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We are moving in our culture toward a view of morality that renders moral values and virtues as no more than simply matters of opinion with no force or application beyond the individual who holds such a view. The contrasts sharply with the notion of morality from a Christian worldview that insists that moral assessments are not only objective but also matters of truth and knowledge. As we celebrated MLK day a couple weeks ago, we should be reminded that King himself held that the moral values on which the civil rights movement was based, were objective and knowable by the average person in the streets. He held that they were objective truths of morality, not subjective matters of individual preference ...

Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California discuss the challenges and opportunities of bi-vocational ministry.

This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig. Recently I listened to your argument from the applicability of mathematics on premier Christian radio as well as the debate you had with Alex Rosenberg. I'm not particularly knowledgeable when it comes to mathematics but I was intrigued by your comments on how the argument from the applicability of mathematics is similar to the argument from fine tuning ... Could it be that, as with the fine tuning argument, the applicability of mathematics might be explained by necessity? ...

A wise person builds his or her house on a solid and lasting foundation. According to Jesus, such a foundation is rooted in him and his teaching about life. The wise person, said Jesus, “hears these words of mine and puts them into practice” (Matthew 7:24). It’s a call to follow what Jesus says as our authority. Claims to authority grind in our cultural gears. But this is often based on confusions about what authority is and what it means to follow it. In this series we’re unraveling some of those confusions ...

In the last twenty years, many individuals claim to have visited heaven or hell and have written vivid accounts of what they purport to have seen. What should we make of these stories? Should they form a basis for our faith? Might they supplement or enhance the convictions that we already have? How do we evaluate such claims and what is their practical use even if true?

In the last twenty years, many individuals claim to have visited heaven or hell and have written vivid accounts of what they purport to have seen. What should we make of these stories? Should they form a basis for our faith? Might they supplement or enhance the convictions that we already have? How do we evaluate such claims and what is their practical use even if true?

Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California discuss how their Talbot education impacts their ministry today in valuable ways.

This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig. Dr. Craig, I recently listened to your Podcast from the Defenders class on God's concurrence (Defenders 2, Doctrine of Creation: Part 8). At the outset, you explained that God is the cause of everything because he concurs in it. As an attorney, this made an abundant amount of sense to me. In the law (particularly in tort), an omission (or failure to act) can be the cause of something in the same way that an affirmative act can. Of course, we would only impose liability where the omission is accompanied by some legal duty to act, but that inquiry is wholly separate from the causation inquiry ...

Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California discuss why a seminary education is so valuable for ministry today.

The Christian belief system is consistent and coherent. This shows in the way that adjustments in one concept of the system often require modifications in other aspects. Increased clarity about one topic elucidates other topics. The interdependence of my beliefs was again displayed when I came across a common mistranslation of a single word in Luke’s gospel. Once I had been persuaded that the prevailing translation was misleading, I experienced shifts in the ways I view and relate to God, and how I pray and think about God’s involvement in daily life. These implications of a single word have been strong reverberations that I am grateful to experience ...

Las noticias a nuestro alrededor pueden ser bastante desalentadoras. Por alguna razón las noticias que se publican y tienen promoción tienden a ser las negativas y las que reflejan algún conflicto social. Para los medios de comunicación y para la sociedad en general las buenas noticias parecieran no ser atractivas y solamente las negativas pueden salir de la sombra de lo cotidiano para llamar nuestra atención. Desgraciadamente, el estar rodeados de malas noticias origina un ambiente negativo en el que la vida pareciera una maraña de conflictos que crece cada vez más y a la que no se le encuentra solución por ningún lado. Si a esta situación le agregamos los actos de terrorismo de grupos radicales que se escudan en la religión para cometer atentados deleznables contra inocentes y las posturas tan radicales de políticos y grupos sociales que impiden una sana conversación para resolver sus diferencias, es fácil caer en la desesperanza y la impotencia.

Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California discuss how local churches can better engage and love their communities.

This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig: ... my question today refers to Lee Strobel book "The Case for a Creator". There was one part in the book where Strobel asked you "why does it have to be One Creator?" And you responded by saying "my opinion, Ockham's Razor would shave away any additional Creators." So my question today is in 3 questions: Define what is Ockham's Razor? How does this (scientific) principle or theory eliminate the need for extra gods? How does Ockham's Razor prove the existence of One God? ...

Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California discuss the unique challenges of ministry in this region.

A few months ago I wrote about José Bowen’s seminar and his book, Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2012). I shared that his main thrust was for teachers to use technology to deliver content outside of class sessions, and shift the use of class time to processing that information, promoting critical thinking and the application of knowledge to real life situations. There are three ideas from Bowen’s work that I think have the potential of deepening the impact of our teaching in the church. Over the next few months I’ll be writing a brief blog on each of the three ideas, beginning with ways of using technology to get students into the content of the Bible lesson/study before you meet, preparing them for a more active and deeper learning experience together.

