Canon Fodder

Exploring the origins of the New Testament canon and other biblical and theological issues

College Students: Here Are Some Thoughts On Picking a Good Church

Well, it’s that time of year. Thousands of college students all over the country (and the world) will soon be moving into their dorm room or house, eager to get settled in for the new academic year.

High on the agenda for many students will be discovering the best place for live music, finding the coolest (and cheapest!) restaurants in town, or maybe just scoring tickets to the big football game. But for Christian students there’s another agenda item (or at least their should be): finding a new church home.

Now, there’s lots to be said about how to pick a good church. And top of the list are two core theological concerns: (1) Does this church believe the Gospel—that Jesus is the divine Son of God who died for sinners and rose from the dead?; and (2) Does this church believe the Bible—that it is the inspired word of God and the ultimate standard for all that we believe and do?

However, while these two concerns are paramount, they are not all that can be said about finding a good church. There are many churches that say they believe both of these things that still have other serious problems.  So, here are some additional considerations that may or may not have crossed your mind: [Read more…]

Are Christian Parents Too Protective of Their Children?

In 2017, Jack Gilbert—who teaches microbial science at the University of Chicago—published a fascinating book: Dirt is Good: The Advantage of Germs for Your Child’s Developing Immune System.

As the title suggests, Gilbert challenges a core assumption of every nervous parent, namely that we must take every step humanly possible to protect our child from any and all forms of contamination. It seems that our kids can never use enough hand sanitizer or take enough baths or use enough Clorox wipes.

As paradoxical as it seems, argues Gilbert, some level of exposure to germs can actually be a good thing. It can help children develop their immune systems which, in turn, will protect them when they are older. Indeed, he argues, many health problems (including the rising rate of severe allergies) can be linked to a lack of exposure to certain bacteria.

Here’s the point: the germ-conscious parent may think they are raising healthy children when they may actually be raising vulnerable children—a vulnerability which will not become apparent until many years later.

Now, I am not a scientist and I can’t tell a parent whether they should wash off the pacifier when it falls to the ground. But I do think there is a parallel lesson here in the spiritual world.

As nervous Christian parents, sometimes we think our number one job is to make sure our kids are never exposed to any non-Christian thinking. We may be tempted to place our children inside a sanitized theological bubble, safe from all forms of intellectual contamination. But, just like germ-conscious parents, this may not be accomplishing what we think.

This topic has been on my mind quite a bit since the release of my most recent book, Surviving Religion 101: Letters to a Christian Student On Keeping the Faith in College.  In all of the podcasts I have been doing since the book’s release, one question keeps coming up again and again: [Read more…]

How Can I Believe in a Miracle If I’ve Never Seen One?

I’ve been working my way through a blog series in light of the recent release of my book, Surviving Religion 101: Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College (Crossway, 2021). This series includes 7 videos that tackle key intellectual questions about the Christian faith.

We now come to the seventh and final video, and this is a big one: “How Can I Believe in a Miracle If I’ve Never Seen One?”

Of course, skepticism over the supernatural is nothing new. Even when it seems a miracle just may have occurred, the knee-jerk reaction of most people is to prefer a naturalistic explanation: someone is lying, eyewitnesses are confused, maybe someone is having a hallucination, etc.

This reminds me of the scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in which Lucy returns from her first magical trip through the wardrobe. After describing the wonderful land of Narnia—and how she met a faun named Tumnus—her siblings conclude that she is just making up stories. Lucy runs off in tears. Later, Peter and Lucy discuss the situation with the professor, worried that something might be wrong with their little sister. They are shocked to discover that the professor might just believe her!

Susan’s response represents the classic position that miracles are impossible: “But this couldn’t be true—all this about the wood and the Faun. . . . We thought there might be something wrong with Lucy.” Notice that Susan’s skepticism about the miraculous leads her to assume a naturalistic explanation, namely, that Lucy is mentally ill.

But the Professor pushes back by pointing out that there’s other evidence to consider:

Why don’t they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume she is telling the truth.

What makes the difference with the professor is that he is not closed off to the possibility of the miraculous. Thus, he does not feel compelled to always pick a non-miraculous explanation. With a credible eyewitness like Lucy (who’s more credible than Edmund), he is quite willing to think that a miracle might just have occurred.

So, here’s my video addressing this important subject: [Read more…]

My New Book “Surviving Religion 101” Releases Today!

In the fall of 1989, I began my freshman year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Like many freshmen, I was excited for the next chapter in my life, eager to explore the new opportunities and experiences that college had to offer.

Of course, I knew there would be challenges. College life would not be easy, especially for a Christian. But I had grown up in a solid Christian home, was taught the Bible from a young age, and was a faithful member of my church youth group. So I figured I was ready.

I wasn’t.

The problem stemmed not from what I was taught but from what I wasn’t taught. I wasn’t prepared in the one area that would matter most in a university environment. I wasn’t prepared intellectually. And I would soon learn (the hard way) that intellectual preparation was what I needed more than anything.

My lack of preparation reached a head in the spring of my freshman year when I took a religion course titled Introduction to the New Testament. The professor was a young scholar who was bright, engaging, funny, and persuasive. It didn’t take long to see that he lectured with an eye toward evangelicals, even sharing how he was once an evangelical himself not long ago.

And then during his graduate studies, after deep engagement with the text, he realized he could no longer maintain his evangelical beliefs. The New Testament wasn’t inspired after all but was full of mistakes. It wasn’t reliable but was filled with made-up stories and fabrications. And its original form wasn’t even accessible to us but had been badly corrupted by scribes over years of transmission.

That professor’s name was [Read more…]

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About

I am President and Samuel C. Patterson Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC, and husband to Melissa Kruger, Director of Women’s Content at The Gospel Coalition.

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