By Rod Benson Brandi Carlile’s Returning to Myself, her first solo release in four years, was recently named Song of the Year at the 2026 Americana Honors & Awards. It is not explicitly a Christian song, yet my friend and Baptist theologian Steve Harmon’s description of it as a work of “theological anthropology” is perceptive. In …
Does the Bible teach total depravity?
Vittore Carpaccio, "Saint Augustine in His Study," 1507. A biblical reconsideration of the views of Augustine and Calvin By Rod Benson I’ve been reading Rutger Bregman’s 2019 New York Times bestseller, Humankind: A Hopeful History, and it has me questioning my views about human nature and Christian anthropology. Of course, this is a good thing because engagement …
The display of God’s splendour
A sermon by Rod Benson Isaiah 61:1-3 Many years ago, a Bible teacher from the Plymouth Brethren movement named Harold Paisley, the brother of the fiery Irish Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Ian Paisley, said to me that in any congregation or gathering of God’s people there will be some who are struggling with grief, or …
