Roger E. Olson's Blog, page 172

“Help, Mom! There Are Calvinists under My Bed!” Some Ideas for a New Book

Help, Mom! There Are Calvinists under My Bed! Some Ideas for a New Book Have you seen the new book published by Cross Books (apparently a division of LifeWay) entitled Help, Mom! There Are Arminians under My Bed!? I haven’t read it; I’ve just seen the “cover.” (I put cover in scare quotes because it [...]

Games (Some) Theologians Play

 Games (Some) Theologians Play             If you’ve been following my blog recently, you know that I defend the value and autonomy of theology as a definite discipline for the churches. In a nutshell, when theology (as I described it in my recent series What Is Theology and Who Does It?) is abandoned or neglected, the [...]

Please Read This about Boys (Politically Incorrect Warning!)

I’m a pretty “PC” (“politically correct”) guy most of the time. And I don’t mean that ironically–I really do think most of what is “PC” is right. But there are areas where I think our contemporary American perception of what is PC is off a bit. As anyone who has visited here often for a [...]

What Is Theology and Who Does It? Part 3 (Final)

What Is Theology and Who Does It? Part 3 (Final) This third installment of the series won’t make much sense without the first two, so please read Parts 1 and 2 before this. This part presupposes those. Throughout my career as a theologian, I have frequently encountered people who claim, directly or indirectly, that they [...]

What Is Theology and Who Does It? Part 2

What Is Theology and Who Does It? Part 2             In Part 1 I described two broad types of antipathy toward scholarly, academic theology among American Christians (especially evangelicals). The first is anti-intellectualism (especially toward scholarly study of religion in general and Christianity in particular. The second is scholarly, academic belief that theology is a [...]

What Is “Theology” and Who Does It? Part 1

What Is “Theology” and Who Does It? Part 1             It may sound like a simple question (or two simple questions), but it’s not. I’ve been a “professional theologian” (someone who gets paid for being one) for thirty-one years and before that I was preparing to be one for several years. The dream of being [...]

Shocking Sermon by Presiding Episcopal Bishop

To read it go to: http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/en... The shocking part is the fourth paragraph. (There may be other shocking parts, but that’s the portion of the sermon I focus on here.) Apparently, according to the Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church, the Apostle Paul wrongly cast out of a slave girl her “gift of [...]

Practical Implications of Satanic Realism

You probably won’t get much out of this post without reading the two previous ones, so I urge you to do that before reading this one. Someone asked me, in response to my recent post about Satan, what practical difference Satanic realism (belief that Satan is not merely a symbol of human evil but a [...]

Where the Devil is Satan (in Contemporary Christianity)?

Where the Devil is Satan (in Contemporary Christianity)?             When I write about “contemporary Christianity,” for the most part, I’m addressing what I see as my own religious-cultural context—moderate, centrist, evangelically-oriented Protestantism in the U.S. I’m not usually (unless I say otherwise) addressing fundamentalist or liberal Protestantism or Roman Catholicism.             I hold in my [...]

R.I.P. Dallas Willard (and Was He an Open Theist?)

R.I.P. Dallas Willard (and Was He an Open Theist?)             The evangelical Christian community has lost one of its best minds and most articulate writers—Professor Dallas Willard of the University of Southern California’s School of Philosophy (retired), associate of Richard Foster’s in the Renovaré movement, and author of numerous books in the philosophy of religion [...]