corinthians: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel [...]