Matt O'Reilly, PhD

Should churches stop using the historic Creeds in weekly worship? Rev. Jeremy Smith seems to think so and attempts to make the case with an essay that summarizes a longer sermon preached by Dr. Raymond E. Balcomb, a former pastor of First Methodist Church, Portland, Oregon. The post is a follow-up to another creed-critical post from about a year ago that came in response a tweet in which I quoted Tom Noble on the importance of the Creeds for the people called Methodist. You c

Given the ongoing discussion with regard to our “invisible Wesleyan message” and my recent reflections on finding our Wesleyan voice, I thought I’d point to a couple of paragraphs from Joel Green’s book, Reading Scripture as Wesleyans. These quotes illustrate the centrality of scripture for Wesley and for the tradition that bears his name. For the heirs of John Wesley – I will call them “methodists” – the central importance of Scripture in the formation of God’s people is non

#BookReviews #Gospels #Hermeneutics #Scripture

The details of the controversy are available in other places; so I’ll simply sum up the core issue. In his massive book, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, Licona devoted a few paragraphs to Matthew 27:52-53, which says that at the time of Jesus’ death, “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.” Licona suggests that this passage is ap

The question as to whether God’s wrath could possibly be righteous was raised by Paul in the middle of the first century. Paul sets out his intention to describe God’s righteousness in Romans 1.17. He then immediately begins describing God’s wrath in Romans 1.18. The parallel is striking: “For in it (the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed (1.17)…For the wrath of God is revealed (1.18). Key is the causal connective “for” at the beginning of 1.18, which indicates that

Here’s a gem from John Wesley on the trustworthiness (dare I say, inerrancy) of scripture: Two observations are noteworthy. First, Wesley takes the character of God to be the basis for his doctrine of scripture. If God is true and scripture is God’s word, then scripture must be true as well. Second, for Wesley, if a Christian denies the trustworthiness of scripture by suggesting it contains error, it is a betrayal of his own cause. My guess is that many Methodist and Wesleyan