Restitutio

Restitutio exists to restore authentic Christianity and live it out today. As a restorationist, it really does matter to me how the earliest Christians practiced their faith. A question I ask myself is if I jumped in a time machine and went back to the late first century and attended a house church meeting, would I fit in? Is what I believe about the bible what they believed? Is how I do Christian...

As our society increases in polarization and ideological tribalism, it's easy to become thin-skinned, taking offense at the slightest remark. Even certain words can trigger us to explode in outrage and vitriol. What are we to do? Should we cloister ourselves in echo chambers, surrounded by those who already agree with us? Should we listen when criticisms come our way? After all, sometimes they may...

Today in our fourth and final part of our series on postmodernism Pastor Jacob Ballard explains four key guidelines for cross-cultural ministry. Always change the language, but never change the message Exchange meta-narrative for personal narrative or community narrative Exchange certainty for humility, clues, hints, and mysteries Exchange absolutist morality for personal accountability and commun...

Today, in part three of our series on postmodernism we ask the question, "How is postmodernism affecting our world today?" Pastor Jacob Ballard explains how narrative, experience, community, and subjective truth are key ways that postmodern-minded people go about making sense of reality. Then he shows how movements like Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ rights draw strength from these postmodern ways...

In our last episode, Pastor Jacob Ballard explained what worldviews are. Today he covers the two major worldviews: modernism and postmodernism. Although many today still approach life from a modernist mindset, postmodernism is here in increasing force. What are we as bible-believing Christians to do about this? The first step is to become aware of what's going on and how it both fits with and chal...

Have you noticed the shifts happening all around us in our culture? Skepticism of traditional institutions from the government to the media to churches is at an all time high, while increasingly we're told to discover our authentic self and live it out courageously. Universal truth claims sound like power grabs while individual personal truths are celebrated no matter how patently false they seem....

Have you noticed the shrill tone that permeates public discourse in our time? It seems like everyone is on a hairpin trigger ready to rage and vent at their ideological enemies. What is a Christian to do? Should we stand up for our beliefs, morals, and politics? Should we disengage from conversation about controversial issues? Is there another way? Peter Miano, my guest for today, shares how respe...

Did you know the Unitarian Christian Alliance just launched a podcast? In this interview, Mark Cain explains what he aims to do with this newest addition to one God podcasts and how the UCA podcast is different from the others. Ultimately, he wants to see unitarian Christians carry ourselves with confidence, knowing that our faith is firmly rooted in the scriptures. —— Links —— Contact Mark Cain:...

Sam who asked me not to use his last name for fear that he will get kicked out of his current church, tells his story of navigating evangelical Christianity as a biblical unitarian. He shares two sad stories of excommunication from a college ministry and a local church. As you might suspect, this harsh treatment drove Sam to question his non-trinitarian beliefs. Even though he had every reason to...

Pastor Jeff Deuble of the Churches of Christ in Sydney, Australia shares his journey to uncover the genuine Jesus from scripture alone. After his brother Greg challenged him to understand Christ from a Jewish perspective, Jeff set out on a quest, reading through all of scripture to see what it really said about the Messiah. What he found upended his life, bringing both delight at his clearer under...

This is the second part of a conversation where Jerry Wierwille challenges Brandon Duke's soul-making theodicy. In particular, Wierwille raises the following questions: Why is hiddenness and epistemic distance considered a necessity for moral development considering the biblical examples where people experienced God and still retained their ability to make real moral choices either to obey or reje...

In our last two episodes , Brandon Duke laid out his way of answering the question of why God allows so much suffering in our world. He did so by putting forward a modified version of the late John Hick's soul-making theodicy. In this episode, Jerry Wierwille pushes back on a few issues with soul-making, preferring instead a classic free will theodicy. First we'll see how Duke's version of soul-ma...

