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Was the omniscience of God a developed idea?

Or do we retroactively place our current theology of God on God? Consider the Garden of Eden: '[T]he Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”'  (Gen. 3:8-10) Now today we make it into a rhetorical question, but was this always so? In this story, God is spoken of almost in a physical-bodily sense as walking in the garden, since "they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden" as he moved about, and then tried to hide themselves from his view! Next think of the tower of Babel - "The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built" (Gen 11:5) - Did he not just know already? Also this story...

The Problem of Suffering and How We Approach it

The topic of human suffering is a subject many Christians struggle with, and is an issue many theologians have written about over the centuries — so it's definitely not something I can fully address in a single blog post! But there are some general principles we can find in Scripture that many Christians can/do accept, which should act as a starting point to addressing this subject, such as: We live in a fallen world due to sin (Gen 3), and so things aren’t perfect and neither are people, therefore suffering can happen from illness, nature, and human action (or inaction). Not all suffering is necessarily “bad”, from a Christian perspective. For exam...

Before The Pumpkins: Faith In The Flames

Picture the scene: the year is somewhere around 155–160, Polycarp has just been arrested and brought to the city. The crowd roared in the stadium. The smell of sweat and fear mingled with the dust of Smyrna’s arena. And in the centre of it all stood an old man — calm, unflinching, his face marked with years of faith. The Roman proconsul urged him again: “Swear by the fortune of Caesar. Curse Christ, and I will release you.” Polycarp looked him in the eye and replied with a defiant response that has echoed down the ages, Eighty and six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me? Those words hav...

Former Muslim Explains the Trinity

I saw this video doing the rounds on Facebook, and thought it was too good not to share here as well. Very few people tend to articulate the Trinitarian doctrine well enough to: a) still make sense, and b) not slip into heresy. Just reading the comments section on this video proves point b) quick enough, with many people giving their take on it (and usually espousing some form of Modalism). I won't make a big post on the Trinity now, but I may do one soon off the back of this one, as it's clearly still something believers (and non-believers) struggle to understand, or explain without heresy! For now though, sit back and take about 5 minutes to listen to this...

Creedal Christians: The Nicene Creed

The Nicene Creed — what is it and why is it called that? This creed gets its name from a time and place: the first ecumenical Church council held at Nicaea, which is now known as İznik in northwestern Turkey, in 325 AD. Now that may raise another question for you: what is an ecumenical council? Well, to explain more about the Nicene Creed, we are going to have to take a look at The First Council of Nicaea in order to better understand why this creed was written. First things first though; an “ecumenical council” is ideally a Church-wide meeting where all the Bishops from all across the Church come together to hold a very large and very important meetin...

Doubting Defying Jihad: Questioning the Popular Conversion Story

This is a guest post by “KingsServant” In 2019 a book called Defying Jihad was published by Tyndale House, the reputable Christian publisher telling the story of “Esther Ahmad” a pseudonym used by the author alongside her co-author Craig Borlase, who has previously written alongside, well known Christian personalities such as Matt Redman the singer and Andrew Brunson, an American pastor imprisoned by the Turkish government. As I began to read this book over this past year I was expecting an encouraging account of how a former Jihadi found Christ and escaped her previous accomplices. Very quickly, however, I became uncomfortable, her descriptions of her...