Articles

By Randy Ellis

Randy Ellis earned his Bachelor of Religious Education from Baptist Bible College in Clark Summit, Pennsylvania. He originally wrote this paper in 2000 while attending Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. Randy was born and raised on Long Island and currently resides in Tega Cay, South Carolina, with his wife Christine. He has three daughters and two grandsons.

On January 22, 1997, the 24th anniversary of the U. S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, American Vice President Al Gore gave a speech in Chicago, Illinois, to the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).

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.

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.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

How does God choose who will be saved and who won’t? Historically there have been two major positions; today most call these two positions Calvinism and Arminianism, but they’ve gone by other names throughout history. There are other positions, but these two are the most common. Calvinists generally put more emphasis on God’s sovereignty to choose who will be saved, and Arminians put more emphasis on our responsibility to choose to trust in Christ. For some denominations, this issue is one of their distinctives; most all Presbyterians are Calvinists, and most all Methodists are Arminians. But other denominations are different; for example, Southern Baptists don’t hold this issue as one of their distinctives.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

Ancient philosophy began when people started thinking about ultimate reality. These early philosophers proposed theories about the ultimate elemental stuff which everything else comes from or is made of. Some of the early theories were earth, air, fire, or water. One ancient philosopher, Democritus, even suggested that everything is made up of tiny particles he called atoms. However, if Christianity is true, and I believe it is, then when the final curtain of reality is pulled back, we won’t find earth, air, fire, water, or atoms. Instead, we’ll find loving relationships between three divine persons. Ultimate reality, from which everything else comes, is a God which exists as a Trinity: three divine persons united in one essence and united in Their loving relationships with Each Other.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

It seems to me that Plantinga’s argument in this book is correct but uninteresting. If I understand him right, his argument is that if Christianity is true, then it has warrant. This seems to be only helpful in interacting with those who claim that even if Christianity were true, people still wouldn’t be justified in believing it. I don’t imagine that many people claim such a thing, but I could be wrong. Maybe it’s the case that there are, or have been, some very influential thinkers who have made this argument, possibly even Marx and Freud.

What if evolution is false? I’ve talked with many people who considered themselves Christians but then, for whatever reason, came to believe that evolution is true. These individuals were greatly troubled because they thought, now that they had accepted evolution, that they’d have to reject Christianity. However, many of them remained confident that the basic tenets of Christianity were true, i.e., God exists, Jesus is God, the Bible is from God, and a person can be forgiven and reconciled back to God through faith in Jesus Christ. With such individuals I’ve tried to lovingly point out that evolution doesn’t prove that Christianity is false. In this article I’ll summarize my argument in the hope it will be a benefit to others. This article will be published in two parts. I’ll begin by stating the obvious: If evolution is false, then certainly it doesn’t prove that Christianity is false. Therefore, in part one of this article, I’ll present the strongest argument against evolution.

What if evolution is true? This is the second part of an article where I’m attempting to answer this question: does evolution prove that Christianity is false? I’ve chosen to write about this subject because I’ve encountered many people who have rejected Christianity because they think evolution is true; in other words, they think these two beliefs are mutually exclusive. In the first part of this article, I began by stating the obvious: if evolution is false, then it surely doesn’t prove that Christianity is false. I went on to summarize the strongest argument against evolution that I’m aware of. Now, here in part two, I’ll argue that even if evolution is true, this still doesn’t prove that Christianity is false.