Summary:
Dr. Gregory Boyd is a professor of theology at Bethel College. He attended such universities as the University of Minnesota, Yale Divinity School, and Princeton Theological Seminary. As well as being a professor he is a preaching pastor at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and has authored three books and several articles. This particular book is a dialogue between he and his father, Edward Boyd. Edward lives in Florida and worked for 35 years in sales management. He has six kids, 15 grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.
Gregory attempted for years to try and convert his father to Christianity without any success. About the time he felt like giving up on his father, he felt the Holy Spirit leading him to go one more mile. That last mile ended up in his father accepting Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior, and thus resulted in the publishing of their correspondence.
It all started with the first letter from Gregory when his father was 70 years old. Gregory simply asked his father if he would take part in talking through some of the issues he had with Christianity. Edward agreed and so the journey began. Much to the surprise of Gregory, his father, very agnostic, had many very deep hard to answer questions. These questions ranged from questions about so-called "Christians," to questions about God, questions about Jesus, questions about the Christian life, and the why he should believe in all of this nonsense. As soon as Gregory would reply and answer his father's questions, he would receive another letter full of good questions.
This went on for three years and the progression of the book showed very clearly God working on Edward, until the end of the book when he invited Christ into his heart and accepting Him as Lord and Savior at the young age of 73.
Evaluation:
I found the questions from Edward to very tough, and I was extremely satisfied with Gregory's answers to them. He seemed to be very humble in the fact that he admittedly did not have all the answers, but very confident in his beliefs and understanding of the evidence favoring Christianity.
For the most part I really appreciated Gregory's answers and found them to be very insightful, as well as theologically correct. I liked his defense of God when Edward blamed Him for all the evil in the world.
Although they had much in common in terms of speaking they had even more differences. For example: King tried to motivate people, tried to make them feel good about equality. While Edwards hammered at his congregation using guilt and fear to get them to accept the Lord. Edwards portrayed God as being a less compassionate God than most people picture him as. "God has so many different, unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out of the world and sending them to hell...""...natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell..." are vivid examples Edwards used to scare his congregation. Edwards described man as loathsome weak people and they owed a great deal of reverence to God. Edward's opinions about man were so straight forward and strong that he even included mere children in his views of pathetic and evil man: "...the foolish children of men do miserably delude themselves in their own schemes and in their confidence and in their own strength and wisdom.
The article, “Motivated Rejection of Science” stood out to me because the vast amount of scientific research to back up findings and the vast majority of the population that rejects it. Lewandowsky and Oberauer discuss the prevalence of false beliefs in the general population. They bring up the popular conspiracy theories that have either false or no scientific research, plaguing the minds of many. When the majority of the general population believe in a certain theory – like the vaccines that are ‘linked’ to measles, Autism, mumps, and rubella – the effects can be detrimental. The vaccine craze was felt worldwide and is the best example of misinformation.
The book, Studies in Galatians, by Tom Wacaster was an excellent study and very well put together. I felt he did a great job gathering others together to elaborate on some of the main points from this book. From the beginning, the author let you know, in the introduction a specific direction he was aiming toward even though the introduction seem to be a bit long. However, after I looked at it upon completion of reading, I appreciated it more than when I read it the first time. When you take second look, it made me understand the reading better. Moreover, the flow of the book was well organized, with the outline of the whole book coming after the introduction, and the remainder of the book broken down verse-by-verse, which brings the attention of the reader in a simple format. I really like the fact that he shared the ideas of others and did not hesitate to provide adequate references letting the reader know the correct source.
The authors Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey's essay is credible because they both have knowledge and experience regarding the topic and researched various parts of the topic using reliable sources. Along with this essay, Charles Colson has written thirty books which have received much praise among the Christian community. He has also received many awards including the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1993, the Presidential Citizen's Medal
ingrained beliefs in a few hours, but was able to provide some justification as to why he had lived his life in search of wisdom.
Regarding Islam, the only area that caught me off guard was when Dr. Akhter stated that Jesus will come back to die and break the cross. The Jihad is another issue that surprised me, because it hardly corresponds to what Allah instructed Mohammad to do in the Koran in countless verses. Dr. Akhter said that a Muslim must fight injustice as a part of the Jihad.
