Dr Paul Allen

1. What perception does the average Scotsman have of Christianity ?  The average Scotsman does not have a positive perception of Christianity, but rather sees it as outdated or bigoted. Scotland is really post-Christian. And so, while there may be some lip service in places, perhaps under the guise of tolerance, really there is either apathy or hostility. 2. What are the most common objections/challenges raised against the gospel? In truth, many people don’t raise objections, so long as it does not interfere with their own lives. And yet others will treat it with scorn as a thing of the past – that was for their grandparents’ generation, not our “enlightened” one. The sad thing now is that most people don’t know what the gospel is – darkness is over the land. “Religious assembles” in schools have become “assemblies” and often the so-called chaplains don’t know the first thing about true religion. In my experience I have noticed school children who don’t want to hear anything...

I don't think you can tell it from reading on the internet, but among many younger leaders with Reformed and evangelical convictions there may be a slow convergence coming on the subject of the mission of the church and the relationship of Christ and culture. On the surface, the Reformed and evangelical world seems divided between "Cultural Transformationists" and the " Two Kingdoms " views. Transformationists fall into fairly different camps, including the neo- Calvinists who follow Abraham Kuyper , the Christian Right , and the theonomists. Though different in significant ways, they all believe Christians should be about redeeming and changing the culture along Christian lines. On the other hand, the Two Kingdoms view believes essentially the opposite---that neither the church nor individual Christians should be in the business of changing the world or society. Again, there are very different camps within this stance. The Reformed and Lutheran propone...

Image via Wikipedia This phrase (Lat. ordo salutis) appears to have been brought into theological usage in 1737 by Jakob Karpov, a Lutheran .  But the doctrine is of much greater antiquity.  Necessarily, there is a wide divergence between the Roman Catholic and the Reformed view in this connection, for although they both agree that there can be no salvation apart from the work of Jesus Christ , the Roman Catholic Church teaches that it is the divinely appointed dispenser of saving grace through the sacraments, which, of themselves, convey grace to the recipients.  The stages of Rome’s order of salvation may be taken as marked by its sacraments of  (1) baptism, in which the soul is regenerated;  (2) confirmation, in which baptized persons receive the gift of the Holy Ghost ; (3) the Eucharist, in which they partake of the very body and blood of Christ in the transubstantiated wafer;  (4) penance, by which the benefit of Christ’s death is a...

Image via Wikipedia The End of the World According to Harold Camping   Author: Robert Godfrey . If you were to drive the freeways of southern California, you would see from time to time billboards proclaiming the Judgment Day on May 21, 2011 and declaring that the Bible guarantees it.  Presumably these billboards may be seen in many other parts of the country as well. Who is responsible for these signs and what do they really mean theologically? The signs have been placed by Harold Camping and his followers to warn people that the end is at hand. To understand these signs we must know something of the history as well as the theology of Harold Camping.  I am in a somewhat distinctive position to write on this subject since I first met Camping in the late 1950s. I learned a great deal from him then, and so I find what follows a very sad story. I pray for him that the Lord will deliver him from the serious errors into which he has fallen. Christian Reformed ...

David VanDrunen’s book  Living in Two Kingdoms  is the first attempt of which I am aware to present at a non-academic level a book-length biblical and theological case for “two kingdoms theology.”  VanDrunen, who serves as professor of systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California and as an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church has dealt with this subject before.  He has written several articles on the subject, and in 2006, he published  A Biblical Case for Natural Law , which contains a discussion of two kingdoms doctrine .  In early 2010, he published  Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms .  That book is an extensive academic study of the historical development of Reformed social thought with a particular focus on the Reformed view of natural law and two kingdoms doctrine.   After looking at precursors such as Augustine and Luther, VanDrunen proceeds to examine specifically Reformed thinking on these subject...