CHRISTIAN READER

The Nature and Scope of Biblical Authority

by Leland Ryken

Basic to religious belief is the question of what constitutes the authority for belief. Historically there have been three main views of what constitutes the ultimate authority: the Bible, church tradition, and human reason, either alone or in combination. The Puritans, following the lead of the Continental Reformers, claimed Scripture alone as the final authority for religious belief. "The rule according to which conscience is to proceed, " wrote Cotton Mather, is "what God has revealed in the Sacred Scriptures." "This is the glory and sure friend of a church," added John Lightfoot, "to be built upon the Holy Scriptures...The foundation of the true church of God is Scripture."

The Truth of Absolutes

One of C.S. Lewis’s most famous and heavily repeated quotations comes from a speech entitled “Is Theology Poetry?” He closed his speech with these words: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else." [1] Lewis realized that the Christian worldview was not some “on again/off again” belief system that should be brought out only when people want to begin swapping ideas about religion and metaphysics. He understood that Christianity claims exclusivity and supremacy over everything else. Christianity is, first and foremost, The Truth. Lewis reminds us that far from being only a belief system about certain propositions, Christianity is the filter that all other ideas and thoughts need to be strained through. If you don’t think God’s thoughts after Him, Lewis is saying, you will end up with wrong conclusions about the way the world works.

The Breakdown of Theology

I got the email on Tuesday morning. I can't say exactly what went through my mind the first time I read it, or the tenth time. All I really remember is reading it over and over hoping that its message would somehow change. The email informed me that a family that I knew from several years and many miles ago had lost their oldest daughter in a car accident on Valentine's Day. The news of a death never seems to mean very much until it is someone that you know. Although I hadn't spoken with or really even thought about this family with anything more than a passing thought in the last five years, at that moment I sat staring at my computer screen, unable to get them out of my mind.

Back to Basics

by David Hagopian

C.S. Lewis once quipped that he preferred to take his Christianity the same way he took his whiskey—straight. Though Lewis's analogy will startle some, his point should not be missed. True biblical Christianity is strong stuff. And because it is, the church has often succumbed to the temptation to water it down with all sorts of alluring admixtures. A dash of pragmatism here, a dash of mysticism there, and voila—down it goes!

Saving Dale

by Brian Carpenter

It’s a mystery to me why any true Calvinist would shy away from evangelism.  When I was an Arminian, evangelism was a terribly stressful enterprise.  I thought a person’s eternal destiny hinged on my sales presentation.  Now I know better.  Now I’m free just to speak the gospel and let things take whatever course the Lord ordains.

Society and Its Dissenters

by Herbert Schlossberg

 Those now living in a post-Christian world can find the New Testament especially meaningful because it was written in a pre-Christian world. We are in a position to read it with more comprehension, perhaps, than any generation of Western Christians in a millennium and a half. We can gain from it some of the peculiar understandings that Africans and Asians in the last few generations have been able to derive: the understanding of subversives in an alien culture. The invitation spoken at the inception of the Christian church has more meaning for us than many millions of our predecessors: "Save yourselves from this crooked generation" (Acts 2:40).

The Legacy of Coach Joe

Unlike every other college and university in America, Penn State University has had only one head football coach during my entire lifetime of 38 years. As a matter of fact, you have to go back six years before I was born to reach the point when Paterno became the head coach at Penn State. And for 16 years before that, Joe was an assistant coach, which puts his entire tenure at the school right at 60 years. That's longer than most marriages. Actually, it's longer than Joe's own marriage. Joe and Sue Pohland were married in 1962—twelve years after Joe was hired as an assistant coach. And, if you think about it, a marriage is how most pre-Baby Boomer Americans regarded their careers. A marriage of business rather than love of course, but a marriage nonetheless; one where dedication, commitment, and trust was required—on both sides.

Faith in the Power of Reason

For more than 200 years, men have been disguising their disdain for the Bible in the language of science. Claiming to be materialists, they have embraced atheism, and now want you to do the same. No longer content to co-exist peacefully with Christianity, the “new atheists” insist that the world needs to be cleansed of the "poison" of religion.

Isaiah's Job (Part Two)

by Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945)

This is the second part of this article. Click here to read Part One.

But without following up this suggestion, I wish only, as I said, to remark the fact that as things now stand Isaiah's job seems rather to go begging. Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses' attention and interest. This attitude towards the masses is so exclusive, so devout, that one is reminded of the troglodytic monster described by Plato, and the assiduous crowd at the entrance to its cave, trying obsequiously to placate it and win its favour, trying to interpret its inarticulate noises, trying to find out what it wants, and eagerly offering it all sorts of things that they think might strike its fancy.

Isaiah's Job (Part One)

by Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945)

One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: "I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population. What do you think?"