Posts by Thaddeus Williams

Thaddeus Williams

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51�� Magazine
Stale Cheetos and What to Think When God Feels Distant
Excerpt from Revering God: How to Marvel at Your Maker
Thaddeus Williams — July 02, 2025
Imagine the existence of a master chef who makes infinitely satisfying food. He is a culinary god in the kitchen. Chicken divan crepes, lobster...
Think Biblically
Cultural Update: Why Don't We Feel We're Thriving?; The End of Rainbow Capitalism; Democratic Socialism
Scott Rae, Thaddeus Williams — June 27, 2025
This week, Scott is joined by Talbot professor Thaddeus Williams to discuss: Why Don’t We Feel We're Thriving? — Despite living in the most...
Think Biblically
Cultural Update: New Pope, Supreme Court Hears Case on Religious Charter Schools, New Successful Argument Against Transgenderism
Sean McDowell, Thaddeus Williams — May 09, 2025
This Week's Topics: A New Pope has been chosen by the Catholic Church The Supreme Court hears a case about government funding for a Catholic...
Think Biblically
Cultural Update: Maine Continues to Fight Over Transgender Athletes, Delaware Considering a Bill to Recognize First Cousin Marriage, Is America Becoming a Theocracy? A Bill That Challenges Religious Liberty
Sean McDowell, Thaddeus Williams — March 07, 2025
Maine Continues to Fight over Transgender Athletes A Bill to Recognise First Cousin Marriage Is America Becoming a Theocracy? A Bill in Washington...
The Good Book Blog
5 Marks of a Good Theologian
Thaddeus Williams — January 27, 2025
The following is an excerpt from Thaddeus Williams’ new book Revering God: How to Marvel at Your Maker (Zondervan Reflect), a systematic theology...
Think Biblically
Revering God
with Thaddeus Williams
Sean McDowell, Scott Rae, Thaddeus Williams — October 01, 2024
Why is it often difficult to find pleasure and joy in God? If the chief end of man is to know and enjoy God, why do so many of us fall short? In...
Think Biblically
Cultural Update: Kanye's "God of Me"; AI Resurrections; Florida's DEI Departures
Sean McDowell, Thaddeus Williams — March 22, 2024
This week, Sean and guest co-host Thaddeus Williams discuss: Kanye West's Controversial Statements on Faith : Kanye West, now known as Ye,...
Think Biblically
Don't Follow Your Heart??
with Thaddeus Williams
Scott Rae, Thaddeus Williams — January 04, 2024
What is humanity’s oldest lie? And how is it freshly emerging to steal the hearts and minds of a new generation? Our guest today, 51�� professor...
The Good Book Blog
Don’t Follow Your Heart: Boldly Breaking the 10 Commandments of Self-Worship
Thaddeus Williams — October 04, 2023
Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, the self-described “militant atheist,” opens his dated bestseller The God Delusion by laying his cards on the table. He doesn’t want you to believe in a god who is “a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak.” Neither do I.
Talbot Magazine
Thinking Biblically 51�� Social Justice
How to tell the difference between real justice and its 21st century counterfeits.
Thaddeus Williams — June 16, 2021
If we take the Bible seriously then we should all care about justice. God does not suggest, he commands that we “Do justice and righteousness, and...
The Good Book Blog
Thinking Biblically 51�� Systemic Injustice
Thaddeus Williams — April 19, 2021
[The following is adapted from Thaddeus Williams’ Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth: 12 Questions Christians Should Ask 51�� Social...
Think Biblically
[Bonus Podcast] A Biblical Response to Social Justice
with Thaddeus Williams
Sean McDowell, Thaddeus Williams — September 15, 2020
How should Christians think about social justice? What is a Christian response to Critical Race Theory? In this video, Sean interviews 51��...
The Good Book Blog
Jesus Wasn't Biblically Illiterate (And We Shouldn't Be Either)
Thaddeus Williams — March 04, 2019
After decades of data gathering, the pollster George Gallup concluded, “Americans revere the Bible—but, by and large, they don't read it. And...
The Good Book Blog
Throwing Cheese to the Glory of God
The Spirituality of Everyday Life
Thaddeus Williams — February 25, 2019
Paul describes the Christian life as the process of “being transformed into the same image [of Christ] from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor....
The Good Book Blog
How then are you loved?
Rejoicing on the ‘Even As’ Gospel of John 17
Thaddeus Williams — February 18, 2019
Take the phrase—“You’re the first person I have ever told…” In two decades of ministry, I have had the privilege of hearing this phrase more than...
The Good Book Blog
Do We Need Another Reformation?
Thaddeus Williams — October 31, 2017
The 16th century church was in dire need of a Reformation. What about today, a half millennium later? Is the 21st century church due for another Reformation, a Re-Reformation? Professor Williams shares his thoughts ...
The Good Book Blog
Post-Postmodernism: Engaging the New Spirit of the Age with Clarity, Conviction, and Compassion
Thaddeus Williams — October 11, 2017
Fifteen years ago in Paris, I had a conversation with a young existentialist who said something as unflattering as it was memorable: “Whatever the world does the church does ten years later and worse.” My new friend was talking about Christian music, describing a decade lag factor, a slowness to recognize and adapt to cultural changes that, in his estimation, rendered the church musically irrelevant ...
