Thursday, May 14, 2026

Should we expect demonic and other paranormal activities today to be the same as they are in the Biblical record?

No, since there are significant contextual differences. Not all historical contexts are the same. They involve different individuals, with different things at stake, etc. The Bible is Divine revelation that's meant to address some topics and not others and to address the topics it does cover to different degrees. Just as it doesn't tell us everything about astronomy or prayer, for example, it also doesn't tell us everything about the paranormal. There are reasons for the Bible to give a lot of attention to one thing and little or no attention to something else, even if the thing that gets little or no attention is more common, is more relevant to people in some contexts, etc. The fact that illness X was more common than illness Y in Biblical times, and therefore gets discussed more in scripture, doesn't change the fact that we should be giving much more attention, money, and other resources to Y if it's far more common than X in the modern world, does more harm than X, and so forth. Similarly, there's a different rate of literacy today than in Biblical times, so we expect more from people accordingly (e.g., how much we expect them to read scripture). Or when something like transgenderism becomes more popular at a certain point in history than it was at another point, we make adjustments to accommodate that. The same is true with paranormal matters. If near-death experiences are being discussed much more today than in past generations, including during the Biblical era, then we should make adjustments accordingly, living in the way appropriate to our context, not the Biblical one.

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Was Ignatius of Antioch Roman Catholic?

He's been discussed a lot lately by various Catholics. See this recent video by Cameron Bertuzzi, for example. And Ignatius has often been cited in support of Catholicism and against Protestantism for many years. It's not just a recent development. It's been popular for a long time in Catholic circles to cite Ignatius as a major problem for Protestants, because of comments he makes about issues like the monarchical episcopate and how the eucharist is the flesh and blood of Christ.

But some Protestants believe in the monarchical episcopate and a bodily presence of Christ in the eucharist. And the sort of language Ignatius uses about the eucharist is also used by him in other contexts that aren't interpreted by anybody the way advocates of a bodily presence of Christ in the eucharist are interpreting his eucharistic comments. See my discussion here. And here are some other examples not discussed in that thread I just linked:

Sunday, May 10, 2026

Interacting With The Dead

Greg Koukl addressed the issue of interacting with the dead on a recent podcast. Start listening at 50:16 here. He was responding to a Christian caller whose parents have recently been having some allegedly paranormal experiences that they've interpreted as contact from their deceased daughter. I suspect ninety-some percent of the Evangelicals who would typically listen to a program like Greg's would agree with the answer he provides. But I want to address some problems with it. In addition to addressing what Greg and the caller said, I want to talk about some other misconceptions I suspect many people have about these issues.