Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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I live in a small house. I work in a small office in a small church. For those reasons and others I will never have a huge library. When I add a book I almost always remove a book, a practice that allows me to focus on quality over quantity. Over the past couple of years I have focused on building a collection of commentaries that will include only the best volumes on each book of the Bible. I know …
Genesis 2 has often been put at odds with Genesis 1. A long list of skeptics have claimed that the content is contradictory in places, especially when it comes to the timing of the events it recounts. Other scholars have argued that stylistic differences indicate that the chapters were written by different authors as parts of entirely separate creation accounts, and that these were later forced together in Genesis. So how do we answer this while also affirming that “every …
This is the fourth installment in a series on theological terms. You can see the previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, and creation. Today the series moves to man. Surprisingly, attempting to define man in simple terms is not an easy task. There are many things that could be included in the definition and a line has to be drawn somewhere. I’ve chosen to define man according the very first use of the term in the Bible. In Genesis …
Should Christians embrace evolution? It is an increasingly urgent question and one that seems increasingly difficult to answer. Like you, I have grown accustomed to hearing Christians declare that, in the end, it doesn’t really matter a whole lot what you believe about creation, whether you embrace a literal six-day creation or a version that allows for some kind of evolution. If only it was that simple. The fact is that there are many other doctrines that lean heavily upon …
As you know I’m at Ligonier Ministries’ annual conference this week. I was going to give you some thoughts on the conference today but maybe I’ll do that another time. Today Al Mohler spoke on an exceedingly difficult topic–why does the universe look so old? And I think he did an exceptional job of providing an answer that affirms a young earth, 24-hour, 6-day view of creation while also maintaining theological and intellectual credibility. I thought I’d share my notes …
The Elisha Foundation – The Elisha Foundation is a great ministry that works with the families of disabled children (mental or physical disabilities). Their annual retreat is coming up and is a time when parents are given a brief respite from the work of caring for their children. Check out the web site for details. Three Great Reads for Good Friday – Here are three good books you may want to read before Good Friday: one, two and for advanced …
Christians are accustomed to treating evolution as an account of the world’s origins that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and something that a person could only believe in the absence of God or in the absence of faith. But this is not quite fair. There are now many Christians–Christians who treasure the Bible and who affirm the truths of the historic Christian faith–who do believe that the evidence for evolution is too compelling to ignore. It is telling that, as …
A few days ago I received an interesting email from a reader of this site. She had read an older article of mine in which I affirmed the Bible’s position about the extraordinary value of women. While she was grateful that I had written such an article, she shared some of her struggles with distinguishing between differing roles and differing value. She wrote “No matter how I push my body to its limits, and no matter how much endurance I …
Before you get all crazy, please realize that this article is satirical. Rick Warren’s Book Becomes More than Recommended Reading for Local Congregation MEMPHIS, TN – Many Christians have heard sentences like these lately: “Oh, you really should read The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren,” and “Wow, I can’t believe you haven’t read The Purpose Driven Life yet.” But only one group of believers has been confronted with this imperative: “Read The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren or …