Upcoming Event: After Dispensationalism

On Thursday, March 30, 2023, the Biblical and Theological Studies department of Providence Theological Seminary will be hosting a panel discussion of the forthcoming book After Dispensationalism: Reading the Bible for the End of the World written by Brian Irwin of Knox College, Toronto along with my colleague Tim Perry. If you’re a Christian in North America there’s a very good chance that you’ve either personally been influenced by dispensationalism or know someone who has. Guests are welcome to join the event in person or on Zoom. You can register for this free event and find out more information here.

Calvin on Faith and Hope

“For if faith, as has been said above, is a sure persuasion of the truth of God – that it can neither lie to us, nor deceive us, nor become void – then those who have grasped this certainty assuredly expect the time to come when God will fulfill his promises, which they are persuaded cannot but be true.  Accordingly, in brief, hope is nothing else than the expectation of those things which faith has believed to have been truly promised by God.  Continue reading Calvin on Faith and Hope

A Sermon for Black History Month

Below is a recording of a sermon I preached this past Sunday at Prairie Presbyterian Church.  My text was John 3:1-21.  As I was working on the sermon, I began to notice interesting connections between the story of Nicodemus’s encounter with Jesus and our current cultural struggles surrounding race in North America.  The fact that I’ve been reading Jonathan Tran’s insightful book, Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism, is also surely a contributing factor.  The first part of the sermon is sure to aggravate cultural warriors on the left and the right, but I do think the second half gestures towards a more distinctive Christian approach to this set of problems. Continue reading A Sermon for Black History Month

Root on Transformation vs. Change

“Modernity,” according to Root, “is the constant process of speeding things up.”1  Under the accelerating forces of modernity, human beings and communities are constantly scrambling to keep up with the rapid rate of change, leading to increasing levels of anxiety and depression.  Root illuminatingly contrasts change with transformation: Continue reading Root on Transformation vs. Change

  1. Andrew Root, The Church in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time against the Speed of Modern Life (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2021), 14.

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