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Why is abortion always treated as a Catholic issue? I get highly annoyed when people speak of issues such as abortion as if they were purely the invention of the religious right and devoid of any other supporters than “the crazy Christians”. So to help put things in perspective, here are several secular sources who, like Christians, thought that abortions were a bad idea. Boldness liberally applied by myself. “There are five kinds of evil Karma which are difficult to extinguish, even if one were to repent of them. What are the five kinds of offences? The first one is killing the father, the second one is killing the mother, the third one is abortion, the fourth one is to injure the Buddha, the fifth one is to create disharmony among the Sangha assemblies. These five types of evil and sinful karma are difficult to extinguish.” -The Dharani Sutra of the Buddha ...

Some ex-scripts from an article by my friend Jeff Henning on being a Christian soldier in God’s army: “Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” - 2 Timothy 2:3 .. Paul equated the life of a soldier with the life of a Christian. A Christian needed to have the civilian individualism taken out by disciplined training and the ’team first’ concept installed in it’s place. He wrote “No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs” to mean that way of life had to cease. Being a soldier was a serious, full time job. ...

I recently came across the draft of a paper written by Ken Keathley on Molinism titled “A Molinist View of Election Or How to Be a Consistent Infralapsarian”. The full PDF version is avaliable here. The final version is included in the book Calvinism: A Southern Baptist Dialogue. On supralapsarianism and historical Calvinism Keathly writes: Some Calvinists (following their namesake, John Calvin) cannot accept that there is any conditionality in God’s decrees, so they bite the bullet and dismiss permission altogether. They embrace a double predestination in which God chose some and rejected others and then subsequently decreed the Fall in order to bring it about. Those who hold this position are called supralapsarians because they understand the decree of election and reprobation as occurring logically prior (supra) to the decree to allow the Fall (lapsis), hence the term supralapsarianism. ...

A brother of mine recently wrote the following by way of advocating the position that “all Christians ought to be socialists”: Acts 2:44-45 “All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need' Acts 4;32b, 34-35 “..neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.” Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. ...

In a recent conversation via Google Buzz between a couple of Reformed brethren and myself I was told the following: Nathan White - Wes- I don’t see Calvinism starting with philosophy because it starts with what scripture explicitly says, that we were chosen, predestined, and even that God created vessels of wrath and mercy for His specific purposes, and then moves on from there and forms compatibalism based upon statements of God’s love, and inferences that God holds men accountable for their actions. Molinism cannot exegete a text in context and form a doctrine, and let that doctrine help interpret other tough passages, but Calvinists can easily do so with the explicit statements of Romans 9. ...

I was recently sent the following challenging response to a previous post regarding the deconversion of those who once claimed to be Christians: Apply your reasoning to any other area of life, and no one can ever stop believing something that they really believed in. True belief PRECLUDES assimilating newly discovered evidence which causes re-evaluation of what you once would have given your life in defense of???? So an Amazon tribal person who once believed that the sun revolves around the earth, who is shown through diagrams and scientific language he understands, then stops believing that and then believes that the earth revolves around the sun, DIDN’T REALLY BELIEVE IN THE FIRST PLACE THAT THE SUN REVOLVES AROUND THE EARTH???? ...

From a conversation via Google Buzz (I love Google Buzz.): I can’t help but coming to the conclusion that, outside of open theism where God has no clue what the future holds, God is always in some way ‘responsible’ for sin and evil in the world. I say that with reverence and a few qualifications, of course. But God created the world at least knowing the sin and evil that would come from it. He also sustains the world and the wicked in it. He gives them life, breath, health, cognitive ability, opportunity, freedom of conscience, He doesn’t restrain their evil, and He doesn’t always save the innocent (though having full power to do so). ...

The anabaptists often get a bum rap in Church history classes. Especially among the reformed crowd who would preferr to paint them as anarchists who despised order and expoused heresies. A lawless mob. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, since the anabaptists were routienely persecuted by both the Roman Catholic Church as well as the Magesterial Reformers such as John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Ulrich Zwingli. Emir Caner has recently released a paper in defense of the anabaptists in an attempt to set the record straight. I highly encourage anyone who is interested in Church history to take a minute and read it. ...

I ran across a recent Tweet via Google Buzz that read: Would we be more pious than Jesus? - “I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given Me” - Jn 17:9 During the course of our conversation on the implications of the thought expressed above I come up with the following logical argument for God’s loving the whole world as opposed to a small segment of it per reformed theology. ...

I generally try to concentrate on Greek as the Biblical language I’d like to learn first, however during a recent search through Biblical texts for a word to name my flash drive I ran across the Hebrew word “baraq” and thought it not only accurately described my 8Gig temporary storage drive, but our current president as well. What it means Hebrew בָּרָ Transliteration/Pronunciation baraq/bä·räk' Strong’s H1300 Definition Flash, lightning, glittering. Generally something that is big and impressive, but doesn’t last very long. It’s used to describe lightning, swords, the voice of God when He speaks, and the appearance of the messiah in Ezekiel and Daniel. ...