Dr Paul Allen

There are more significant questions beneath this question, making this an essential issue to many. As we move toward an answer, here are three pivotal concerns behind the question that can help us understand why this gnaws at many people’s hearts. 1. What do we mean when we talk about heaven? Generally, when people think about heaven, they refer to what theologians more appropriately call “the intermediate state.” When a believer in Christ dies, their soul leaves the earth, and they go into the presence of Jesus until the second coming of Christ. Here, we are liberated from physical pain, sin, the presence of evil, and all effects of the fall. We shall see the face of Jesus and experience unfettered communion with him. We will be, ideally, euphorically and eternally happy. The intermediate state, though, is temporary. At the second coming of Christ, we will descend with Jesus to the earth, where heaven will become a place on earth. At that point, the resurrection of the dead will occu...

The Genealogical Adam and Eve – An interview with Ben Withington Having first read William Lane Craig's fascinating book, The Quest for the Historical Adam, that book kept mentioning a computational geneticist named Joshua Swamidass as a dialogue partner.  I’d better read his book about the genealogical Adam and Eve.  Right off the bat, as a Biblical scholar, both books are excellent, and both, in my view, have some significant exegetical deficiencies, which is not entirely surprising since Craig is a philosopher and Swamidass, is a scientist.   Regarding the ethos of each book, Craig is more definitive and specific about his conclusions, and Swamidass is more open to a variety of possibilities though he takes a definite position on the genealogical as opposed to the genetic ancestry we all have, particularly regarding Adam and Eve. Both books affirm that yes, there was a historical Adam, with Craig thinking it must have been hundreds of thousands of years ago, and S...

Ardel Caneday Would a reasonable Christian read John Bunyan’s allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress allegorically or figuratively? The answer is Neither because the adverbs “allegorically” and “figuratively” describe not how to read his similitude but how Bunyan wrote it.  Thus, he requires us to read it for what it actually is, an allegory. Authors of literature, not readers, have authority over their texts to assign symbolic or figurative properties to settings, events, persons, and things they embed within their texts.  Readers are obligated to comprehend how an author represents the world being portrayed textually, whether the realm portrayed is fictional or real. Thus, we are not at liberty to read The Pilgrim’s Progress according to our whims. We are not free to assign our own arbitrary meanings to the author’s text. Bunyan wrote it as an allegory. He assigned figurative representational significances to the settings, events, persons, and things. Readers do not have that role....