Dr Paul Allen

Although it is common for my Calvinist, non-charismatic friends to point to church history in support of their cessationist position, it’s really a mistake for them to do so. A big mistake. Church history actually works against them. The first reason is the most obvious. Reformed cessationists, like me, are in the Protestant, rather than Catholic, camp of the church. That means that we believe that, in some very fundamental ways, much of the church lost its way through history, because of which a massive reformation was needed. Many Reformed Christians even argue that Roman Catholics are not Christians at all, meaning that roughly half of all professing Christians today are de facto disqualified. On what basis, then, does a Reformed cessationist appeal to church history, when so much of that history is rejected from the outset? If the argument is that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit which were normative in New Testament times gradually disappeared from church history, what do these ...

Nearly 1600 years ago today, Augustine of Hippo passed out of this life and into eternity. Has any other thinker had such a profound influence on the course of Christian theology and philosophy? On the indwelling of God Confessions, Book I, Ch. 3: Do heaven and earth encompass Thee, then, since Thou fillest them? Or dost Thou fill them and still have something left over, since they cannot contain Thee? And where dost Thou overflow when, having filled heaven and earth, something more remains of Thee? Or dost Thou have no need of a container, Thou who containest all things, since what things Thou fillest, Thou fillest by containing them? It is not the vessels filled with Thee which hold Thee in position, for, even were they to break, Thou wouldst not spill out. And when Thou dost flow out over us, Thou dost not fall to the earth; rather, Thou dost lift us up. Nor dost Thou scatter Thyself; rather, Thou dost gather us in. Dost Thou fill all the things which Thou fillest with T...

Author Tabor Laughlin . Like far too many young people today, my adolescent eyes found pornography too early and too often. Soon the allure of cheap and easy pleasure constantly haunted me. My struggle intensified in middle and high school when my mom’s health faltered. I turned to the empty promises of pornography to try to fill me up and help me cope. Even after I became a true follower of Christ in college, I continued to struggle with sexual sin. My porn and masturbation patterns fueled impure relationships with girls. I tried to make headway fighting these sins, but I seemed stuck. I felt trapped. I felt helpless. Slave to Sexual Sin Romans 6:6–7 declares that believers have been set free from sin and are no longer slaves to its power. But even as a believer, I felt enslaved to the master of sexual sin. Even if I could fight those sins off temporarily, it seemed like only a matter of time before I would give in again. My inevitable failure was constantly loo...

The Scutum Fidei, a diagram frequently used by Christian apologists to explain the Trinity. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Here is my attempt at a very brief summary of the debate and discussion surrounding the eternal functional subordination (EFS) of the Son to the Father. We all know the incarnate Son submits to the Father, but is His submission something that extends to His eternal role/relationship as Son?  Is the Son subordinate to the Father from all eternity? Is there authority and submission within the inner life of the Trinity, even before creation and redemption? Proponents of EFS say yes. Opponents say no. Opponents say submission/subordination necessarily entails two wills. To have submission, you have to have one will submitting to another. But the Triune God has only one will. Now, the incarnate Christ submits to the Father because, as the God -man, He has two wills: divine and human. However, opponents of EFS maintain that having two wills in the Godhead wo...

Oil painting of a young John Calvin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In 1557, John Calvin published his large commentary on the book of Psalms . In the English translation , this commentary runs to five substantial volumes. This commentary reflects a life lived with the Psalter . He loved the psalms: he knew them, studied them, wrote on them, preached them, and sang them. In the course of his commentary on the Psalms, Calvin gave strong expression to various aspects of his doctrine of providence. Five themes about providence recur in his exposition. First, he recognizes God ’s power as the active governor of the world: He gives us to understand by this word, that heaven is not a palace in which God remains idle and indulges in pleasures, as the Epicureans dream, but a royal court, from which he exercises his government over all parts of the world. If he has erected his throne, therefore, in the sanctuary of heaven, in order to govern the universe, it follows that he in no wis...

Thomas Aquinas (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Aquinas ’s  Summa contra gentiles , written to combat Greco- Arabic philosophy , is the greatest apologetic work of the  Middle Ages and so merits our attention. Thomas develops a framework for the relationship of faith and reason that includes the Augustinian signs of credibility. He begins by making a distinction within truths about God.  On the one hand, there are truths that completely surpass the capability of human reason, for example, the  doctrine of the Trinity . On the other hand, many truths lie within the grasp of human reason, such as the existence of God. In the first three volumes of the Summa contra gentiles, Thomas attempts to prove these truths of reason, including the existence and  nature of God , the orders of creation, the nature and end of man, and so forth. But when he comes to the fourth volume, in which he handles subjects like the Trinity, the incarnation, the sacraments, and the last ...

Plate from America a Prophecy, copy A, in the collection of the Morgan Library. Relief etching with hand coloring and white line etching. Leaf size approx. 32 x 24 cm (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Paul thought of prophecy at Corinth as something different than the prophecy we see, in Revelation or in many parts of the Old Testament . There, a divine authority of actual words is claimed by or on behalf of the prophets. But the prophecy we find in 1 Corinthians only gives a kind of divine authority of general content. The prophet could err, could misinterpret, and could be questioned or challenged at any point. The prophecy must be judged. The prophecy is of a minor kind of “divine” authority, but it certainly was not absolute. In the NT , the counterpart of the OT prophets are the apostles, and not the NT prophets. Those who are viewed as divinely authoritative messengers in the NT are most often called not “prophets” but “apostles.” This is significant because if the NT a...

StJohnsAshfield StainedGlass Baptism (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God . Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lᴏʀᴅ. ( Psalm 40:3) There is a song in your heart.  Did you know that? The song in your heart celebrates what you consider worthy of celebration. You consider worthy of celebration that in which your soul delights. You delight in — with the song of your heart — that in which your soul finds satisfaction. This does not mean your soul is as satisfied as it could be, or that your soul is satisfied with the things that it should be. In fact, many people celebrate things that aren’t necessarily worthy of celebration. Sadly, billions praise those things that starve their souls and drive them to the brink of eternal death. Some are still singing as they fall off the cliff into outer darkness . That would be us, too, if God had not given us another song to sing — a “new” song. There is another song that celebr...