"...my 47 years in evangelical Christianity." See here ( 20:20) Here, as best as I can gather, is the religious background of the celebrated ex-evangelical convert to Mormonism David Alexander. Alexander features his evangelical background as the platform from which he defends Mormonism and opposes evangelicals. Questions have been posed about the extent of Alexander's evangelical involvement. How one answers these questions will depend on (1) whether one considers the Twelve Tribe group in which Alexander (as "Duresh") belonged for what appears to be most of the last 20 years, should be counted as evangelical or not, and (2) whether the great number of churches Alexander reports having passed through during the previous 27 years, some of which could undoubtedly be counted as evangelical, represents typical evangelical experience. I leave it to my readers to decide the answers to these two questions for themselves. Where possible I have relied on Al...
One-year-out Congratulations to Marcia and Don! A pastor named Tyler Zach, who promotes what he calls the "Gospel Enneagram," wrote a little tract in which he asked: "Let's just get to the heart of the matter and ask the question: If some of the Enneagram’s origins do have occultist roots—should this fact alone be enough for Christians to stop using the Enneagram?" His basic answer is: No, It shouldn't matter. Strange thing is, I was actually encouraged to see this. Why? Well, the reason is that he was responding to Claudio Naranjo's 2010 claim in an interview with E. J. Gold that when he was creating the Enneagram of Personality back in c. 1970, he had relied on automatic writing. In the same interview Naranjo also admitted that he had lied about the enneagram being an ancient teaching (see minutes 1:20-4:20 for both admissions). Zach mentions that Naranjo says he originated the enneagram in the clip but neglects to mention that he had previously li...
Podcast: What Does Sandra Tanner have to Say About Biblical Forgeries I've been enjoying listening to this part of the interview between Rick C. Bennett and Sandra Tanner. Since my own area includes Gospels and Patristics, I thought I would chime in with few comments and corrections. For the most part my comments follow the sequence of the discussion, and probably doesn't make much sense if you have'n't listened to the discussion. (1) The context of Paul’s warning against people preaching other Gospels (Galatians 1) had to do, as becomes clear as one reads on in Galatians, with forcing Gentiles who converted to Christianity to become Jews first, through circumcision and what not. I have never encountered a New Testament scholar who would make the case that Paul was referring to Gnostic Gospels. I can’t say for certain that there is no scholar who does not make that case, but it would certainly be an idiosyncratic one. (2) When what might be called proto-Gnost...
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