Quotes from J.P. Moreland

Today, people are inclined to think that the sincerity and fervency of one's beliefs are more important than the content. As long as we believe something honestly and strongly, we are told, then that is all that really matters. Reality is basically indifferent to how sincerely we believe something.

immortality of the soul is something of such vital importance to us that one must have lost all feeling not to care about knowing the facts of the matter.

Douglas Moo notes that therefore, while not denying that some in the church may have the gift of healing, James encourages all Christians, and especially those charged with pastoral oversight, to be active in prayer for healing. . . . Similarly, James' promise that the Lord will raise up (egeiro) the sick person reflects the language of NT healing stories (Matt 9:6; Mark 1:31; Acts 3:7).

You must understand that in the afterlife, our personalities reflect an adult situation anyway, so we can say for sure that there will be no children in hell.

people will be sentenced in accordance with their deeds...God's justice is proportional. There is not exactly the same justice for everyone who refuses the mercy of God.

What hell does is recognize that people have intrinsic value. If God loves intrinsic value, then he has go to be a sustainer of persons, because that means he is a sustainer of intrinsic value.

Our current Western cultural plausibility structure elevates science and scorns and mocks religion, especially Christian teaching. As a result, believers in Western cultures do not as readily believe the supernatural worldview of the Bible in comparison with their Third World brothers and sisters.

While forgiveness is an important part of the gospel, the good news goes beyond that. It amounts to the claim that the kingdom of God—the direct availability of God himself and His rule—is now available to anyone who will enter it through trust in Jesus.

The gospel of the kingdom is an invitation to a different reality, a different way of living. The kingdom is a new way of relating as people. Where ordinary human life is based on competitiveness and defensiveness, domination and subjugation, treachery and violence, the kingdom is based on the self-giving love of God.

As Puritan Cotton Mather proclaimed, "Ignorance is the Mother not of Devotion but of HERESY."4

When stress becomes a habit mentally, emotionally, and physically, a default setting on our inner dial, then it becomes "normal" and we no longer notice its presence. But the stress is still there, and it affects how we perceive, feel, and react to events in our lives. And stress is the major cause of anxiety.

As G. K. Chesterton bemoaned, once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything.

1. In our scientifically oriented culture, traditional understandings of morality and related notions are considered passé.

Freedom was traditionally understood as the power to do what one ought to do.

2. The traditional view is neither scientifically testable nor easily compatible with evolution.

we have allowed secular thinkers to frame the debate, and the Christian voice has been muffled at best.

3. Secular ideas have replaced the traditional view.

We need local churches dedicated to the task of training believers to think theologically and biblically.

While the Christian faith clearly teaches that believers are to be involved as good citizens in the state, nevertheless, it is obvious why so many secularists are addicted to politics today because political power is a surrogate for a Higher Power.

Once objective duty, goodness, and virtue were abandoned under the guise of scientism and secularism, the only moral map that could replace objective morality is what Daniel Callahan has called minimalistic ethics —anything is morally permissible provided only that you do not harm someone else.

Until Christians can do a better job of seeing these issues and articulating them in terms of objective duty and virtue, the Jack Kevorkians will continue to win the "debate" (if that is what we should call the media rhetoric that surrounds the framing of moral dilemmas), precisely because the Kevorkians are on the side of individual rights.

Our society has replaced heroes with celebrities, the quest for a well-informed character with the search for flat abs, substance and depth with image and personality.

Scientific Naturalism Just what is scientific naturalism (hereafter, naturalism)? Succinctly put, it is the view that the spatio-temporal universe of physical objects, properties, events, and processes that are well established by scientific forms of investigation is all there is, was, or ever will be.

The role of intellectual development is primary in evangelical Christianity, but you might not know that from a cursory look at the church today.