Dr Paul Allen

Christopher Hitchens (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) College-aged millennials today are far more likely than the general population to be religiously unaffiliated. This is true when they are compared to previous generations as well. In fact, the Pew Research Center documents that millennials are the least outwardly religious American generation, where “one in four are unaffiliated with any religion, far more than the share of older adults when they were ages 18 to 29.” Just over 60 percent of millennials say that Christianity is “judgmental,” and 64 percent say that “anti-gay” best describes most churches today. In ministry circles, it has long been reported that of youth raised in homes that were to some degree “ Christian ,” roughly three-quarters will jettison that faith after high school. Just under half of this number will return to some level of church involvement in their late 20s or early 30s. It has long been recognized that experience with an earthly father deeply info...

Writing to the Philippians, Paul says, "He who has begun a good work in you will perfect it to the end" (Phil. 1:6). Therein is the promise of God that what He starts in our souls, He intends to finish. So the old axiom in Reformed theology about the perseverance of the saints is this: If you have it—that is, if you have genuine faith and are in a state of saving grace—you will never lose it. If you lose it, you never had it. We know that many people make professions of faith, then turn away and repudiate or recant those professions. The Apostle John notes that there were those who left the company of the disciples, and he says of them, "Those who went out from us were never really with us" (1 John 2:19). Of course, they were with the disciples in terms of outward appearances before they departed. They had made an outward profession of faith, and Jesus makes it clear that it is possible for a person to do this even when he doesn't possess what he's pro...

Inquisition Scene by Francisco Goya. The Spanish Inquisition was still in force in the late eighteenth century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) A friend asked me that question earlier this week. And so I thought it might be helpful to share a few thoughts, from a historical perspective. Opinions about how to answer the question vary widely. Some suggest that just a few thousand people were executed during the Inquisition, while others project that there were tens of millions of victims. So how can the estimates be so widely divergent? There seem to be several explanations: 1. First,  the imprecise nature of the historical records means that contemporary historians are forced to extrapolate on the basis of the limited information they possess. One of the first accounts of the Inquisition came from a former Spanish secretary to the Inquisition named Juan Antonio Llorente (1756–1823). According to Llorente, the total number of “heretics” burned at the stake during the Sp...

Philip the Apostle. The text (in Old Church Slavonic) in the book is: "15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. 16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love..." (First Epistle of John). Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos (1774) at Kondopoga. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” ( James 1:18 ) The term “born again” has come into wide use in recent years—too wide and popular, in fact, for many who use it have little comprehension of its meaning. First of all, there can be no real Christian who is not a “ born-again Christian .” Jesus said: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God . . . . Ye must be born again” ( John 3:3 , 7). The Creator of the new birth is the Creator of the universe , as the text declares. He begat us as a kind of first fruits of His creatures...

There is one tell-tale fruit , but it may take a long time for it to happen. And even then you likely won't see it. But here's the fruit nonetheless—if the sinner ends up in heaven, you will know they had truly repented . If not, they likely had not. I understand the desire to know the sincerity of another's repentance. I've been in countless pastoral situations wherein it seemed like the answer to that one question—is this person truly repentant—determined the answer to every other question about what should be done. Trouble is, God has not been pleased to give us the means to peer into the souls of others. So what do we do? Consider the case of adultery, perhaps the most common grievous sin we face. Suppose I am unfaithful to my wife. Suppose I claim to be repentant. What ought she to do? The Bible says that she is free to divorce me, but is not required to do so. Many times her decision is bound up in this question—is he repentant? But that's not really the ...

In the last few tragic days, I received the following comment in my twitter feed from an Australian journalist. AIDS researchers and a Catholic nun among #MH17 victims. If you believe in a god, this would seriously be testing your faith. I replied, Well, most of all, and sadly, it tests your faith in humanity who do these things to each other. The journalist was kind enough to ‘favourite’ my tweet as her reply. I think she recognised that before we rush to blame God , we should direct our blame on those directly responsible for such evil: the terrorist who fired the rocket launcher; the persons who supplied the hardware and training to fire it. More broadly in recent days, it is not God who burned down Mosul ’s church, but the ISIS militants. It is not God who butchered a hundred villagers in Damboa , Nigeria, with RPGs and machine guns, but Boko Haram . That’s where the clear and immediate moral responsibility lies: with the human evildoers. However, once we’v...

Graduation (Photo credit: besighyawn ) It’s graduation season. And as such, scores of graduating students and their doting family and friends will be exposed to the senseless drivel known as a graduation speech . This speech is supposed to prepare the students to face the real world—or perhaps the “real world” of going to college. One last shot at making something out of these thugs. Most graduation speeches follow the same format. And they are filled with inspirational quotes and silly sayings that somebody’s mom will post on Facebook three years later with pretty little flowers and a demand to share. Or maybe the saying will be really good and you’ll see it on one of those overpriced placards that people buy to put in their storage sheds. Usually the graduates are just lied to. Here are six lies they’ll likely be told: You can be anything you want. Just dream and work hard . This sounds so wonderful and loving and I’ve heard it so many times I feel like a jerk saying it isn’t ...