Gerald McDermott

The idea that there are other “gods” who exist as real supernatural beings, albeit infinitely inferior to the only Creator and Redeemer, pervades the Bible. The Psalms fairly explode with evidence. . . . Continue Reading »

Dale Coulter is a fine historical theologian. His recent article at this space (“ Two Wings of Evangelicalism ”) helpfully provides perspective on the divide in evangelical theology. But it does not get at the root problems. Coulter rightly explains that the “confessionalist” . . . . Continue Reading »

A new battle is brewing over the future of Evangelical theology. Roger Olsen, Evangelical theologian at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary, protests in a recent article that some Evangelicals (especially me in a recent article in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society) misunderstand “liberal theology.” We think, he says, that liberal theology “is a good label for any deviation from orthodoxy.” So we wrongly label, he says, “any deviation from or attempt to re-form orthodox Christian tradition as ‘liberal.’” Instead, he argues, liberal theology is that which makes modernity rather than Scripture its norm… . Continue Reading »

In these pages recently Stephen Webb suggested that the apostle Paul had stage fright. This would be remarkable, given his history of travelling throughout the Roman Empire speaking in many dangerous situations. But any reader of the Bible knows it is full of remarkable ironies. Such as the probability that Moses, arguably the greatest leader of Israel, was a stutterer… . Continue Reading »

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? Since the devastating attacks of 9/11”when the world saw afresh that religion has geo-political consequences, and that Islam is the most volatile religion on the world’s stage”more and more Christians have been asking this question. Yale theologian Miroslav Volf answers the question in a recent book (Allah: A Christian Response) with a nuanced but insistent Yes … Continue Reading »

A new poll from Virginia, a key swing state, suggests that evangelicals will help put Mitt Romney in the White House this November. It has become a truism in recent years that evangelicals are critical to our national elections. As New York Times reporter Erik Eckholm pointed out on April 14, evangelicals accounted for nearly one-fourth of all ballots cast in recent presidential elections… . Continue Reading »

Long confused with fundamentalism by most of the academy and dismissed as intellectually inadequate, evangelical theology has in the last two decades become one of the liveliest and most creative forms of Protestant theology in America. Not long ago the Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten noted that . . . . Continue Reading »

Just after my wife and I watched the new hit movie, “The King’s Speech,” a friend asked me if I enjoyed it. “No, I suffered through it. But it was a great movie.” I have been a stutterer since the age of six. Every time King George VI puffed his cheeks helplessly as he tried to get out a word, I felt the frustration and pain. … Continue Reading »

“Why in the world is the Vatican attacking Israel and reverting to radical supercessionism?” asked a theologian who knows I am involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue. Supersessionism, at least in its radical form, states that the church has replaced Jewish Israel so that the Jewish covenant no longer has continuing significance… . Continue Reading »

Bruce D. Porter Mormonism has been much in the news over the past year. The presidential campaign of Mitt Romney was the principal reason, though there were other causes as well: the growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to become the fourth-largest denomination in the United . . . . Continue Reading »