Geoffrey Holsclaw
Returning Home? Salvation is about returning home—the return to joy. Salvation is the joy that comes in the morning (Ps. 30:5). But… Many of our homes were/are filled with pain and neglect, abuse and trauma, loneliness and fear. We can’t imagine what really joy is even like—the joy that comes in the presence of someone who […]
Pray. Read your Bible. Go to church—twice on Sundays. And don’t sin. Be sure not to sin. These were my devotions (as they were called). I was raised independent Bible Church baptist. So we didn’t do that “spiritual discipline” crap. Only the Catholics did that stuff while trying to “earn their salvation”—so I was told. But […]
Why do people experience the same situation so differently? Because we don’t respond to the world. We predict it. And how do we predict the world? Through past experience. Basically, people experience the same situation differently because they have different pasts. This is the focus of chapter 4 of Lisa Feldman Barrett’s new […]
Alice Roberts—scientist, professor, and hornet’s nest kicker— reminded the Twitterverse—on Good Friday—that “dead people – don’t come back to life.” Some 6000 comments (and counting) later, we need to step back and look at the facts (just like professor Roberts, as the unbiased scientist she is would want us to do). Fact: The Tomb was […]
Truth is, we all want blood, even if just to be entertained. Some want physical blood still. Others are content with social media outrage. But we are like those who demanded the blood of Jesus on Good Friday. As the religious (right & left) and the activists (right & left), we would rather get on […]
In the last post I asked, “What is Penal Substitutionary Atonement?” I summarized Thomas Schreiner’s position in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views as fairly as possible. Now I’m going to offer my own review of the biblical materials. Just How Biblical Is Penal Substitution? Advocates like Schreiner say their view is the most […]
“The theory of penal substitution is the heart and soul of an evangelical view of the atonement.” So says Thomas Schreiner in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views (67). And historically, Schreiner is right. This is how I was raised as an evangelical fundamentalist in California, and many others all across the USA. […]
Today I’m wondering why so often there is such a big gap between what everyday Christians think about the “atonement” (the reason why Jesus died for ours sins) and what theologians and preachers mean by it, especially those who are part of “penal substitutionary atonement” churches and traditions. This gap is seen in the answers […]