Summer 2016: Other Significant Articles
Richard J. Mouw, “Mormons Approaching Orthodoxy” First Things (May 2016).
Richard Mouw argues that today’s Mormons do not necessarily agree with the 1840 Snow couplet, “As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.” Mouw, president emeritus of Fuller Theological Seminary, says that there has been “a decision on the part of the Mormon leadership to downplay the Snow couplet within the corpus of Mormon teachings about the deity, not just to outsiders, but within their own community. This suggests that contemporary Mormonism is interested in joining the broad Jewish and Christian consensus that God is ontologically different from man—or at least that Mormons today don’t want to directly contradict that consensus.”
Read the related review essay by Gerald McDermott, “Mormons and Christians: So Close, Yet So Far Away: What should we make of claims that the two faiths are on a path to reconciling?” Christianity Today (September 7, 2016).
Craig Keener, “Jesus’s miracles and other accounts” AqueductProject.org (May 20, 2016).
Craig Keener says this video interview about Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts may be the most concise and coherent he has given, with a focus on ancient background and philosophy.
Read exclusive excerpts from Miracles at PneumaReview.com.
John P. Lathrop, “A Principle of Pentecost” Women of Wonder (May 9, 2016).
Craig Keener, “Does doubting salvation make you unsaved?” CraigKeener.com (July 24, 2016)
New Testament scholar Craig Keener answers questions about what the Bible says about doubting our salvation in this short video. “The Bible doesn’t say that we are saved by confidence in ourselves, but by confidence in Jesus.”
Jennifer A. Miskov, “Confessions of a Facebook Addict” Silver to Gold (July 9, 2016).
Heidi Baker, “Chips and solar Bibles in the persecuted Church” IRIS Global (July 29, 2016).
Heidi Baker shares about the use of solar-powered Bibles and the effectiveness of distributing the Bible on MicroSD cards to the persecuted church.
Médine Keener, “7 Things Christians Should Know about Refugees” Seedbed.com (June 20, 2016).
Craig Keener, “Young teenagers who prophesy” CraigKeener.com (July 14, 2016).
A brief video teaching on Acts 21:9. “Nobody’s too young to serve God or be full of God’s power.”
Roger Olson, “An Evangelical Response to David Gushee’s RNS Essay ‘On LGBT Equality’” Patheos (August 26, 2016).
Christian theologian and professor Roger Olson responds and expands upon the August 22, 2016 Religion News Service essay, “On LGBT equality, middle ground is disappearing” by David Gushee. Olson asks, “Once the government forces religious organizations to become inclusive of LGBT people without hindrances or discriminatory rules (e.g., forbidding gay marriage among its employees and/or students) by withholding tax exemptions all non-profit organizations receive, what will happen next?” He then offers brief but grim predictions, and a reminder that Christians have faced much worse.
Jennifer LeClaire, “The Truth About Bethel’s Bill Johnson” Watchman on the Wall (August 26, 2016).
In this opinion essay appearing on her blog, hosted by CharismaNews.com, Charisma editor Jennifer LeClaire shares her reflections and seeks to set the record straight about Bill Johnson.
Read and respond to Pastor Larry Russi’s related review of Martyn Wendell Jones, “Kingdom Come in California?” Christianity Today (May 2016).
Craig Keener, “The wise and foolish virgins” CraigKeener.com (July 21, 2016).
A brief video teaching on Matthew 25:1-13. “No matter how old or young we are, we always need to be watching and ready for the Lord.”
Scott Lencke, “Wait, Paul! Do You Want Us to Speak in Tongues or Not?” ProdigalThought.net (August 12, 2016).
With the intention of stirring up conversation on the biblical purpose of tongues, Scott Lencke wrote this article to get readers to rethink their approach and assumptions about glossolalia.
Alan Jacobs, “The Watchmen: What became of the Christian intellectuals?” Harper’s MAgazine (September 2016).
William De Arteaga writes: “This a is a long read, but also important to those of us wishing to make an impact on the secular world.”
Lee Dean, “The Financial Health of Pastors: New study points out key issues as churches seek long-term solutions” Church Law & Tax (September 2016).
“At any given moment, there are people in a church congregation who are in the grip of a financial crisis. One of those people could be the pastor.”
“WCC remembers Pentecostal ecumenist Walter J. Hollenweger” World Council of Churches (September 6, 2016).
“Rev. Dr Walter Jacob Hollenweger, a long-time professor of intercultural mission theology at Birmingham University in the UK and prolific author on the nature of the Pentecostal movement, died on 10 August in Krattigen, Switzerland.”
Stanley N. Gundry, “An Open Letter to the Members of the Evangelical Theological Society” Patheos (September 16, 2016).
Roger Olson has reproduced Stanley Gundry’s open letter to fellow ETS members about his concerns regarding introducing resolutions such as the recent four-fold statement on gender and marriage. He is responding to an apparent attempt to move the Society from having a doctrinal basis to having a precise and exclusive doctrinal statement.
Category: Summer 2016