Dr Paul Allen

I’ve worked in the field of psychology for over a decade now. I’ve done private practice and taught in a graduate psychology program. I loved my work, my clients, my students, and my colleagues. I was respected in my community as a professor and psychologist. But I left my job in psychology to start and lead a biblical counselling ministry at a church across the country. Why? When I talk to people about biblical counselling, it brings up varied thoughts and emotions. Some people are unfamiliar with it. But to others, biblical counselling connotes misquoted Bible verses, uncompassionate calls for repentance, and an overly reductionist view of mental health struggles. They’ve experienced (or know people who’ve experienced) counselling from well-meaning pastors and ministry leaders that made them feel utterly misunderstood, with their suffering and pain reduced only to a trial that must be embraced with joy. My heart grieves when I hear those stories. And yet, here I am—a psychologist tur...

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was one of the great preachers of the last century. A medical doctor by training, he was a powerful expositor, whose ministry at Westminster Chapel in London influenced thousands of his fellow preachers. A stalwart defender of biblical Christianity, Dr. Lloyd-Jones understood that the issue of biblical authority is paramount and that the church must choose between two contrasting views of Scripture. Here is an excerpt from his sermon on Ephesians 6:14, The Authority of Scripture: There can be no doubt whatsoever that all the troubles in the Church today, and most of the troubles in the world, are due to a departure from the authority of the Bible. And, alas, it was the Church herself that led in the so-called Higher Criticism that came from Germany just over a hundred years ago.  Human philosophy took the place of revelation, man's opinions were exalted and Church leaders talked about 'the advance of knowledge and science', and 'the assured result...

In his book, The Way of the (Modern) World : or, Why It’s Tempting to Live as If God Doesn’t Exist, Craig Gay observes that one of the major preoccupations that define modern culture is the quest for control.  “The desire to maintain autonomous control over reality by rational-technical means is particularly central to the modern world.…[A] modern society is one in which the prevailing conception of the human task in the world is that of mastery by way of systematic manipulation.” Francis Bacon’s assertion that knowledge is power may well serve as a slogan for modern culture.  To be modern is to believe that we can bring nature and history under our dominion. Systems of all kinds — political, economic, technical, educational, even spiritual — have been designed by modern men and women to extend and ensure that control. Of course, the desire to run the cosmos is nothing new. One of the irrational symptoms of human sinfulness from the very beginning is the belief...

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ .” ( Colossians 2:8 ) It is bound to be significant that, in the only place where the Scriptures even mention philosophy, we are warned to beware of it! Likewise, the only philosophers mentioned were evolutionary humanists who called the apostle Paul a “babbler . . . because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection” ( Acts 17:18 ). Philosophy & Poetry (Photo credit: Lawrence OP ) The word “philosophy” literally means “love of wisdom,” and every philosophy—ancient or modern—is essentially a humanistic devotion to man’s wisdom for its own sake. But such wisdom is false wisdom. It derives in type from “the tree of knowledge,” through the “vain deceit” of Satan, who tries to persuade us that partaking of it would “make one wise” and that “your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods” ( Genesis 2:17 ; 3:5-6). It has...

Coat of arms of the University of Oxford Location : seen outside Rewley House of Kellogg College, Oxford (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Is God dead? Not in academia. As someone who teaches philosophy at Wycliffe Hall , University of Oxford , Vince Vitale is well placed to know what the top scholarship says about God .  Vince shows how in the fields of philosophy and sociology, God is very much alive. If you think intellectual objections undermine belief in God , Vince suggests that you may be unaware of the arguments at the highest level. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWjR8C8bKhQ Related articles God Is Alive in Academia (str.typepad.com) SN Balagangadhara and Rajiv Malhotra on Reversing the Gaze (samirchopra.com) Praxeology and the Purpose of Political Economy: Illustration from Ben Powell (coordinationproblem.org) 10.03.2014 (agreementsanddisagreements.wordpress.com) The Morning Star Of The Reformation- John Wycliffe (nicolalyonehu.wordpress.com) The Unexp...

Auguste Comte (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Psalm 19 “The heavens declare the glory of God , and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” ( v. 1 ). Metaphysics is the study of that which transcends the physical realm accessed by our five senses . Every worldview has its own answer to the single most important metaphysical question: What principle makes sense of the diversity of creation? Is there something that explains the existence of the universe and demonstrates how the tremendous variety of “things” (dogs, stars, flowers, sand, and so on) all fit together as pieces of the whole? Christian theology has always said that this unifying principle is the Creator who stands above all things. God is the one who makes sense of everything. Non- Christian philosophers have suggested that an abstract concept, such as reason serves as the unifying principle. The nineteenth-century French thinker Auguste Comte was dissatisfied with both theological and philosophical views of metaphysics an...

