Free Will Baptists and the “Mind-body Problem”
Who are we? Who are you? Who am I? These questions of identity rank among Leroy Forlines’s “inescapable questions of life.”[1] And as Forlines notes, these inquiries are not the result of mere curiosity; they are instead our entire beings’ profound cry for answers.[2] Understanding who we are, both in body and in soul, is essential to understanding our purposes and perceptions in and of the world. Much of the foundation of our lives...
How We Get Our English Bible: A Review
by Jacob Riggs How We Get Our English Bible: Understanding About Different VersionsRobert E. PicirilliRandall House, 2019ISBN: 9781614841050 Near the end of my reading this book I told my wife, “Next to God’s Word, this may be the most important book for every Free Will Baptist to read.” I said that, and still believe it, for three reasons: (1) some Free Will Baptist’s who are KJV-only (in the National Association of Free Will...
Sing About Jesus, Not About You: Rejecting Self-centered Church Music
In a previous essay, I discussed the increasing individualistic approach to music in our modern society. Now I want to focus on how this trend has affected our church music, both on the level of individual songs and on the level of our approach to church music in general. An examination of lyrics, style, and setting can inform us of how we should sing and how we have missed the mark. Lyrics Perhaps the most basic element of our church...
Economics: Theological Foundations
In his celebrated 1994 work The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, evangelical historian Mark Noll dourly concluded that evangelical’s “intellectual sterility” had produced “virtually no insights into how, under God, the natural world proceeded, how human societies worked, why human nature acted the way it did, or what constituted the blessings and perils of culture.”[1] While I have written elsewhere that Noll’s thesis exaggerates the...
An Introduction to Conservatism: Canons Four–Five
In a previous article, I introduced classical conservatism, surveying canons one through three, from Russell Kirk’s The Politic of Prudence. In particular, conservatives believe in an enduring transcendent moral order. They adhere to custom, convention, and continuity, and they follow the principle of prescription. Thus conservatives look upwards and backwards to form their ethic. In this article, we will briefly review canon four,...
The Use and Abuse of Christian Liberty
One of the more challenging passages in the New Testament is found in Romans 12:1–2: Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect...
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