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I am honored to have been asked to speak this morning on the topic of ecumenism from a Reformed perspective shaped by my work as a church historian and by my engagement with the work of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. At the heart of the ecumenical movement, as Reformed people see it, is …
Continue reading “A Reformed Perspective on the Ecumenical Movement”
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Book Review: Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture of America. By Randall Balmer. Oxford University Press, 256 pp., $19.95. The sign said: “Modern American Culture Museum of the Oxford University Press: Tonight’s Feature: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture of America.” Once safely under the overhang of the museum’s …
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Will the world later in this century perceive Christianity as the global religion par excellence? I am now less inclined to think so than in 1970. We Christians may have to reconcile ourselves to a growing misperception that Christianity is but one among the many living religions; worse yet, we may see our commitment to …
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The emergence of theologies of liberation — whether black, feminist or Latin American — is probably the most significant theological development of recent years. At the heart of liberation theology is the attempt fundamentally to rethink theology from the standpoint of the poor and oppressed. The central theological foundation of this approach is the thesis …
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Book Review: Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation, by William C. Placher. Westminster: John Knox, 178 pp., $13.95. William C. Placher, professor of philosophy and religion at Wabash College in Indiana, offers what he modestly describes as “an extended preface to contemporary discussions about theological method.” if you are wary of method …
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There is an awareness of God that is not tangible or measurable, as, for example, a piece of wood. God is in a class by Himself.
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Civil law issued by government is the law agreed to or initiated by the people. But the law of God is given man from God, and not from man.
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The commandments are for men and not God. The greatest is to love God and one’s neighbor.
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Humans are favored above all animals in at least one way, that of having a free will, the ability to reason and decide. He can say yes or no to whatever he encounters. He can choose evil or God.
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We know that we are disobedient and that drives us further away from God all too often. But God, in Jesus, came with a promise of forgiveness. That is the promise contained in His word.
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Who is Jesus? Better than that is Who is Jesus Christ? For in Him all our eternal hopes lie.
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Are you perhaps a true man ? Really ? The question comes from our failure to be what we should be. Jesus was the man God wanted men to be.
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No one today knows God from having seen Him. The Son of God had seen Him before coming to earth as Jesus. He reveals God to us.
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Who is the King ? Who is our King ? These are eternally important questions which are answered by oiur choosing our King. The King wants subjects chosen through free will and love.
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Our beliefs and actions are recorded in heaven and will be there in judgment, unless we have a Mediator with God. Through obedience our mediator pleads our case before God and obtains a clean record for us.
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There are differences of opinion about the third member of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost. He has not gone away. He is alive and active. How?
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Why does everyone have a Bible ? Why is it translated into hundreds of languages ? Brunner explains how the Bible is the word of God.
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Despair can be a terrible affliction when it has grown to be constantly in our thoughts. The greatest of all despair is death. Is it merely death, or can natural death also be hope? Jesus answers loud and clear.
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Is it enough to say “by faith alone”? Or is it that true faith in God makes one ever active doing what God has stated as the best for us?
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Conversion is a right about face, a daily growing in the right direction.
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“If any man is in Christ he is a new creature, old things have passed away, behold all things are become new.” He is regenerated a new person.
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Masterlessness is slavery. Freedom is only half the story. The other half is what are we free for, and thus what is it that is chosen.
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Without help from outside the world, the future of present life is dismal. Prayer to the living God has meaning, and true prayer from a believer will be heard.
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Prayer is indeed daring and humiliating at the same time. Yet God is our Father and waits to hear from each of us.
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Loneliness can occur in a crowd. Loneliness is solitude of the soul. It is within one’s self. Other people can relieve that kind of loneliness to an extent, but it is God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost, who give full relief and internal peace.
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The church is important for it is the army of Christ. He bought and paid for it with His own blood on the Cross. The duty is to spread the gospel, and to preserve it.
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What do I make of the Sacraments? Many Christians have let go of them observing the Lord’s Supper, for example.. However, sacraments are important.
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God is not domesticated and spoken familiarly about as, for example, about one’s cat or dog. The fact is that we know nothing about God except what He has revealed. In heaven we will know God, but until then we must rely on His own Words.
