Dr Paul Allen

English: Jesus Christ - detail from Deesis mosaic, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The following statements, one ancient and one modern, are typical of the response people make to the miraculous. “For nothing can happen without cause; nothing happens that cannot happen, and when what was capable of happening has happened, it may not be interpreted as a miracle. Consequently, there are no miracles… . We therefore draw this conclusion: what was capable of happening is not a miracle” (Cicero, De Divinatione , 2. 28, cited by V. van der Loos in The Miracle of Jesus, Leiden : E. J. Brill , 1965, p. 7). “For example, there is the record of the life of Jesus Christ in the Bible. That record contained accounts of events which, in light of the facts of the natural order which were known, could not possibly have happened. “Children are not born to virgins, angels do not bring messages to people, men do not walk on water, people who die do not return to life, and so on....

happiness (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) James is sometimes called the " New Testament book of Proverbs." That's because of passages such as James 4 that give us a series of loosely linked aphorisms of practical, godly wisdom. This chapter begins with our universal concern about conflict: What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend on your passions. (James 4:1-3) The world is marked by warfare. There's global war and national conflict; there's warfare in the church; there's warfare in the community; there's warfare in the home—there's conflict all around us. James says that these quarrels, fights, disputes, and contentions come from within, from the fallenness of our hearts. The mot...

Jesus is considered by scholars such as Weber to be an example of a charismatic religious leader. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Religious people are always profoundly disturbed when they discover that they are not, and never have been, true Christians. Does all of their religion count for nothing? Those hours in church, hours spent doing good things, hours involved in religious activity—do they not count for something in the presence of God ? Do they not enable me to say: "Look at what I have done. Don’t I deserve heaven?" Sadly, thinking that I deserve heaven is a sure sign I have no understanding of the gospel. Thinking that I deserve heaven is a sure sign I have no understanding of the gospel. Jesus unmasked the terrible truth about His contemporaries. They resisted His teaching and refused to receive His Word because they were sinners —and slaves to sin. Some years ago, the British media reported that a Presbyterian denomination had pulled fifty thousand pri...

It is often assumed that the Holy Spirit ’s witness to a believer is not very helpful in a study of apologetics. After all, this testimony is given only to Christians and it is not verified or falsified by evidences. So does it follow that this witness is no more than a subjective conviction? In the few NT passages that address this subject, we are told that, at a minimum, the witness of the Holy Spirit is a personal word to believers that they are children of God (Rm 8:15–17). The Holy Spirit testifies to believers as family members (Gl 4:6–7). So the believer will experience the presence of the Holy Spirit ( Jn 14:16–17). This is one way to know that we are truly believers (1 Jn 3:24; 4:13). Since the unbeliever cannot understand things pertaining to salvation (Jn 14:17; 1 Co 2:14), one might question the value of the Holy Spirit’s witness in an apologetic context. But this seems to assume that dealing with unbelievers is the only purpose for defending the faith. Apologetics may...