Archive for the ‘Evangelicalism’ Category
Hello Friday, my name is Links
Something I Liked
Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink) is a genius. This profile gives interesting insight.
Can you become a millionare easily. no.
Something I Sort of Agree With But is Worth Reading
7 Kinds of Pastors to Run From.
Something About The Election That was Very Cool (I Don’t Hate Obama or Nader or Palin or Anyone Else–Be Calm)
Marketing Lessons from the election
Something
Ted Haggard. Sigh
Something That Looks Cool
Check all these amazing examples of packaging.
Something Probably A Little Over Dramatic.
This. Then this.
Leave a Comment On Any of This. God Bless See You Next Week.
Pastor? Scholar? Why Choose?
Athanasius, Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Wesley, Edwards—men whose enduring legacies have shaped the landscape of contemporary theological thought. Their reflection was deep, their intellect profound, their passion remarkable, and their influence vast. And these great thinkers not only impacted the intellectuals of their day, but were followed and admired by the laity as well. What was it about these men that established them as such significant theologians? What made them so effective in sparking revival, bolstering faith, and reforming the Church?
Though diverse in their theologies, all of these men shared a common and significant mark of distinction—they were churchmen. They were bishops and preachers, pastors and founders of denominations, shepherd of souls. Though not all of them were formally pastors in the sense we understand today, their social, theological, and intellectual life was inseparably woven into the fabric of parish ministry. They were practitioners as much as theologians. Living among the people for whom they wrote and thought, the press and weight of parish life drove the questions that their theology sought to answer. And they were loved by their people because they resided among them, and because the questions that panged the heart of their parishioners, panged also their own. They were churchmen first, and theologians second, and the former gave birth to the latter.
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Erasmus and Post-Conservativism
I recently read Luther’s Bondage of the Will. For those that don’t know, Luther’s Bondage of the Will was written against Erasmus’ Freedom of the Will. In the historical/theological introduction, editors Packer and Johnston do a fine job of establishing the context for Luther’s work. Erasmus, arguably the finest scholar of his day, was a humanist who had his own grievances against the church. Early on, as the Reformation was just getting started, it was supposed that Erasmus and Luther would join forces. Such was not to be. Erasmus, though a Greek scholar of unquestionable renown, was not a theologian. In fact, he found the scholastic theology of his day to be distracting and largely irrelevant to the life of the average Christian. He was a pragmatist and a moralist and largely uninterested in questions of theology. Erasmus was after reform, but he had no ability to see the connection between ecclesial reform and theological reform. For Erasmus, one of the main problems with the church was that it gave too much attention to theology in the first place. Far better was the simple life of faith, of love and good deeds toward God and neighbor. And if he was annoyed with the theology of the scholastic theologians, he was horrified by Luther’s theology.
For Erasmus, Luther’s appropriation of Augustine’s doctrine of sin and grace seemed to render moral reform and good works an impossibility. Far better, Erasmus argues in his Freedom to simply not ask questions about such matters. Luther responds with a resounding chastisement, chiding Erasmus for being unwilling to deal with theological issues and for too quickly claiming “mystery!” about what God had clearly revealed in his word.
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When God Goes to Church
I’m getting ready to write a book on the church. It’s gone through countless edits in my head and has now escalated into an almost non-stop conversation between me and . . . well, I’m not sure who I’m talking to… hopefully you and not just myself.
I’m thinking of calling the book, When God Goes to Church! I don’t have a subtitle yet–maybe I don’t need one. I think at the end of the day, my message is this: we have to get back to vertical church. Somewhere along the line, well meaning people have hijacked the church. Some in the name of organizational excellence, some because they want to see more people coming to Christ, some because they feel the church has become too stale to actually reach this so-called postmodern audience, and some because of countless other motivations, good and bad, that I can’t think of right now.
Bottom line: at Harvest Bible Chapel we now have almost 20 years invested in the notion that church should not, better, must not be an audience-centered effort. NO MORE AUDIENCE-CENTERED CHURCH, unless of course we return to the biblical priority of God Himself being the audience. My thesis is that God simply does not attend most churches in America. He won’t work or manifest His presence in places where His Word is apologized for, His Son is polished and marketed, and His power is not sought in prayer or even anticipated. God does not attend churches where the gospel is watered down to a self-help pep talk about felt needs. God does not attend churches where Jesus’ crucified life is not proclaimed as the only hope for a fallen humanity. God does not attend churches where Bibles are not brought, and the gospel is reduced to a formula that a person can recite in 60 seconds. God does not attend churches where words, biblical words, like holiness, repentance, and Lordship are scrubbed from the vocabulary in an effort to . . . ? You may be able to get people to attend churches like that but God doesn’t show up much at all.
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John Calvin: He Just Keeps Going and Going…
I just finished reading Calvin’s Institutes. Or I’m done with it, anyway. I confess to skimming a few hundred of the 1500+ pages. His civil government stuff was at the end of the book and I was already growing weary, and he just kept going on and on about the Eucharist debates. I agree–enough already!
It is impossible to review a book of such significance (and length) in a mere post, but one thing in particular stood out; Calvin is thoroughly evangelical. Or perhaps more aptly stated, evangelicals are thoroughly Calvinistic. The title of this post wasn’t as much about the length of Calvin’s corpus (which is indeed vast), but about the enduring nature of his legacy. When it comes to the doctrine of Scripture, soteriology, authority of the Church, the relationship between faith and reason, the sacraments, etc., it is clear Calvin’s legacy lives on in contemporary evangelicalism. The debt we owe to him, for both his strengths and weaknesses, is immense.
In my mind, Luther was the more colorful theologian–more provocative, more original and daring. But Luther is also harder to codify and systematize. In many respects, this makes him harder to appropriate and less useful. Calvin, on the other hand, is less speculative, more pragmatic, and more delineating. Consequently, a great deal of Calvin’s system has been adopted wholesale by later generations of evangelicals in a way that Luther’s has not.
