Blog - Page 205 of 318 - John H Armstrong

Albert Einstein and the Modern Atheists

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:57-05:00January 9th, 2009|Categories: Apologetics|

Albert Einstein was clearly a brilliant man. He was once asked if he believed in God. He said: "I'm not an atheist. I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws."

Einstein was asked other questions about his beliefs over the years. He tried to express his feelings as clearly as possible. In the summer of 1930, amid […]

Pearls, Swine and the Problem of Forcing Character Formation

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:57-05:00January 8th, 2009|Categories: Biblical Theology|

Yesterday I wrote about Matthew 7:1 and Jesus' teaching on judgment and fault finding within the Christian community.

Paul writes: "For what have I to do with judging those who are on the outside? Is it not those on the inside you are to judge? God will judge those outside. 'Drive out the wicked person from you'" (1 Corinthians 5:12-13, NRSV). The irony of our time is that the church judges those who are outside the church and accordingly fails to deal with sin on the inside of the church. The world notices and our witness is severely harmed accordingly. In this practice we are more like the Corinthians than mature Christians.

But in Matthew 7 the governing thought seems to me to be that God treats us in the way that we treat others. This is, in reality, a rather sobering thought. If we are judgmental and critical then we will receive the same. In Matthew 7:5 […]

Newly Redesigned ACT 3 Weekly

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:57-05:00January 7th, 2009|Categories: Uncategorized|

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Fault Finding: Don't Jump on People's Failures

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:58-05:00January 7th, 2009|Categories: Biblical Theology|

One of the most common statements Jesus made, and he likely made it repeatedly, is actually a saying found throughout the ancient world. In Matthew 7:1 we find his familiar words: "Judge not, that you be not judged." Let me state, before I even explore this text, that Jesus is clearly not forbidding all forms of judgment. Criticism has a proper place. And the church, not individual Christians, is called upon to judge its own members.

John Calvin says, "Jesus' words here are intended to cure a disease that is natural to us all. We have the tendency to flatter ourselves while passing severe censure on others. This vice provides us with a kind of strange enjoyment, for hardly anyone exists who is not tickled with the desire of asking about other people's faults. Yet we also acknowledge that it is an intolerable evil to overlook one's own vices while being critical of others."

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God's Redemptive Activity in the World

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:58-05:00January 6th, 2009|Categories: Missional Church|

My good friend, Dr. Lon Allison is the executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. We also teach together in the graduate school program in evangelism. Besides this Lon is the director for the Institute for Strategic Evangelism at Wheaton College and the co-publisher of Lausanne World Pulse, a helpful on-line publication. In the most recent issue of World Pulse Lon reflects on what God is doing in the world today. His comments are worth your consideration.

1. Through Alpha leaders Lon says that he had learned of a Chinese woman (PhD student) studying in the U.S. who agreed to attend an Alpha course even though she was an atheist. The student called her mother in China, after the first class, and told her what she had learned about Christianity. Five weeks later she called her mother again to discover that her mom had since become a Christian. The simple reporting of what she had learned about Christianity was passed […]

Beyond the Worship Wars

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:58-05:00January 5th, 2009|Categories: The Church|

Nothing has more defined evangelical church divisions, at least since the 1970s, than the various wars that we have fought over worship in the church. Perhaps the only churches I personally know that have not been impacted by these wars are Orthodox Churches. If you think the Roman Catholic Church is not impacted by this struggle then think again. Anyone remember the "guitar Mass" phase of the 1970s? Or the trouble with the modern changes in the Mass after Vatican II and the significant push back that followed? The impact of these struggles is less obvious now than it is among Protestants but there has been some measure of the struggle in Catholic churches as well.

It seems obvious to me that the most basic problem here is defining worship itself. The source for worship must be the Bible. Scripture has quite a lot to say about worship. In fact, one could say the whole point of Scripture is to show us that we […]

The Feast of the Holy Name

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:58-05:00January 4th, 2009|Categories: Church Tradition|

The first day of January has been a Feast Day in the liturgical calendar of the church since at least the sixth century. January 1 marks eight days after the birth of Jesus, at least according to the church calendar. (No biblical scholar seriously argues that these are the exact dates.) But on this feast day the church remembers that it was on this day that Luke 2:21 was fulfilled. Luke says that when it was time to circumcise the child he was given the name Jesus. Jewish tradition was honored and kept by the holy family in all ways.

This all seems a bit odd to us living in America since naming means very little in our culture. We more often than not name a child based upon the name's use in popular culture, or what names are "in" at the time of the child's birth. Rarely do parents name their children on the basis of what the name means for the […]

Recovering from the Sugar Bowl

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:58-05:00January 3rd, 2009|Categories: College Football|

OK, Utah beat Alabama at every aspect of the game last night. What else can a real fan of this great sport say? In some ways the score of 31-17 was much closer than the game, at least if you watched it unfold from sequence to brutal sequence from kickoff to the end. I actually wondered what would happen to Alabama's offensive line before the game. When you take the best lineman in American out just a few days before the game and move people around the line at the last minute you tamper with chemistry and timing. Then another starter went down before the first quarter was hardly half over and the rest of the game was a display of how not to run an offense and how a line could not protect the quarterback or the runners. Add to this Utah's smart way of running a "hurry-up" offense the first three possessions and you quickly find yourself buried in a 21-0 hole before the game is one […]

Robert V. Remini: Historian to the House of Representatives

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:58-05:00January 2nd, 2009|Categories: America and Americanism|

One of my favorite television channels is C-Span. I know, most people do not even know what it is and if they do they are bored to tears. Not me. This is the stuff I enjoy. On the weekend C-Span 2 provides "Book Television" (all non-fiction books) for 48-hours. Now there is a C-Span 3 that deals only with history. For me the feast has been doubled. This glut of outstanding material is also accessible to me on my schedule with the DVR system I now use. I can set up four recordings at once and then watch them on my personal schedule. My "recorded television" Que is constantly full.

Over the last weekend I saw a great presentation by the well-known American historian Robert V. Remini (photo at right).
I first learned of Remini many years ago because of his majestic biographical work on President Andrew […]

Cardinal Avery Dulles: RIP

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:58-05:00January 1st, 2009|Categories: Roman Catholicism|

One of the most prolific and important leaders in the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Avery Dulles (b. August 24, 1918), passed away on December 12, 2008. Many Protestant Christians may not have noticed but all Christians lost a champion of the faith and a true friend to us all. Dulles, the son of the famous cabinet minister and foreign policy expert, John Foster Dulles, was converted as a college student at Harvard in the late 1930s. He immediately had a vibrant, personal, living faith. His first book, A Testimonial to Grace (1946), which I discovered in a used bookshop some years ago and read, tells the early story. Not too long after his conversion he left the Episcopal Church of his childhood and entered the Catholic Church. His becoming a Catholic was profoundly rooted in his understanding of the faith and his deep commitment to Christ and his church.

Dulles was a teacher of teachers. He taught at Fordham University (twice), Woodstock […]