Dr Paul Allen

Frans Floris - The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Gathering and Protecting Mankind - WGA7949 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father , and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him . . . he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” ( John 14:8-9 )   Theologians have wrestled with the dual nature of the Lord Jesus since the beginning. On the one hand, there are those who deny or belittle His humanity, and on the other hand, there are those who deny His deity. Both natures are completely true: Jesus is fully human and fully God .   The prophets identified the coming Messiah as fully God. Isaiah 9:6 is the “naming” prophecy that specifies that the Messiah would be called “Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace .”  Isaiah  7:14  specifies that “the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel .” Matth...

The Reformed Church of France, Paris, France (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever" ( Deut. 29:29). In John Calvin 's understanding, these words from Deuteronomy 29:29 serve as the equivalent of a theological "no trespassing" sign. A distinction is drawn by this text between those things that are "revealed" and those things that are "secret," and the latter are unequivocally identified as the unique property of God. To investigate such "hidden" things without license constitutes an act of intrusion upon territory very clearly marked out by God as God's own. The Latin Vulgate , the standard Bible of the Church prior to the Reformation , had blunted the force of the distinction drawn in Deut. 29:29, translating the Hebrew original in a way that could potentially read in English as "the secret things which belo...

Illustration from the Morgan Bible of the Israelites being repulsed from Ai. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Most people, Christians and non-believers alike, are horrified by the atrocities of the (IS) Islamic State. But for some Christians the current violence also raises uncomfortable comparisons with the Old Testament . How does this "holy war" perpetrated in the name of Islam differ from what God told Israel to do under Joshua ? I'd like to point to three aspects of the biblical accounts that can help us. What does the Bible actually say? First, we need to make sure we don't misrepresent what the Bible actually says. Here are Moses' instructions in Deuteronomy 7:1-6:  When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations - the Hittites , Girga Shites, Amorites, Canaanites , Penzzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven na...