Description and Prescription

Description and Prescription

A Response to “Pagan Christianity?” 2.4 The distinction between description and prescription   The final principle I want to clarify is the distinction we have to make between those New Testament passages that merely describe the activities of the...
Description and Prescription

The Regulative Principle

A Response to “Pagan Christianity?” 2.3 The regulative principle of worship   The regulative principle of worship is, stated simply, the principle that God alone has the right to regulate our worship, by his word.[1] In worship, we (1) must do...
Description and Prescription

A Response to “Pagan Christianity?”

A Response to “Pagan Christianity?” 1. Introductory Remarks   Pagan Christianity? by Frank Viola and George Barna is an aggressively polemical book claiming to expose “the roots of our church practices”[1] as fundamentally pagan, rather than biblical....
Description and Prescription

Tradition in Scripture

A Response to “Pagan Christianity?” 2. Foundational Principles 2.1 The Concept of Tradition in Scripture   Viola and Barna almost exclusively treat tradition as a threat, but, of course, a tradition is simply a belief or practice that has been passed...
Table of Contents

Table of Contents

A Response to “Pagan Christianity?” Table of Contents    1. Introductory Remarks 2. Foundational Principles 2.1 The concept of tradition in Scripture 2.2 Finding a balanced understanding of church tradition and church history 2.3 The regulative...