“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
Tag Archives: faith
In Him All Things Hold Together: Integrating Knowledge, Pursuing Vocation, Building up the Body
I am serving as the Project Lead for a Science for Seminaries Seed Grant that Providence Theological Seminary has been awarded by AAAS-DoSER. As part of the grant, we are hosting a Faith and Science Symposium on Saturday, March 19. Due to uncertainties surrounding the pandemic, we have been forced to host the event entirely online. While we will miss gathering in person, this does have two distinct advantages. First, because we are meeting online, we have been able to assemble a strong international lineup of speakers. Second, because the Symposium is online, you can participate from wherever in the world you happen to be located. See the poster below and visit prov.ca/scienceandfaith for more information.
A Christian Statement on Science for Pandemic Times
I’ve added my name to the list of signatories to this timely statement published by the people at Biologos.
Salvation by Allegiance Alone – Chapter 3
This is the fourth in a series of posts engaging with Matthew Bates’s Salvation by Allegiance Alone. The earlier posts can be read here: first, second, third.
In chapter 3, “Jesus Proclaims the Gospel,” Bates turns to confronting a longstanding problem in modern Protestant Christianity: the reconciliation of the Letters of Paul with the Gospels.1 The writings of Paul have long been a haven for certain forms of Lutheranism and conservative evangelicalism espousing the centrality of a particular understanding of justification by faith. While the Gospels have often been the playground of some liberal forms of Christianity attempting to advance a social agenda based upon ethical principles. The irony is that in their readings of their respective canons-within-a-canon both groups have lost sight of the animating center of the canon as a whole, as well as Paul’s Letters and the Gospels in particular, namely the crucified and living Lord Jesus Christ. Continue reading Salvation by Allegiance Alone – Chapter 3
- Interestingly, Bonhoeffer felt the need to make a similar move in his famous treatise Discipleship. Although, Bonhoeffer began with the Synoptic Gospels before turning his attention to Paul. ↩
Salvation by Allegiance Alone – Chapter 1
This is the second in a series of posts engaging with Matthew Bates’s Salvation by Allegiance Alone. The inaugural post can be read here.
The first chapter of Salvation by Allegiance Alone, entitled “Faith Is Not” is Bates’s attempt to clean the deck of the good ship of the church by scraping off the various layers of mold and sediment that have accumulated over the centuries on top of the planks of the gospel, faith, and the Christian life. Continue reading Salvation by Allegiance Alone – Chapter 1
Salvation By Allegiance Alone
In the days ahead, I’m hoping to post a series of reflections on the chapters of Matthew W. Bates’s book Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King. When I first heard of Bates’s book about a year ago, I knew that it was a title I would have to read. His main thesis seems to overlap in some significant ways with some of my own thinking emerging from my reflection upon the themes of discipleship, apocalyptic theology, and the pistis Iesou Christou (faith in/faithfulness of Jesus Christ) debate, alongside of my dissertation work on the theologies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas. Furthermore, the title of the book resonates in some interesting ways with a sermon I preached that will be appearing in a forthcoming book. In that sermon, based on Romans 1:1-7, I suggest that the Gospel can be understood as “the Neverending Story of King Jesus.” Continue reading Salvation By Allegiance Alone