Category: Spirituality

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Historical Theology Spirituality

Wilken on Historical Theology

“The path to theological maturity leads necessarily through the study of the Christian past, and this requires a kind of spiritual and intellectual apprenticeship.  Before we become masters we must become disciples.  From the great thinkers of Christian history, we learn how to use the language of faith, to understand the inner logic of theological ideas, to discern the relation between seemingly disparate concepts, to discover what is central and what peripheral, and to love God above all things.  Before we learn to speak on our own we must allow others to form our words and guide our thoughts.  Historical theology is an exercise in humility, for we discover that theology is as much a matter of receiving as it is of constructing, that it has to do with the heart as well as with the intellect, with character as well as with doctrines, with love as well as with understanding.”

— Robert Louis Wilken

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Spirituality

Spurgeon On Wisdom

“Wisdom is, I suppose, the right use of knowledge.  To know is not to be wise.  Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it.  There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool.  But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.” — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Categories
Biblical Studies Spirituality Theological Hermeneutics

Hauerwas on the Parable of the Sower

The shallow character of many strategies for renewal [of the Church] is revealed just to the extent that the resulting churches cannot understand how Christians might face persecutions.  This is particularly a problem in America, where Christians cannot imagine how being a Christian might put them in tension with the American way of life.  This is as true for Christians on the left as it is for Christians on the right.  Both mistakenly assume, often in quite similar ways, that freedom is a necessary condition for discipleship.

— Stanley Hauerwas, Commentary on Matthew 13.

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Spirituality

Pete Rollins Denies the Resurrection

How sad.  Or is it?  Go to Everyday Liturgy to find out.  Great stuff!

Categories
Early Christianity Historical Theology History Spirituality

Perpetua IV: Questions

Here are some questions for discussion about the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas.

Question I: What were the nature of Perpetua’s dreams / visions and what do they say about her spiritual beliefs and practices?

Related sub-questions:

Were Perpetua’s dreams / visions given to her by the Holy Spirit, were they stress-induced psychological manifestations, are they literary devices, or all or none of the above?

What messages would the record of Perpetua’s dreams / visions have communicated to third-century readers?

Can we infer from Perpetua’s reliance on dreams and visions that she was part of a Montanist or proto-Montanist movement?

Question II: What, if anything, can we infer about Perpetua’s understanding of the afterlife from her vision about her deceased younger brother (and, presumably, the understanding of the afterlife in the Christian community she had joined)?

Question III: Should we take Perpetua today as a role model?

Related sub-questions:

What should we make today of Perpetua’s spirituality of dreams and visions?

What should we make today of the theology implicit in Perpetua’s dreams / visions, particularly concerning the afterlife?

Should we be eager, as Perpetua and Felicitas were, for martyrdom?

Can you think of any contemporary analogues to Perpetua’s story that might edify the North American missional church and/or appeal to people who are indifferent to the Gospel?

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Law and Policy Spirituality

Watching History

I watched the innaguration of President Obama in the law school auditorium. The room was packed. Some people wept. One woman lifted her hands in the air when Rick Warren prayed (though a few people boo’ed Warren). The entire room stood when the oath of office was administered. People clapped and cheered as though they were present at the ceremony. There was a mood in the room, not only of hope, but also of relief.

I think those of us from middle and upper-middle class conservative church backgrounds just don’t fathom the depth of disenfranchisement felt by so many people during the Bush years. Even more than ever, it seemed clear to me today that our alignment with Republican politics has been profoundly unfaithful to our calling as the Church. Yes, there are things our conscience as the Church requires us to speak clearly about. I think, I hope, that we’re learning how to do that with true independence and humility.

I feel proud and grateful to have been able to witness the first African-American President’s innaguration. I also feel proud and grateful to be among such an amazing group of colleagues and students. And I feel energized to keep about the work of faith, truth, justice, renewal and hope in allegience to and by the grace of Jesus the Redeemer.

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Academic Spirituality

The Death of Education

Jamie Smith offers some thoughts on the instrumentalization of education.

As a graduate school prof, I respond: Oh, bladey bladey blah. There is a time in everyone’s career when one gets curmudgeonly. Yet, much of what he says is true — probably even more so in law schools, which are expressly offering career-centric training. But consider the alternative: an elitist system in which only the (male) children of the very rich get to spend a few years at Harvard or Yale (or Oxford, or the Imperial Court) before rejoining the real world while everyone else labors without any education at all?

I think the time we live in now is so unprecedented in terms of education that we take it for granted. I was reading Wired magazine this morning with my coffee, an article about a guy who was sequencing his own daughter’s genome to try and figure out her disability, and thinking: “how can the Church remain relevant in a world where a mid-level employee at a biotech company has enough knowledge and technology to sequence his own child’s genome? What could we say to a guy like that to convince him that Christianity is intellectually credible and satisfying and the Bible isn’t just a collection of ancient Hebrew fairy tales?”

Categories
Ecclesiology Spirituality Theology

Mouw on Atonement

Evangelical Protestants have rightly emphasized the ‘transactional’ dimensions of the atoning work of Christ over against the teaching of the theological liberals.  But in their own ways evangelicals too have operated with a restricted view of the redemptive ministry of Jesus.  They have placed limits on the scope and power of the Cross.  In boasting of a ‘full gospel’ they have often proclaimed a truncated Christianity.  In speaking of a blood that cleanses from all unrighteousness, they have consistently restricted the meaning of the word ‘all.’  They have seen the work of Christ as beinga totally transforming power only within individual lives.  They have not shown much interest in the work of the Lamb as it applies to the broad reaches of culture or the patterns of political life, nor as a power that heals the racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, and injustice that have for so long poisoned human relationships.  To such Christians we must insist that the Lamb is indeed the lamp of the City; just as we must insist to liberal Christians that the light which illuminates the City does indeed issue from the Lamb who shed his own blood as a ransom for sin.

Richard Mouw, When the Kings Come Marching In, p. 111-112.

Categories
Ecclesiology Spirituality Theology

Mouw on the Church and the Eternal City

“[T]he Christian community ought to function as a model of, a pointer to, what life will be like in the Eternal City of God.  The church must be, here and now, a place into which the peoples of the earth are being gathered for new life.”

— Richar Mouw, When the Kings Come Marching In:  Isaiah and the New Jerusalem.

Categories
Biblical Seminary Historical Theology Spirituality

Women and the Early Church

In our first World Christian History lecture, Prof. Thomas mentioned the importance of women in the early church.  No, this wasn’t revisionist neo-gnostic hooey — it was simply the role that widows and other women played in showing hospitality and spreading the gospel.  This made me think of my mom.  My mom is the paradigm of the “older woman” in Titus 2, who is able to teach younger people and set a good example.  She tirelessly teaches Bible study groups with other women, and many have come to Christ or been deepened in the faith by her mentoring.  She’ll stand with those first and second century women some day as true heroes of the faith.