Because He Loved Me — A Night at the Mission — A Christian mission worker holds a dying young man in an alley in Orlando, Florida. First-person testimony of compassion, mercy, and the practical meaning of faith.
Biblical Criticism and Textual Traditions — How the Bible Came to Be — A two-part exchange from soc.religion.christian (Aug 1989): a scholarly introduction to textual, literary, and canonical criticism of the Bible, followed by a detailed technical response on Greek NT textual traditions and the Westcott-Hort controversy.
Catholics and Protestants on Justification — A Scholarly Comparison — A 1989 Usenet essay by the soc.religion.christian moderator analyzing the surprising convergence between Catholic and Protestant doctrine on justification, with direct quotations from the Council of Trent, the Baptist Faith and Message, and Luther.
Christianity and Islam — Towards a Better Understanding — A two-part interfaith study presenting the Islamic view of Jesus Christ for a Christian audience, drawing on Quranic accounts of Mary, the Virgin Birth, the Sonship question, the Trinity, and the Day of Judgment dialogue between God and Jesus. Written by Hameed Ahmed Mohammed of the University of Southwestern Louisiana and posted to soc.religion.christian in June 1991.
Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon — A Critical Review — A detailed scholarly review of a 1986 evangelical collection on Biblical inerrancy, hermeneutics, and canon formation, with the reviewer's own liberal-critical perspective appended.
Introduction to soc.religion.christian — A scholarly introduction to soc.religion.christian, one of the earliest moderated Christian discussion forums on the internet, active from the late 1980s through the early 1990s and notable for the theological range and quality of its participants.
Of the Holy Scripture — A Personal Reformed Confession — Michael Bushnell of the University of New Mexico posts the first chapter of a personal confession of faith to soc.religion.christian (May 1990): a Reformed theology of Scripture covering canon formation, the Apocrypha, Sola Scriptura, biblical translation, and the role of the Holy Spirit in interpretation.
On Purgatory — An Experiential Account — A Catholic woman at the University of Delaware explains purgatory not as doctrine but through a personal story of grief and growth — the experience of learning, after the fact, the full weight of one's past harm.
Original Sin and the Atonement — An Orthodox Account — A 1991 Usenet post presenting the Eastern Orthodox theological understanding of the Fall, original sin, and Christ's atonement, contrasted with the Augustinian and Anselmian Western views. Uses extensive patristic quotation.
The Athanasian Creed — The complete text of the Athanasian Creed (Quicunque Vult), one of the three great creeds of Western Christianity, in its traditional verse format. Posted to soc.religion.christian in 1991 in response to a request for the text.
The Rise of Critical Understanding — An essay tracing the history of critical method from ancient Greece through medieval Oxford to modern Biblical scholarship, arguing that the same analytical tools applied to Homer should be permitted for Scripture.
The Sonship of Jesus — A Study in Comparative Scripture — A comparative scriptural study of the concept of divine Sonship as applied to Jesus, examining both Quranic verses and New Testament Greek, arguing that the earliest Christian and Islamic understandings of Jesus were closer than centuries of doctrinal divergence suggest. Posted to soc.religion.christian in 1991 by Zafar Siddiqui.
The Three-Legged Stool — Scripture, Tradition, and Reason — A 1989 Usenet essay by the soc.religion.christian moderator examining the Anglican concept of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, questioning the metaphor's symmetry and arguing for the primacy of Scripture as living encounter rather than as authoritative text.
Tongues for Today — A Scriptural Investigation — A two-part investigation into glossolalia from an evangelical cessationist perspective, drawing on scripture, personal experience at Pentecostal churches, and careful argument about the purpose and ceasing of the gift of tongues.
Typology in Genesis — On Finding Meaning in Sacred Text — A 1989 Usenet essay by Michael Siemon on typological interpretation, using Genesis 3:15 as a case study to examine what it means to find meaning in Scripture, and why treating poetic associations as embedded divine prophecy is a category mistake.