He really put out a lot of emotion in his answers, and just kept repeating how it was “so unbelievable” and how “this can’t happen in the United States.” I already knew a lot on the subject of 9/11, so it was really neat to hear someone I knews perspective on the whole tragic event. What really stuck out to me is when he started talking about how everyone on the news was so frantic and they didn’t know anything. Although he did not lose anyone close he felt the pain, as well as everyone in the United States did that
Gregory strongly believed that the choosing of bishops was solely the church's role and opposed German Emperor Henry IV's policy of "lay investiture" which allowed the bishop to bestow a bishop title on a layman. When Gregory excommunicated Gregory for continuing this policy, Henry was forced to beg for forgiveness and submit to Pope Gregory. This led to decades of quarrel as popes and emperors struggled for supremacy. Many years later, Pope Innocent III immortalized his papacy by fully actualizing Gregory's vision and successfully establishing a united Kingdom of Christianity throughout most of
Richardson, William E., and Dave Kidd. “Articles.” Pentecostal Evangel. General Council of the Assemblies of God. Web. 13 Nov. 2011.
Many of the discussions included questions drawn from the book and we were asked to relate them to our own lives. For the majority of the questions, I had never even given much thought to the topics. For example, one of the discussion questions was about how Jessica went outside of her comfort zone when she decided to study abroad in Nairobi, Kenya. It then asks each individual to discuss a moment in their life when they were called to participate in something that was outside of their interests or comfort zone. I talked about how during the summer of 2015, my youth director asked me to help teach vacation bible school at our church. I am very shy and not a public speaker, so this was definitely out of my comfort zone, but the idea of bringing children closer to God filled my heart with joy, so I said yes. After talking about this experience I realized how big of an impact this particular event had on my life; I became more involved in my church and I took on more leadership
1. The thing that most inspired me was Abraham generally follows God's voice, blindly. Yet he had trust in God. Abraham always trusted god. Abraham takes his trust in god to extreme levels. In Genesis god tells Abraham to sacrifice his son. Abraham is willing to kill his own child all for god. Abraham abandoned his whole life. He abandon his life at such an old age, start a new life and even cuts off part of his penis. I am not sure why he did the penis thing, he was the first to do it and it was crazy. I don't really understand how he can do all that at such an old age, but I definitely admire his bravery to start over.
In theory, Clovis’s wife had asked him to convert to her religion, Christianity. In 496, fearing defeat against another Germanic tribe, he pleaded to the Christian god. The Franks then had won and asked a bishop to baptize him and his 3,000 men who experienced a miracle victory. By 511, the Franks were united into one kingdom and an alliance between the Franks and the Church formed. With the help of the Franks, many Germanic people converted to the Churches ways. Due to the rural conditions of the region, the Church built monasteries so Christian men called monks could give away all their private possessions and devoted their life to God. Women who went through this process were called nuns and they lived in convents. The siblings, Benedict and Scholastica, encouraged guidelines written by Benedict to the men and women of Christianity. These guidelines became bases for other religions in Europe also. Soon enough, monasteries became Europe’s most educated communities. In 590, Gregory I, also know as Gregory the Great, became pope. The pope’s office, or papacy became the center of Roman government. Gregory the Great made great achievements for the
It brought together a collaboration of the combined knowledge of God. The fact, that countless followers of God created the Bible, proves that they knew God and therefore we also know God. Later, philosophers like St. Augustine and St. Aquinas began to question the very nature of the Bible. In doing so, they grew closer to God and learned more about Him. “It was therefore necessary that besides philosophical science built up by reason, there should be a sacred science learned through revelation.” (Aquinas, Ignatius, pages 40-41) Many times, in light of a significant breakthrough in any philosopher’s endeavors, a holy unveiling of knowledge became known to them through the grace of God. Thus, we can say that we know of God through literature and in the same token, through
I appreciated Dr Fredrick Schmidt starting the plenary sessions with prayer. He mentioned about spiritual practices and its disciplines in the church, and explained how we could apply different lenses to spiritual disciplines. The second plenary session was a creative session with Dr. Karla Kincannon where we prayed and meditated and, helped us learn how to create the art. It helped us shape our creativity and spirituality together. The third plenary session was with Dr. Fredrick Schmidt where he taught us about the monastic life lived by the monks during the second century, how monks lived; the way they prayed and meditated and gave more time to God. The monks were living a more disciplined life, they were closer to God and away from the worldly pleasures. The last plenary session with Dr. Mark Fowler was an amazing experiencing. He reminded us that we are here in seminary for a purpose and that God wants us to fulfil that purpose in our lives. Our journey in the seminary may be of challenges but we have to keep our faith strong and remember by whom we have given our authority of
The story of Cornelius not only shows the necessity of the gospel but it indicates that God will move heaven and earth to bring the gospel to those who are ready to receive it. Paul’s important contributions to Christian theology: One is justification (cleansed from sin) by faith alone, the concept that humans are saved from sin by believing in Jesus. Jewish tradition focused on ceremonious rituals, and living according to Jewish law. Two, Paul created a theological, fundamental foundation for Christianity, furthermore recognizing Jesus ' death and resurrection as generating a key change in the human race’s relationship with God--an affiliation in which faith, and receiving the gospel rather than behavior, was the central