In part one , Brandon Duke laid out some of the important groundwork for thinking about how a good and powerful God might have a world capable of experiencing immense amounts of evil and suffering. In our conversation today, we'll delve further into the idea of soul-making to explain why suffering like death, damage, decay, and deprivation along with the limitation of God's hiddenness are necessar...

If God is so good and powerful, why is there so much evil in our world? Although you might retort, "It's because humanity fell into sin and we are all suffering the consequences." Such an answer merely pushes the question back one step, since God is the one who determined just how fallen our world would become once sin entered the picture. Why doesn't he allow more suffering or less? What are his...

When Joshua Anderson left home and attended a secular college, the environment bombarded him with skepticism and criticism of Christianity.  He internalized the general attitude manifested on campus from professors, students, and text books to such a degree that he began doubting his faith.  He fell into a two year period of existential despair as he desperately read book after book trying to find...

I love hearing people's stories--especially people of faith. In this episode you'll get to know Bob Jones, a professor at the Atlanta Bible College. He's equally adept teaching chemistry or physics as he is Old Testament or Systematic Theology. Now in his seventies, Jones looks back on his life to see how God led him through it all, even in the darkest of times. —— Links —— To get in touch with Bo...

Although powerful preaching, serving the poor, and missionary work often take the lime light in Christian ministry, the truth is that home groups, churches, and especially denominations will fall to pieces without competent and consistent administrators. The job isn't glitzy or glamorous and it is often beset with equal parts of tedium, stress, and failure, but without it nothing gets done--or at...

We’re delving into a topic rife with controversy, polarization, and intense emotion.  We’re asking the question, how should bible-based Christians respond to the Black Lives Matter movement.  No doubt, some of you will answer that we should all be out marching in full support while others think BLM is itself racist and should be resisted.  Of course, between these two ex...

Last December the Coronavirus pandemic began spreading from Wuhan, China across the world. As of today, globally we know of approximately 30 million cases across 188 countries and territories resulting in 941,000 deaths and 20.3 million who have recovered. The United States has the most cases with 6.7 million infected (roughly 2% of the population) and nearly 200,000 deaths (a mortality rate of al...

Today, we've got three more texts to look at in our selection of unitarian Bible translations. Unlike last time where we focused on Christologically interesting passages, today, we'll examine Luke 23.43, John 7.53-8.11, and 1 Thessalonians 1.3 to look at a punctuation issue, a textual issue, and a grammatical issue. By the end of this episode we hope you'll have a firmer grasp on the differences b...

Last time we reviewed six unitarian Bible translations , covering some basic information about where each came from and their overall strategy for translation. Today, we're going to analyze how they translate three key texts, including Philippians 2.6, John 1.1-3, and John 8.58. Our goal is to measure these translations against what the Greek says as well as noting significant variations from main...

In our last episode, I recommended some mainstream Christian Bible translations, but I would remiss if I didn’t also review some important unitarian Bible translations.  Although often overlooked, these versions are important because they have the opposite bias when it comes to passages commonly offered as proof texts for the Trinity.  Also, I asked Dr. Jerry Wierwille to join me today, sinc...

This is now our last episode in this 24 part class on How We Got the Bible .  Today after a quick review and an appeal to learn the biblical languages, I’ll recommend a number of Bible translations.  Although I’m hesitant to do this, so many have written in asking for it that I would be negligent to avoid making some recommendations in this last episode.  Additionally, we’ll cove...

This is our fifth and final example of bias in translation. After this episode, we’ll have one more to conclude our class on How We Got the Bible .  Today our focus is God’s spirit.  Should it have an uppercase ‘S’ or a lowercase ‘s?’  Should pronouns referring back to spirit be masculine (like “he”) or neuter (like “it”)?  Is the spirit...

Did Jesus claim to be “The Great I AM” in John 8.58?  If not, what was he saying?  In this episode we examine the alleged parallel passage in Exodus where God reveals his name to Moses at the burning bush.  Next, we’ll explore texts with the same Greek construction that Jesus used in an effort to sniff out bias.  In the end we’ll see there are three viable possibilities for...