Adam Johnson

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

Salvation, the reconciling of man to God, has its roots in the unconditional Promise God gave to Abraham and his seed when He told him, “in you all the nations of the earth will be blessed” (Gen. 12:3; Gal. 3:16). It was unconditional in the sense that God promised to do this regardless of what Abraham or his descendants would do. In contrast, the Law, told to the Israelites by God through Moses and summarized in the Ten Commandments, was given 430 years later (Gal. 3:17a) as a conditional covenant.

The Israelites agreed with God to enter into this conditional covenant which, if obeyed, guaranteed blessing and security for them in the land of Canaan (Deut.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

In Galatians Paul wrote that the Law served as a “tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24). Even though Paul was specifically referring to the Mosaic Law, the same could be said concerning the Old Testament as a whole. The Messiah, His person, His work, and His ministry were anticipated through allusion and imagery, not the least of which was the establishment of a theology concerning substitutionary atonement. This laid the groundwork for understanding our need for a Messiah because it explained how we came to be the wretched beings that we are, why God’s moral righteousness means our situation is so dire, and what must be done to reconcile us back to the loving relationship with God we were created for.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

In his seminal work After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre argues that our Western society has lost the conceptual context for and foundation within which moral language makes sense. In the premodern world moral judgments were understood as governed by impersonal standards justified by a shared conception of human good. That context was lost in the Enlightenment when Aristotelian Scholasticism and Christian theology were discarded and, with them, the idea of teleology. After teleology was discarded, several conceptual systems attempted to provide a new account of morality which would maintain the status, authority, and justification of moral rules.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

On October 17, 2022, William Lane Craig discussed an article of mine in which I explained my Divine Love Theory. My article was published in the Worldview Bulletin Newsletter here: Divine Love Theory: How the Trinity Is the Source and Foundation of Morality.

You can listen to Craig’s podcast about my Divine Love Theory here: Divine Love Theory and the Trinity | Podcast | Reasonable Faith.

First, I’ll provide key quotes from Craig’s podcast. Craig said he has reservations about my Divine Love Theory because “it proposes that the love between the members of the Trinity is the source and foundation of morality, and I think that is a distorted and lopsided view because, as important as divine love is, it also equally belongs to God’s moral perfection to be just and to be holy.”

This is a serious issue because one of the most important things a person should know is how he can become a Christian. When someone becomes a Christian, they are saved from the punishment of hell that we all deserve, forgiven, reconciled back to God, and welcomed into heaven to spend eternity loving God and loving others. If the Catholic position on faith and works is incorrect, then they aren’t telling people the correct way to become a Christian. In fact, if Protestants are right that someone is saved by faith alone apart from works, then adding works to salvation is a serious mistake. Paul even wrote that “[y]ou have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:4).

The book of Ecclesiastes is notoriously difficult to interpret. In this article I share my best attempt at understanding and explaining what this book is about. Many have argued that the main message of Ecclesiastes is that we shouldn’t look for meaning and purpose in this world or in this mortal life. While that might be a valid application of the truths found in Ecclesiastes, I don’t think that is its primary message. It seems to me that the main purpose of Ecclesiastes is to teach the following conditional: If life ends at death, then life, and the toil of this life, is vanity because it’s fleeting, futile, meaningless, and absurd.

In September 2020, Adam Lloyd Johnson debated Dr. Erik Wielenberg, an atheist philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at DePauw University. They discussed the foundations of morality and whether or not God is necessary to explain the existence of objective moral values and duties.

On March 5, 2022, Adam Lloyd Johnson debated Dan Barker, an atheist and co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, at FREEFLO, which is the biennial conference of the Florida Humanist Association held in Orlando, Florida. They debated the question "Does God Exist?"

Who won the debate? Can you find Calvinism in the Bible? Was Molina trying to undermine the Reformation? Does God predestine everything? Is God limited by counterfactuals? This commentary on the James White vs. William Lane Craig debate covers these questions and more.

Romans 11:25-36