Top Ten Blog Posts of 2017

I like lists, and year-end lists in particular are always fun. So here’s a list of my top ten most viewed blog posts from the past year. While I wasn’t surprised by what came out on top, I was pleased to see that many of the popular posts were about books and theology (which is what I prefer to write on), as opposed to pop culture commentary (which has its place).

1.  I Don’t Understand Christians Watching Game of Thrones. I don’t expect those who are strangers to the light to be bothered by the darkness. But for conservative Christians who care about marriage and immorality and decency in so many other areas, it is baffling that Game of Thrones gets a free pass.
2. One More Time on Game of Thrones. Only in a hyper-sexual, pornographic-saturated culture like ours could we think that graphic sex scenes are no big deal, or somehow offset by a brilliant screenplay.
3. Best Books of 2017. This is simply a list of the books (Christian and non-Christian, but all non-fiction) that I thought were the best in the past year.
4. Immutability and Reformed Theology. If God is whatever God has, as the traditional doctrine states—that is, if every attribute of God is identical with his essence—then it does not make sense to say that God can undergo a change of any kind (atemporal or temporal) that does not also imply a change in essence.
5. Theological Primer: The 144,000. The 144,000 are not an ethnic Jewish remnant, and certainly not an Anointed Class of saints who became Jehovah’s Witnesses before 1935. The 144,000 “sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel” (Rev. 7:4) represent the entire community of the redeemed.
6. Why I’m Not Allowing Laptops in My Seminary Class. I want people caught up in listening, not frantic about getting the perfect notes that lead to the perfect grade. And if worse comes to worse, and they end up moderately bored for an hour instead of infinitely distracted, that’s not bad either.
7. Seven Characteristics of Liberal Theology. Liberalism is both a tradition—coming out of the late-18th century Protestant attempt to reconfigure traditional Christian teaching in the light of modern knowledge and values—and a diverse, but recognizable approach to theology.
8. Protestant and Catholic: What’s the Difference? As we mark the 500th anniversary of Reformation, it’s important to be conversant with some of the main issues that legitimately divide Protestants and Catholics, lest we think all the theological hills have been laid low and all the dogmatic valleys made into a plain.
9. All That Is In God. However much we may want to champion God’s relatability and intimate compassion, deviating from classical theism is not the way to do it.
10. The Two Things We Must Say About the Transgender Debate. While we do not have patience for secular agendas, we must have patience for struggling people. We may be quick with rebuttals in the public square, but we must be quick with a listening ear in the neighbor’s kitchen.