The Good Book Blog
If Christ is not Raised, Your Work is Futile
Thaddeus Williams — May 03, 2017
In Paul’s famous words, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile …” (1 Corinthians 15:17). Can we say the same for work that Paul says about faith? Without the resurrection of Jesus do our earthly endeavors amount to nothing in the grand scheme of existence? As Darrell Cosden asks in The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, “Is there any real lasting or ‘eternal’ value in our work?” Cosden answers, “Our everyday work (whether paid or unpaid) actually matters and makes a difference—not just in the here and now, but also for eternity. Work, and the things that we produce through our work, can be transformed and carried over by God into heaven" ...
The Good Book Blog
Is Jesus Anti-Science?
Thaddeus Williams — April 23, 2017
The Bible insists that everything exists for Jesus. He is the Telos, the Goal, the Final Point where all lines converge. ‘But isn’t that such a strange and invisible conclusion? Doesn’t such a view make Christianity fundamentally anti-science?’
The Good Book Blog
The Empty Tomb Protest: The Subversive Truth of Easter
Thaddeus Williams — April 17, 2017
When we say “He is risen. He is risen indeed!” we are not merely stating a remarkable historical fact, not merely expressing our shared doctrine, not merely standing in line with a long tradition of hope. We are doing all of that. But we are doing more. We are joining the great protest chant against all the dehumanization, death, and decay of the present age and heralding, here and now, the subversive breaking in of the glorious age to come in the resurrected Jesus.
The Good Book Blog
The Multifaceted Cross: 6 Things to Celebrate this Friday (and Every Day)
Thaddeus Williams — April 14, 2017
What happened on Good Friday is so scandalous and profound that the Bible does not limit itself to a single explanation. Dutch theologian, Herman Bavinck, explains, “[T]he work of Christ is so multifaceted that it cannot be captured in a single word nor summarized in a single formula." “Multifaceted” is exactly the right word for the cross. It brings to mind the image of a giant deep-cut diamond, a unity with a multiple facets, each refracting rays off and through the other. Let’s take one lap around this flawless wonder and look at six things to celebrate this Friday and every day...
The Good Book Blog
Jesus Puts the Melody in Education
Thaddeus Williams — March 21, 2017
In our day, wherever it is found, the fruits of intellectual inquiry grow from the conviction that there is such a thing as truth out there to discover. Take an axe to the existence of truth and you no longer have education, you have propaganda. Ideologies that deny the very possibility of truth can be found in many (thankfully, not all) fields of education. In the quip of postmodern philosopher, Richard Rorty, truth is simply a matter of whatever your colleagues will let you get away with saying. With no truth to seek and discover, we are left with only social constructs to endlessly dream up and deconstruct. In the words of one lamenting Harvard graduate, “The freedom of our day is the freedom to devote ourselves to any values we please, on the mere condition that we do not believe them to be true." When the very idea of truth is considered so out-of-fashion, schools gradually turn from the pursuit of knowledge to the business of data transfer, indoctrination, and diploma-printing ...
The Good Book Blog
Christian Millennials and the Lure of Socialism, Part Two: How Biblical Concern for the Poor Can Turn to an Unbiblical Understanding of People
Thaddeus Williams — December 26, 2016
In Part 1 we examined how a biblical concern for the poor can be syncretistically mixed with socialist economic ideology in a way that undermines a biblical view of people and thereby hurts image-bearers of God. In Part 2 I clarify three specific bad ideas about people that have had very bad effects on people in hopes of breaking the spell that socialist ideologies increasingly hold on younger evangelicals ...
The Good Book Blog
Christian Millennials and the Lure of Socialism, Part One: How Biblical Concern for the Poor Can Turn to an Unbiblical Understanding of People
Thaddeus Williams — December 21, 2016
Over the last year, as the Republican and Democratic voters sparred within and between their respective parties over the best candidate to lead our country from the White House, socialism became one of several hot button issues in our national dialogue (or national shouting match). It was the first time in our nation’s history that a candidate identifying as a “democratic socialist” garnered so much popular support, particularly among the college age demographic. Of course, this is not the first time that young Americans have been captivated by socialist ideals. With the 1960s and 70s came the Port Huron Statement according to which “students must consciously build a base for their assault upon the loci of power,” and free market capitalism became a favorite “loci” to assault. Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, a scathing indictment of all things capitalist, became something like inerrant sacred scripture to many budding ideologues. In the new millennium the socialist ethos has experienced new iterations as the Occupy Wall Street movement, the 99%, and, most recently, the widespread support for Bernie Sanders on university campuses around the country. Although Sanders did not procure the nomination of the Democratic Party, he succeeded in revealing a deep affinity with socialism among the millennial generation that will hold an increasing share of policy-shaping power over the decades to come ...
The Good Book Blog
What Does Jerusalem Have to Do with Washington D.C.?: Rethinking the Church’s Role in Law and Public Policy
Thaddeus Williams — April 25, 2016
The summer of 2014 gave us the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby on the side of religious liberty. The summer of 2015 witnessed another culturally controversial 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which carries potentially ominous implications for religious liberty (particularly according to the dissents of Justices Roberts and Alito). Meanwhile, some legal scholars are forecasting a massive public policy paradigm shift in coming years over another hotly contested issue—the right to life. Fordham University’s Charles Camosy, as a case-in-point, sees such a dramatic shift as not only possible but indeed inevitable ...