The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 33): Martin Luther–Sola Scriptura and Autonomous Reason–Was He the Godfather of Enlightenment Thinking?

Yesterday, I began to talk about Martin Luther’s view of Scripture, and pointed out that there was a fundamental flaw with it. I’d like to elaborate on that a bit more. Some of this might sound a bit redundant from the last post, but I think it is worth emphasizing. Luther: The Precursor to Enlightenment…

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The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 32): Martin Luther, Sola Scriptura, and Authority (But whose? And for what purpose?)

When a young college professor named Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door at Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517 in hopes of opening the door to debate over a variety of perceived abuses within the Catholic Church, no one knew that, in actuality, he had opened the floodgates to a whole lot more. Now,…

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The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 31): The Protestant and Secular Revolutions (1500-1700)–A Short Introduction

In most overviews of Western civilization, the typical progression not only incorrectly lumps over one thousand years of culture and history under the umbrella of the “Middle Ages,” it also tends to then portray both the Italian Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation as simultaneous events that both stemmed out from the Middle Ages. This is…

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The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 30): Last Thoughts on the High Catholic Age (aka…”Those filthy peasants have no Christian Faith!)

One final thing needs to be mentioned regarding the day to day life and faith of the common man during the High Catholic Age. What I’m about to say can be related to virtually every age and every people, so this is not unique to one particular time period. Nevertheless, it has to be said…

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The Book of Isaiah: A Clear, Concise Overview that will Answer All Your Questions

Currently, I am devoting a lot of time to finishing up my translation of the Major and Minor Prophets of the Old Testament. One of the things I am including in my translation are short introductions to each prophetic book that will hopefully help the reader understand what that particular prophetic book is about. Consider…

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The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 29): Galileo and the Inquisition

We all know the story of the Galileo and the ignorant and superstitious Catholic Church: Galileo, the enlightened scientist, said, “The earth goes around the sun!” and the Catholic Church said, “Nu uh!” And then in Inquisition put Galileo on trial for his heretical views, and he only was allowed to live because, under threat…

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The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 28): The Renaissance…not quite what you probably assume

After a month, I am now getting back to my “Ways of the Worldviews” series. We now come to the Renaissance. All too often in most history books, the Renaissance is portrayed as a distinct time period that came after the so-called “Middle Ages”—a “renaissance” of classical culture and learning after the 1,000 year period…

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Ken Ham’s Reformation: Don’t You Dare Challenge Him! (My thoughts on his thoughts about Joel Duff’s thoughts about him seeing himself as a modern day Martin Luther)

Allow me to give a brief back-story to the topic of this post. On January 1st, Ken Ham wrote an article for the Answers in Genesis (AiG) website entitled, “Igniting a New Reformation in 2017,” in which he compared his efforts at the Ark Encounter to that of Martin Luther. Martin Luther had taken a…

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A Little Bit of Old Testament Overview–Part 2 (Getting your bearings in the Old Testament Country)

In yesterday’s post, I gave “Part 1” to my explanation as to how understand the Old Testament story. Here is “Part 2.” If you want to read the full story, let me suggest my translation of the Torah and Former Prophet. King David and the Kingdom of Israel In I Samuel, we find the Hebrews…

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A Little Bit of Old Testament Overview (so you can begin to understand the big picture)

I think it is safe to say that, outside of a few famous Sunday School versions of a few Old Testament stories, a handful of Psalms, and a number of select Proverbs, the majority of the Old Testament is completely ignored by most Christians. The reason is obvious: most don’t really know what the Old…

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