I’m in the midst of reviewing some resources for a course I’m going to be offering on the Church Fathers in the winter and came across this quote from the introduction to Robert Wilken’s wonderful book The Spirit of Early Christian Thought that resonates with Robyn’s and Don’s comments on my previous post: Continue reading The Spirit of Early Christian Thought
Tag Archives: theology
The End of an Era
I recently wrapped up my final course at Tyndale Seminary. It was nice to have a smaller group (pictured above) for this last time through Systematic Theology I. Continue reading The End of an Era
Theology as Thinking After
Last night, I kicked off my winter semester “Systematic Theology I” course at Tyndale Seminary. It seems like a quite wonderful group of students called together from a wide cross-section of locales, denominational backgrounds, and life experiences. Some of the ground I covered last night reminded me of the inaugural post I wrote for this blog a little over a year ago. Since it was posted before things really got rolling on the blog and because it might be of interest to my newest batch of students, I thought I’d re-post a large excerpt from that first post. The original post was entitled, “Beginning in the Middle.”
Continue reading Theology as Thinking After
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. ↩
Bonhoeffer on the Danger of Theology
In the winter of 1936, Dietrich Bonhoeffer delivered a series of lectures on the theme of pastoral care to the seminarians under his direction at the underground seminary at Finkenwalde. Bonhoeffer concluded this course of lectures by reflecting on the need for pastoral care for pastoral counselors. Interestingly, Bonhoeffer suggests that “another source of trouble for the serious pastor is his own theology” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 14, ed. H.G. Barker and M.S. Brocker (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 590). Continue reading Bonhoeffer on the Danger of Theology
Beginning in the Middle
Theological reflection always begins in the middle. After all, theological reflection is the work of a people who find themselves on pilgrimage (in via) as a result of being claimed by the address of the Triune God. There is no getting back to square one – to some primal location – for we are historical creatures who cannot escape our positioning in a good, but fallen world that started long before we arrived and, God willing, continue for long after we’ve died. Furthermore, if God is truly God, then God is not simply there to be discovered like helium or hydrogen, mites or mandrills. If theological reflection is to be truly theological it can only be, as Karl Barth famously maintained, a “thinking after” (Nachdenken in German) the reality of God’s self-revelation in the person of Christ. Continue reading Beginning in the Middle