Introduction – Who are the Branch Davidians? The Branch Davidians are a 1930’s offshoot of the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists who are an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventists who are themselves offshoots of the failed experiment in end-times predictions made in the 19th century by the Baptist minister William Miller. An obscure sect for its first 60 years, the Branch Davidians were made…
Introduction The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has done much P.R. work to get their religion to look as much like orthodox Christianity as possible (even increasing the font size on their signs to emphasize “Jesus Christ”). But does Mormonism simply add “another testament” to the Bible or are they following “other gods”…
Introduction In the Free Grace vs. Lordship Salvation debate particular focus is paid to James chapter two. Here James makes a number of troubling statements for those who favor a strict “faith alone” stance, and one of them has to do with James’s analogy of the body. In 2:26 he states, For as the body…
Is the Watchtower Society’s “New World Translation” Trustworthy? Introduction Jehovah’s Witness (JW’s) have their own version of the Bible that contains several key changes to the English text in order to lend support for their heretical doctrines. The New World Translation (NWT) is defined by the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ parent organization (The Watchtower Society) as “a…
Introduction The Christian Church was against against abortion from the earliest days (see The Fathers on Abortion). It can be something of an embarrassment, then, for Christians to discover that the views of the Church’s greatest theologian, Thomas Aquinas, have been used to support abortion. The specific view in question has to do with Aquinas’s statement that God created the rational human…
Introduction In a previous post I argued that Norman Geisler’s inclusion of the Grammatical-Historical Method [GHM] of interpretation in his “Logical Method” for discovering Christian orthodoxy was problematic. Here I will expand on this issue, for it is often at this stage that related debates get hung up. This is not a critique of the GHM itself.…
Introduction I have been reading a bit about Martin Luther lately, and I did not realize what a brawler this guy was! All I remembered from classes and movies was this pious guy crying out that, “there he stood and could do no other.” I knew he cussed and drank etc., and I had a vague notion…
Introduction A friend told me about a short article that appeared recently concerning God’s impassibility titled Is God an Android? by Norman L. Geisler. In this article Geisler makes the claim that people “sometimes object to the classical view of God by claiming that if God is impassible then He cannot experience feelings like love and…
Introduction The doctrine of sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”) began its life as a concern for proper authority in religious matters. By “authority” here I mean something like “that which has the right to compel agreement.” A religious authority would be one which has the right to compel faith (orthodoxy) and actions (orthopraxy). This does not…
Here is an outline and exposition of what is often called the “Vertical Cosomological Argument” based on Thomas Aquinas’ thoughts in On Being and Essence. Outline A contingent being exists. Say, me – or the one who says nothing exists. 🙂 This contingent being must have a cause of its existence that is something other than the…
Douglas Beaumont 