God – The Nicene Nerd

Purple Violins

My children have two grandmothers. This is, of course, not remotely surprising. It is funny, however, just how different they are. Even the way my children distinguish them is a bit amusing. They both go by “grandma,” but my mom is “grandma with the pool” and my wife’s is “grandma with the goat.” If you … Continue reading

Voice of Nature, Voice of God

The Silly Little Crowds Just because everyone says something doesn’t mean it’s right. The crowd can be wrong. What the culture says might be different from what God says. For orthodox Christians, we say and hear sentiments like this all the time. And they are true enough. What most people around you believe about lots … Continue reading

A Fantastic Saga Everyone Should Read

Fantasy, when done well, is one of the best genres of story. (Though when done poorly, it can be among the worst.) Some works of fantasy deserve to be read by almost everyone. But there is one particular series which I truly think everyone ought to read. Indeed, it would be of enormous assistance to … Continue reading

Unchangingly Alive

“I the Lord do not change.” So declared God in Malachi 3:6. The doctrine of immutability, that God is completely changeless, has always been a staple of Christian theology. Unfortunately, like all such staples, it has made many enemies in the last couple centuries. More than a few theologians and philosophers like to argue that … Continue reading

God and Ganon

What is spirit, exactly? This question has come to mind for me on a handful of occasions, but until recently I generally took it primarily in negative terms with respect to matter. Matter has time, space, energy, maybe mass, etc. Matter is tangible or at least physically detectable. Spirit, on the other hand, refers to … Continue reading

That Time a Pagan Sacrifice Worked

The other day in church the preacher was talking about 2 Kings 4, when Elisha provided a widow with a miracle of multiplied oil. That account is interesting enough in its own right, but I found myself, for at least some of the sermon, distracted by the verses which immediately preceded it. I saw the … Continue reading

Against Miracles

What are miracles? If by “miracle” we mean an instance in which God overrules or violates the laws of nature for some greater end of His, a common enough definition, it is unclear whether we have any solid biblical grounds for believing that such things take place. Of course, to say that is probably a … Continue reading

He Died for His People, Not the Elect

The classical Calvinist doctrine of limited atonement is problematic in several ways, even if it does contain a nugget of truth. One of these problems is simply bad exegesis, which in turn results from an unbiblical hermeneutic. A key place where this problem manifests itself is in limited atonement prooftexts like this one: She will … Continue reading

Modernity, From Original Sin to the Day of the Lord

The news lately has put me thinking a lot about the origins and destination of the modern world. By “modern world,” I mean the social, political, cultural, institutional, and industrial structures of the post-Enlightenment West and other regions and peoples who have been influenced by it. It is a very peculiar world, with certain developments … Continue reading

God and His Gods: A Review of Michael Heiser's The Unseen Realm

I just finished an extremely interesting book, probably the most deserving of that descriptor which I’ve read in a long time. This is Michael Heiser’s book, The Unseen Realm. It is about the gods. Specifically, it as about the other gods which the Bible assumes to exist besides the true God, Yahweh. The Unseen Realm … Continue reading