Dr Paul Allen

A little over ten years ago, the book "The Shack" became an unexpected bestseller, sparking debate and garnering appreciation from across the evangelical landscape. Although the author originally wrote the book for his children and had it copied at Kinko’s, it reached number one on the New York Times fiction best-seller list after its release. In 2017, a major motion picture based on the book returned to the top spot once again. The themes of the book are heavy, at times harrowing, and inescapably theological, though they are presented in such a way that the reader can forget it is indeed a work of theology. The theological themes touched on include the character of the church, the problem of evil (theodicy), the nature of revelation, the depiction of God, and our understanding of the Trinity. I want to speak to an element of this last theme because the novel assumes something we are all tempted to assume: in reference to God, ”Father” is ultimately a metaphor and, as such, c...

The Nicene Creed is the world's most widely used confession of faith, and has been for over a thousand years. Sunday after Sunday in their worship services, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and others recite the creed to profess their beliefs. Those who do not know the creed—who have not learned it by heart from years of repetition—are a minority in the Christian world. Why say the Nicene Creed? The creed is a Bible-based summary of the gospel of Jesus Christ. To say the creed is to say who God is—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and who Christ is: the only-begotten Son of the Father, God from God, who for our salvation became incarnate, which is to say fully human, and was crucified, raised from the dead, and now sits enthroned at the right hand of God the Father. Joining other Christians in saying and believing in the creed is thus a way to come to know God. There are other creeds, most importantly the Apostles’ Creed (so called because its teaching goes back ...

“It’s a Christmas miracle!” This exclamation permeates the holiday season from Hollywood to New York City and everywhere in between. While pop culture’s use of this phrase ranges from humorous to heartwarming, the true miracle of Christmas often goes overlooked.  The Incarnation of the Son of God surpasses every miracle that has or will ever occur. It defies human comprehension in a way no other miracle can Because of its profundity, many Christians fail to appreciate how magnificent this miracle truly is, leading to a defective view of what it means that the Word became flesh.  As we celebrate this miraculous event in just a few short days, let’s reflect on the true meaning of the Son of God becoming the Son of Man. One way to improve our understanding of this significant biblical teaching is by refuting what it does not mean. Throughout church history, many errors have arisen regarding the Incarnation. The first error is believing that the Incarnation is the birth of the fir...

Steve Hoffman When it comes to the  Parable of the Lost Son , we encounter something similar. Most folks think this parable is about the son who went away, the one who was lost and then at the end of the parable is found. We think it’s just like the first two parables in this trilogy: the lost sheep is found and brought home, the lost coin is found and brought home, the lost son is found and brought home. And if we stopped there, we still have a really good parable. But when we get to the point where the younger son has returned home and is celebrating, we realize that the parable is not over. It has two punchlines.  The father had two sons. The younger son left and wasted his money on prostitutes and frivolity. The older son stayed home and obeyed his father. But at the end of the parable, who is with the father? And when we come to the end of this parable, which son is the lost son?  Let’s turn our attention to the older son and we will learn that not only is this parab...

One hundred years ago, heroin, cocaine and meth were not only street legal but prescribed by doctors for various ailments (for instance, heroin was marketed as a cough suppressant). Only later did we realise that these drug habits were doing far more harm than good. It took decades to outlaw these drugs, but the damage was done. Generations were addicted, and these drugs still plague us today. Toxic habits can be absolutely devastating. Toxic habits were something Jesus himself railed against in Matthew 15:3 when he asked the religious leaders, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?” Some of the very religious traditions held by the day's leaders kept people away from God, defeating the whole purpose. Even a well-intentioned tradition can turn toxic and do more harm than good if we're not careful. Traditions weren’t just a problem in Jesus’ day. We still struggle with them today. Traditions give people a sense of continuity, order, predictabili...

The Father revealed the Son by sending him to Bethlehem: “He was manifested in the flesh.” But astute readers will note that only two of the three Triune persons are covered. Not worry, because the second line of the hymn declares that in addition to the Father sending the Son, the Son was also “vindicated by the Spirit” (1 Timothy 3:16). What does it mean that the eternal Son was “vindicated” by the Spirit? There are at least three ways the Holy Spirit vindicated Jesus: the Spirit enabled Jesus’ birth, validated Jesus’ deity, and empowered Jesus’ humanity. The Spirit enabled Jesus’ birth. The hymn the Ephesian church was singing began with a declaration that Jesus was “manifested” in the flesh. Recall that the hymn is made up of six declarations, all of which are passive.  In other words, the song celebrates six things that happened to Jesus rather than six things that Jesus did. This is a song about people acting on Jesus. And the first of those was that Jesus was made manifest. ...

Obedience to the Word of God rightly takes center stage in most discussions of living as a follower of Christ. Nevertheless, I would suggest that Christians as a whole would benefit from a greater emphasis on the second aspect of faithful Christian discipleship—namely, submission to the will of God.  Submission to God’s will could be a broad category that would include obedience to His written Word, but I particularly mean the daily walk before the Lord in which we lay our requests, desires, and prayers before Him and then actively submit to His sovereign will as it plays out in our lives. And as in all areas of Christian discipleship, Jesus gives us the perfect example of what this looks like. In particular, His prayer to His Father in the garden of Gethsemane shows us the way. Jesus’ words on the night He was betrayed are some of His most remembered, as He prays “My Father if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). I...

A likely outcome of his ministry ended with him upon a plate. A generation before, on November 20, 1839, the first pair of formal missionaries to the New Hebrides were killed and eaten within minutes of their arrival upon the shore. Even still, John G. Paton, whom Spurgeon later dubbed “King of the Cannibals,” traveled as a missionary to the islands with his wife and son, facing odds and suffering only Christ with him could conquer. And Christ, has promised to be with him (Matthew 28:20), achieved a great feat. Less than fifty years after the murder of the first missionaries, Paton would reflect on the widespread work of God on the islands (including the entire island of Aniwa coming to Christ), writing, “Thus was the New Hebrides baptized with the blood of martyrs; and Christ thereby told the whole Christian world that he claimed these islands as his own” (The Autobiography of the Pioneer Missionary to the New Hebrides, 75). From a people dead in their sins, who ate the flesh of their...

One of the most essential doctrines for a Christian understanding of the Trinity is eternal generation. When the equality of the Son with the Father was thrown into question in the fourth century, the church fathers turned to the doctrine of eternal generation not only to distinguish the Son from the Father but to ensure that the Son is understood to be equal with the Father.  For these reasons, the doctrine of eternal generation became a cornerstone of the Nicene Creed, that standard-bearer of Christian orthodoxy. But over the last several decades, evangelicals have gained a bad reputation for rejecting this doctrine. Even when evangelicals have affirmed it, they do not appear to understand why. Could it be that we do not really grasp what eternal generation is in the first place? I want to invite you on an adventure into the mystery of this indispensable Christian doctrine. But instead of exploring the eternal generation’s biblical warrant (see Simply Trinity: The Unmanipulated F...