Newsweek decided to begin the New Year by attacking people who hold a high view of Scripture. (“The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin,” by Kurt Eichenwald, January 2-9 issue.) Their lead article on the Bible contains so many untrue or partially true assertions that it seemed to me that some sort of concise and readable response needed to be offered. But it would, literally, require a book-length critique to adequately address all the mischaracterizations, factual mistakes, and suggestive statements propounded in this single article. So I have decided to simply read through the article, select an occasional assertion from the article that needs a response, and try to offer a straightforward and hopefully fair response. None of these responses should be taken by a reader as sarcastic; my goal has been to offer sober-minded responses to particular assertions in an article that is full of inaccuracies.

This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig: ... I have a few questions for you which I am hoping you can answer to help strengthen my arguments for Christianity. I have a friend who is a Panentheist; she believes that God literally is the universe and exists apart from the universe at the same time. She claims that God is eternal and there is no reason to believe that the universe began. She also believes that God can be both material and immaterial at the same time and she uses Christ as an example for this point. Finally, she believes that God is not a cause apart from nature, but literally is the force of nature (e.g. Genesis 1 - Elohim "becoming" light and so forth, teachings of Hasidic Judaism, Isaiah 6:3, Gods omniscience, being in all places at once); therefore she also believes that God does not hand down judgment to humanity but instead warns us of the inevitable results due to particular actions (e.g. Genesis 4) ...

Several years ago Charles Arn and I surveyed pastors and asked them to identify the most frustrating part of their job. Can you guess the most frequent response? “Getting laypeople to help with the work and ministry of the church” ... One of the major reasons people are reluctant to serve in and through a church is the feeling that they’ll be stuck in the position for ever, or at least a very long time ...

In this audio recording, David Horner, Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, shares about Epiphany and its significance in the life of the Christian.

I was raised in a church world in which “culture war” was a favorite metaphor of how the church relates to the nonchurch. We were God’s courageous moral infantry doing battle against those cunning cultists, those hateful homosexuals, those lying liberals, and those devilish Darwinists. If we listen with tuned ears to Christian radio, Christian literature, Christian blogs, and Christian conversations, it becomes clear: We Christians love the language of war. Over the last 30 years it has become our dominant metaphor for relating to culture; it saturates our vocabulary, shapes our politics, and soaks our worldview. But is culture war helpful? Is it biblical? Should we be jarheads for Jesus?

Recently in my sermon preparation for Mark 3, I pondered the calling of the Twelve. What a moment! Jesus gathers all of his followers together and chooses twelve so that they could be with him and so that he could send them out to preach. Imagine the joy of being chosen for this ministry. There must have been chatter amongst the crowd as Jesus announced his decision. “Why him? He has no education at all.” “He certainly chose a peculiar bunch.” “This is not fair. I have sacrificed far more than any of them to follow Jesus.” ... I do think each one of the Twelve must have felt special in that moment. I would have. I am certain their parents did. They were ready, but did they know what they were signing up for? ...

The idea of our identity with Christ is an important topic in my class on spiritual formation. We spend several class sessions looking at Colossians 3:1-17 from a variety of angles and often return to thinking about how our identity with Christ is foundational for our spiritual life and maturity (the students also memorize Colossians 3:1-17 over the course of the semester). The capstone to this section of the class is an assignment helping the students to reflect on their own identity. Here are the instructions ...

This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig. Hello Dr. Craig I'm writing from Sweden so I hope you can understand the meaning of my questions even if it is not in perfectly good english. I should start by saying that I am a non-Christian ... Some months ago I started thinking about life, in a way that I had not done before. I started asking myself the big questions. What is the meaning of my life? What is the reason we are here? What makes me important? Sadly I couldn't find the answers to these questions and the more I thought about them, the harder it became to live my day to day life ... Is the only reason to live life as a Christian to tell others about God? Is that the meaning of life? And finally, why why why should people who believe in God but lives here on earth under terrible circumstances (poverty, depression, sickness, war) still continue there lives here? Wouldn't it be better to just die and go to heaven?

A few evenings ago, we hosted a delightful group of ten Biola students at our house for dinner. During dessert, we launched into a lively discussion about how we should celebrate Christmas as Christians. We discussed various sub-topics under this broader question, but we spent the largest portion of our time talking about how Christians should—and should not—talk to their children about Santa Claus.

Since I had several December pregnancies, I found myself frequently thinking of Mary, the first Christmas Mother. As I thought of my troubles and fears with my pregnancy—nothing unusual, just what is common to woman: morning sickness, fatigue, aches, and concerns about the safety of the delivery of the child—I remembered that she was quite possibly, the bravest mother who ever lived. She faced obstacles on every hand but she faced them with courage. Her life was full and good, but it was not at all what she imagined her life and her motherhood would be.