Why Many Orthodox Christians Believe Tim Mackie Should Be Avoided
For millions, The Bible Project’s animated videos have served as an engaging entry point into Scripture. Yet beneath the beautiful visuals and narrative flair, a growing chorus of confessional pastors, theologians, and discernment ministries warn that co-founder Tim Mackie repeatedly contradicts historic Christian orthodoxy on issues that are not secondary. The following quotations come directly from Mackie’s own sermons, podcasts, and published interviews.
1. Penal Substitutionary Atonement
Traditional orthodoxy (Westminster Confession, 1689 Baptist Confession, Council of Trent, etc.) has always taught that Christ bore the wrath of God in the place of sinners, satisfying divine justice.
Mackie explicitly rejects this:
“Penal substitution is a theory that was read into the Bible later… The idea that God is pouring out wrath on Jesus to satisfy some kind of legal requirement in God’s own character—that’s not what the Bible teaches.”
— Tim Mackie, “Exploring My Strange Bible” podcast, 2021
He prefers a “restorative” or “participatory” model of the atonement that omits the judicial, wrath-bearing aspect almost entirely.
2. Eternal Conscious Torment
The historic creeds and the vast majority of evangelical confessions affirm everlasting conscious punishment for the finally impenitent.
Mackie openly leans toward annihilationism/conditional immortality:
“I think the biblical picture is that the wicked are ultimately destroyed… The Bible does not teach that God keeps people alive forever just to torment them endlessly.”
— Tim Mackie on the “Almost Heretical” podcast, 2019
3. Biblical Inerrancy
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978), signed by nearly 300 evangelical leaders, remains the gold standard for most conservative denominations.
Mackie dismisses strict inerrancy as a modern invention:
“The idea that the Bible has to be factually inerrant in every historical or scientific detail is a 19th-century thing… It’s not how the biblical authors thought about their own texts.”
— Tim Mackie, various Bible Project classroom lectures and interviews
4. Sexuality and Same-Sex Relationships
While Mackie does not publicly affirm same-sex marriage, he refuses to give the clear, traditional answer that historic Christianity has always given.
When asked directly about homosexual practice:
“I don’t think it’s helpful to just say ‘the Bible is clear’ and shut the conversation down… We need to create space for people to wrestle with this.”
— Tim Mackie, sermon at Door of Hope church, 2018
He has also said that the church should stop using “theological power to decide who’s in and who’s out” on these questions—language that many orthodox pastors regard as a deliberate softening of Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, and 2,000 years of church teaching.
5. The Nature of God’s Foreknowledge and Sovereignty
Mackie has repeatedly praised Greg Boyd’s open theism and refused to distance himself from it:
“I think Greg Boyd’s work on the crucifixion and divine foreknowledge is some of the most helpful stuff out there.”
— Tim Mackie, multiple public endorsements
Open theism denies that God exhaustively knows the future free choices of His creatures—a position condemned as heterodox by the Evangelical Theological Society and every major Reformed and Baptist confession.
A Safer Path
These are not minor quirks of interpretation. Taken together, they strike at the heart of the gospel as confessed by Augustine, Luther, Calvin, the Puritans, and the evangelical church for centuries.
If you want teachers who unapologetically uphold penal substitution, the inerrancy of Scripture, eternal conscious punishment, exhaustive divine foreknowledge, and the Bible’s unambiguous teaching on sexuality, you will be far better served by proven, battle-tested voices such as:
- John MacArthur
- R.C. Sproul
- Charles Spurgeon
- J.C. Ryle
- Martyn Lloyd-Jones
- Sinclair Ferguson
- Voddie Baucham
These men spent lifetimes expounding the same Scriptures with clarity, reverence, and fidelity to the historic creeds—without ever needing to apologize for, reframe, or quietly walk away from the hard edges of biblical doctrine.
Tim Mackie’s gifts in storytelling and visual explanation are undeniable, but when core doctrines of the faith are at stake, Christians must choose teachers who will not lead them—even unintentionally—into the fog of neo-orthodoxy or progressive evangelicalism. For the health of your soul and the purity of the church, it is wiser to sidestep The Bible Project’s primary theologian and sit instead under the ministry of those who have already stood the test of time.
