I’m a Christian who was raised in the Lutheran church but who left it in my early twenties to join a Oneness Pentecostal church, convinced that I could experience God there in a way I could not in the Lutheran church. After ten years that church collapsed and I spent another ten years in various other churches in growing unhappiness as I became aware that my search for “more of God” outside the Lutheran church had gone badly awry. Finally I returned to the Lutheran church, where I’ve been very happy for the last twenty years. This blog records my present thoughts about Christian life, worship, and doctrine in the light of those experiences.
Let One Rascal Punish the Other (Part I)
Good Friday, March 28, 2024
Some thoughts from Luther that pertain to Christian faith and politics today.
Christian Faith, Politics, and Donald Trump
November 14, 2023
I've watched in disbelief and embarrassment for the last seven years as conservative Christians (including nearly all of the members of the Oneness Penetecostal Church of which I used to be a member) fall all over themselves praising Donald Trump, who even they admit is at very best only a nominal Christian, claiming that God is nevertheless uniquely working through him to accomplish His purposes and restore Biblical values and American greatness. This article gives the reasons I'm embarrassed.
August 5, 2023
As of this year, I've been back in the Lutheran church for twenty years. This is a short list of reasons why I continue to be happy there.
Letter to the American Church
(Book Review)
August 4, 2023
This is my review of the book by Eric Metaxas titled Letter to the American Church. It was published just last September and has already become a best-seller in the Christian publishing world. [This is an edited version of a review that I originally posted in January.]
August 16, 2022
This pertains to an old charge that appeared recently on the Facebook site for a Oneness Pentecostal church I used to be a member of. Though I've answered this several times in the past, I think it is worth addressing again briefly since I've recently been in correspondence with one who was raised in an offshoot of that church and consequently knows nothing about the doctrine of the Trinity or church history except highly distorted versions taught to him by anti-Trinitarian teachers.
The Numbering of the Ten Commandments
March 7, 2022
God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses and the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, an event recorded in Exodus 20:1-17. In that passage they are not numbered, however, and if you look closely at it you will find that there are fifteen commands in those seventeen verses. Further, history records several different ways that people have counted the Ten. This article and the table that accompanies it attempt to explain those ways.
The Holy Trinity, Part 2 (Book Review)
November 2, 2021
The second part of my review of the book The Holy Trinity by Carl L. Beckwith. (The first part was way back on November 25, 2019.)
September 3, 2021
This article explains why Lutherans believe infant baptism to be a scripturally valid practice.
August 27, 2021
Lutherans believe that baptism can be done by immersion of the believer in water or by sprinkling or pouring water over the believer's head. Many other denominations insist that the method must be immersion because in the Greek of the ancient world the word “baptize” (baptizo) meant “dip,” “immerse,” or “submerge.” Lutherans say that fact does not bind us to the method of literally immersing the believer. This article explains why.
Eric Metaxas' Luther (Book Review)
December 24, 2020
A review of the 2017 biography Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World by Eric Metaxas.
Lutheranism, Pentecostalism, and the Scriptures
August 2, 2020
It took me a while as a Pentecostal to realize this, but Pentecostals don't really believe in Sola Scriptura, or at least certainly not in the sense it was intended by Martin Luther and the other early Reformers.
Was the Trinitarian Formula Added to Matthew 28:19?
April 29, 2020
My thoughts about the claim made by some Oneness Pentecostals that the Trinitarian formula was added to the Bible by the Roman Catholic Church.
The Heresy of Orthodoxy (Book Review)
April 20, 2020
My review of a book that refutes one of the key claims made by modernism and postmodernism against Christianity.
March 7, 2020
I look at a key distinctive of Lutheranism that many other churches lack and which I completely missed the first time around.
A Note About the Lutheran Church
December 10, 2019
There are almost as many meanings today of the word “Lutheran” as there are of the word “Christian” so here's a short explanation of what I myself mean when I speak of “the Lutheran church.”
The first part of a planned multi-part review of the book The Holy Trinity by Carl L. Beckwith.
November 5, 2019
This briefly sums up what I expect to be the main themes of this blog.