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Through the simple act of baptism God’s claims us as His own. We then become children of God. Is it that simple ? Yes, for those who believe.
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When one of us dies he or she is no longer present. That is not so for Jesus. We have a commemoration of Him that helps us to remember Him and to praise Him before God. It is the Lord’s Supper.
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The Christian faith is distinguished from all other faiths in that it knows that God is coming. The assurance of future salvation and eternal completion is the Christian faith.
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We are not prophets and cannot predict the future except for one certainty; death of this fleshly body. The Bible however tells us with certainty of Heaven for those who are believers.
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You and I will be judged at the last judgment. We can depend on it.
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Our task is to live in this faith, to be joyful, and to live now in love which is the inner meaning of eternal life.
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When we look about us, and at ourselves, we should recognize a Creator, that all we behold is creation, for man has never done anything so great. If the creator and creation are denied, or taken away, then all else fails.
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God did not plan and create the world and then walk away from it. He has a plan which we need to learn, for then we can see how we fit into it.
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One reading of a newspaper and it is clear that the world is bedeviled by many things from accidents to murder. Much of it can be attributed to evil.
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Though born of our parents, each of us comes from the thought and will of God. We are rooted in eternity. When we turn away from those roots life becomes meaningless.
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As war and peace may depend upon the stroke of the pen in the hands of one government official, so your life depends upon the answer to the question, “what is Man ?”
Book Chapter
Among men, by their evaluations there are bad men, and good men, and that most are in between those extremes. But the Bible says that “There are none who do good”. So where is the goodness of men?
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But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8, NRSV). Pentecostals’ spirituality and practice revolve around their understanding of the infilling of the Holy Spirit, which empowers Christian …
Book Chapter
The Bible can nourish us only if it is understood and personally appropriated as God’s own Word. But this requires an interpreter to translate the great, difficult, strange words of the Bible into the familiar language of daily life. That is the purpose of this little book.
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John Reeve, the 17th-century leader of the British sect known as the Muggletonians, strongly opposed the idea of an earthly millennial kingdom. He was convinced that Jesus had no interest in returning to earth to establish a political administration. After all, he asked, didn’t Jesus suffer during his last stay on earth? Why would he …
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A recent California poll designed to ascertain the general population’s views on the possibility of nuclear war revealed that 85 per cent thought they personally would experience a nuclear war. Most of them expected to die as a result. If that is what the average American foresees, then it is hardly surprising that a deadly, …
Continue reading “Jesus’ Resurrection and the Search for Peace and Justice”
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(ENTIRE BOOK) A straightforward exposition of the basic concepts of traditional Christian faith, divided into thirty-five brief chapters.
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Are “evangelical” and “theologically conservative” synonymous? Are all evangelical theologians conservative? Most observers–both inside and outside the large and diverse subculture of North American evangelical Christianity–would probably answer yes. Evidence is growing, however, that some theologians who insist on wearing the label “evangelical” (or cannot escape it even when they try) are shedding theological conservatism. …
Continue reading “Postconservative Evangelicals Greet the Postmodern Age”
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Historically, the Christianized West believed that humanity held a privileged position in the world.[1] The world was, either by design or by happenstance, for humans to use for their own needs and interests. However, during the 1960’s, concern over the degradation of the environment raised questions about the truthfulness behind the traditional view. Rachel Carson’s …
Continue reading “Should Wildlife Trapping Have a Place in a Christian Environmental Ethic?”
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Then and now have specific autobiographical meanings in what follows. “Then” means the period of my personal development before I became immersed in the meeting with and study of the ecumenical councils and leading ancient consensual exegetes. “Now” means what has happened since that meeting became a serious matter for me in the mid-“70s. “Consensual …
Continue reading “Then and Now: The Recovery of Patristic Wisdom”
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The television star I am thinking of wears expensive-looking, light-colored suits with dark ties, and faces a studio audience from behind a modern wooden desk flanked by plastic plants. A mural of skyscrapers is painted on the wall behind him. He has a boyish, handsome face, thick hair with an unemployed curl in front, and …