The later of two Bruno portraits often uncritically accepted as genuine. Engraved by C. Meyer in Paris, first quarter of the 19th century (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In 1591, a restless philosopher named Giordano Bruno traveled to Venice at the invitation of a Venetian nobleman named Giovanni Mocenigo. When Bruno refused to share "magic" secrets with him, Mocenigo denounced him to the Inquisition. The Inquisition was only too happy to arrest Bruno. A former Dominican monk, Bruno had written satirical words against Christian systems in his book  The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast.  For years he had moved from city to city in Europe, falling out with his hosts wherever he went because he found fault and quarreled with every one and every system, especially Aristotalianism. He published heretical books and obscene plays. Bruno was enthusiastic about the Copernican theory that the planets circle the sun and he believed there are many other planets around other stars,...

Virtue (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Openness to truth where truth may be found is a long-standing virtue that worked on the assumption that there is such a thing as objective truth , to which we should be open. Students of higher education now taught one overarching virtue: to be "open." The purpose of their education is not to make them scholars but to provide them with a moral virtue—an openness, a relativism that eschews any form of fixed objective values or truth.   Its simplistic creed is that there are no absolutes. Without objective standards of truth, we are left with feelings, impressions, and intuitions that can never be judged as either false or bad. The bottom line of such an approach is not merely ignorance and skepticism, but the ultimate dehumanization of persons. If everybody is right, then nobody is right. If every viewpoint is equally valuable, no viewpoint is valuable. As members of the body of Christ , we face twin enemies, both of which are...

English: Baptism of Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In the beginning was the Word , and the Word was with God , and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning ( John 1:1 –2). Who do Christian philosophers and theologians think Jesus is? The oldest philosophical question is the problem of unity and diversity. What is this problem? It is the problem of understanding how all the diverse aspects of life hang together. The ancient philosopher would ask, “Is there any rhyme or reason to all this? How do all these things fit together? How are we to make sense of all these different parts of human experience?” In other words, they were asking the question , “Does life make sense? Is there any ultimate coherence in life?” The very word universe is composed of uni from unity, and verse from diversity. It expresses the idea that all the diverse things in existence are related to one another, and are united in some sense. The Christian answer addresses this issue in two ways....

 Illustrates Jesus' description of himself "I am the Good Shepherd" (from the Gospel of John, chapter 10, verse 11). Wikipedia ) But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery  ( 1 Cor. 2:7). Many times in his epistles Paul asserts that he was not a preacher of human wisdom. Should we, then, infer that Paul despised knowledge, that he was an illiterate enemy of learning, or that he taught nonsense? Far from it! Paul taught the highest wisdom. “The objection urged against Paul was that he did not teach philosophy ,” Hodge wrote. “His answer is, philosophy cannot save men. Whatever may be its value within its own sphere and for its own ends, it is worse than useless as a substitute for the Gospel. He was not for banishing philosophy from the schools, but from the pulpit. Let the dead bury the dead; but do not let them pretend to impart life.” Remember that Paul lived in a day when philosophical debate was a popular pastime. Instead of dealing with the mundane issue...

Auguste Comte (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Psalm 19 "The heavens declare the glory of God , and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" ( v. 1 ). Metaphysics is the study of that which transcends the physical realm accessed by our five senses . Every worldview has its own answer to the single most important metaphysical question: What principle makes sense of the diversity of creation? Is there something that explains the existence of the universe and demonstrates how the tremendous variety of "things" (dogs, stars, flowers, sand, and so on) all fit together as pieces of the whole? Christian theology has always said that this unifying principle is the Creator who stands above all things. God is the one who makes sense of everything. Non- Christian philosophers have suggested that an abstract concept, such as reason serves as the unifying principle. The nineteenth-century French thinker Auguste Comte was dissatisfied with both theological and philosophical vie...

Image via Wikipedia Why do you do what is right, rather than what is wrong? That is hardly a new question. It troubled the minds of the ancients. Some felt that humans are naturally drawn to virtue, but they were hard-pressed to explain why some individuals seemed to resist this impulse. Others argued that society had to make a firm impression upon the young, inculcating a desire for virtue and character that was more external than internal. Fast forward and the Victorians in Britain were convinced that a lack of virtue could be traced to either heredity or deprivation. Assuming the British middle class as normative, the Victorians offered the advice famously advocated by Jiminy Cricket to Pinocchio — “Let your conscience be your guide.” Experience indicates, consistent with what the Bible teaches, that this advice has limited value. The conscience is a human capacity for sure, part of the moral sense that testifies of the  imago Dei , but it is just as  Image via Wikipedi...