Last week I received a mass email from Brian McLaren regarding his “Everything Must Change” tour, in which he lamented that “many if not most Christians in the US remain focused on” their “intramural religious debates” rather than the global crises confronting our world. He wrote: “In one Q & A session after another since [...]
Archive for April, 2009
not everything must change
Posted in Emergent Church, Theology on April 30, 2009 | 13 Comments »
the swine flu and you
Posted in Christian Worldview, Ethics on April 28, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to this, but Martin Luther offers some timely advice in his open letter, Whether One May Flee From a Deadly Plague. The Bubonic Plague came to Wittenberg in 1527, and Luther responded by closing the university and sending his students home.
When concerned citizens asked how Christians should act during [...]
an interesting analogy
Posted in Emergent Church, Theology on April 26, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Julie and I have spent the last four days in South Florida, speaking on Christian worldview at a women’s retreat (thanks, Tullian!), collecting sea shells on Sanibal Island, and watching drunk old people dance in the streets of Naples (are you sure this is the greatest generation?). The weird part is that I haven’t missed any of [...]
my centered-bounded set
Posted in Christian Worldview, Emergent Church, Theology, tagged bounded set, centered set on April 21, 2009 | 40 Comments »
I ran into it again last week, and I’m hearing it often enough now that I think it deserves a response. Many leaders are claiming that we who believe in the importance of the inerrancy of Scripture, the virgin birth, and the need to believe in Jesus are suffering from bounded set thinking. Our problem [...]
Machen on faith and knowledge
Posted in Emergent Church, Theology on April 16, 2009 | 18 Comments »
This morning I was reading J. Gresham Machen’s book, What Is Faith? (1925), and I found his remarks on our need to know in order to believe especially relevant to a recurring discussion on this blog. The fact that Machen’s old words could be addressed to any number of emergent leaders reminds me that our [...]
unfashionable is in
Posted in Christian Worldview, Theology, book review on April 15, 2009 | 16 Comments »
Given the cover story of last week’s Newsweek, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America,” we Americans who believe in Jesus can expect to fall increasingly out of step with our culture. Life was somewhat different in the 1950’s, when “under God” was added to the pledge of allegiance and “in God we trust” was [...]
DeYoung does something
Posted in book review, tagged God's will, Kevin DeYoung on April 13, 2009 | 49 Comments »
I am a big fan of Kevin DeYoung and his book, Why We’re Not Emergent, but I was initially disappointed when I received his new book on the will of God, Just Do Something. It just seemed so small. But then I read it, and I realized that Kevin and the folks at Moody knew [...]
how the resurrection justifies us
Posted in Theology, book review on April 9, 2009 | 10 Comments »
Thank you all for your insights on how we are justified by Jesus’ resurrection. I don’t have much to add, except to point to I. Howard Marshall’s fine chapter on this topic in his recent book, Aspects of the Atonement (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster Press, 2007).
Marshall observes that the average Christian tends to think that [...]
another Easter thought
Posted in Theology on April 8, 2009 | 16 Comments »
This came up yesterday in class: Romans 4:25 says that Jesus was “raised for our justification” and 1 Corinthians 15:17 says that if Jesus is not raised then we are still in our sins. Paul seems to have more in mind here than the resurrection merely provides proof that Jesus is God or that his [...]
a thought for Sunday
Posted in Theology on April 6, 2009 | 8 Comments »
I just finished this RBC devotional last week, and though it isn’t quite ready for prime time, I thought that its content might provoke some thoughts in a sermon this Sunday, or at least give you something to preach against. Easter is the one Sunday I have never been able to preach, as most pastors don’t [...]
