As the dust settles following last Monday’s initial United States Presidential debate, I took the opportunity yesterday to preach on the question of “What does it mean to tell the truth?” I suggested that for Christians telling the truth is inseparable from becoming truthful people, as we find ourselves caught up by the Spirit in the life of Jesus, who is the Truth. For this reason, the Christian tradition has held a special place for the martyrs. The martyrs are those who have borne witness to the truth at the cost of their lives. Although I didn’t explicitly make the connection, a member of the congregation observed that the sermon implicitly contrasted the richness of the faithful witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maximilian Kolbe with the poverty of the two presidential candidates. Continue reading The Truth Will Set You Free
Category Archives: Reflections
Calvin on “The Wonderful Exchange”
I’m hoping to return to my series on Lesslie Newbigin’s marks of the missional church in the near future, but in the meantime I thought I’d share an excerpt from John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion that I came across this morning. In the soaring quote that follows we see resonances with the theme of the “blessed” or “happy exchange” which Martin Luther developed in his famous tract, “The Freedom of a Christian.” In addition, there is also a distinct echoing of the famous Patristic saying affirmed by Irenaeus, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, among others, that “God became man in order that man might become God.” The apparent presence of the theme of theosis or deification in this passage lends credence to the recent attempt by Rowan Williams’ to read John Calvin as “The Last of the Greek Fathers.” Continue reading Calvin on “The Wonderful Exchange”
“What Would Bonhoeffer Do?”: Metaxas’s Misappropriation
When people discover that I have written a book on the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, they often ask me what I think of the popular biography written by Eric Metaxas. My standard answer runs something like this: “Well, Metaxas is certainly an engaging writer. However, he does seem to be in over his head when it comes to understanding the politics of the Church Struggle in Germany and the finer points of Bonhoeffer’s theology. That being said, he has done a great service for the church in helping to make Dietrich Bonhoeffer more widely known.” Usually, this is all the person is looking for. However, if I were to go into more depth I would comment, among other things, upon Metaxas’s failure to understand the centrality of Bonhoeffer’s peace ethic to his theology, his lack of engagement with Bonhoeffer’s prison letters, and his tendency to portray Bonhoeffer in the terms of right-wing American evangelicalism. Some recent public comments by Eric Metaxas have led me to believe that I have perhaps been far too generous in my assessment of Metaxas’s reading of Bonhoeffer up to this point. Continue reading “What Would Bonhoeffer Do?”: Metaxas’s Misappropriation
Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – 3. A Declericalized Theology
[This post is the fourth in a series of posts on what could be called “Newbigin’s marks of the missional church” as outlined in his book Foolishness to the Greeks. The previous posts can be found here: introduction, mark #1, mark #2.]
“The missionary encounter with our culture for which I am pleading,” Newbigin writes, “will require the energetic fostering of a declericalized, lay theology.”1 Upon returning to England after years of missionary service in India, Newbigin observed that theology in the modern West had become largely isolated from the lives and concerns of average Christian men and women. Continue reading Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – 3. A Declericalized Theology
- Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (W.B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 142. ↩
Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – 2. A Christian Doctrine of Freedom
Having considered in the previous post Newbigin’s insistence that the church must recover its eschatological imagination, we now turn to the second of what could be called his seven marks of the missional church — a true Christian doctrine of freedom. Two sets of concerns fall under this heading for Newbigin. The first set deals with matters that pertain to the relationship between church and state, while the second touches upon issues related to anthropology.1 Continue reading Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – 2. A Christian Doctrine of Freedom
- Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1986), 137-141. ↩
Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – 1. Eschatology
The previous post set the stage for a series of posts on Lesslie Newbigin’s understanding, as presented in Foolishness to the Greeks, of the seven essential conditions that must be recovered if there is to be a genuine missionary encounter between the church and the modern West. The first of these essential conditions, Newbigin asserts, “must be the recovery and firm grasp of a true doctrine of the last things, of eschatology.”1 Continue reading Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – 1. Eschatology
- Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1986), 134. ↩