Continuing our look at Timothy Ward’s book Words of Life, I want to focus our attention words of Christ. Ward ties Christ’s words in with the idea of “fullness.” In his words, “Moreover, the ‘fullness’ of God, which God was pleased to have dwell in Christ, also included the words Christ spoke…The most likely implication [...]
Archive for August, 2009
The Word of God: Part 2
Posted in Scripture on August 31, 2009 | 2 Comments »
The Word of God
Posted in Scripture on August 29, 2009 | 3 Comments »
In this post, I begin to look through the new book Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God by Timothy Ward. Ward’s self-proclaimed task is:
I want to articulate, explain and defend what we are really saying when we proclaim, as we must, that the Bible is God’s Word. In particular, [...]
Review of Selderhuis’ John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life
Posted in Book Reviews, Calvin on August 27, 2009 | 9 Comments »
Herman J. Selderhuis. John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009).
I was fortunate enough to take a class with Professor Herman Selderhuis on the Reformation while in seminary. I remember it as a highlight because Prof Selderhuis forced his students to acquire an understanding of the Reformation from a deep existential and theological engagement with the primary literature. [...]
Spiritual Formation
Posted in Spiritual Formation on August 26, 2009 | 1 Comment »
For those of you interested, I was asked to speak about the spiritual formation conversation currently being had in evangelicalism and offer some thoughts about what it is seeking to accomplish. Click here to see the post over at Christians in Context
Righteousness: Covenant Faithfulness or Metaphysical Attribute?
Posted in Jonathan Edwards, Trinity on August 21, 2009 | 56 Comments »
Paul Helm, following Piper’s critique of Wright, suggests that God’s righteousness cannot be defined as covenant faithfulness (see post here). I want to think out loud a bit about Helm’s argumentation, and would love to hear your thoughts after reading his post and after reading my impressions here. First, Helm states,
I think we need to [...]
Praying for the Kingdom with Grace and Impatience
Posted in Prayer, Preaching on August 19, 2009 | 9 Comments »
Not long ago I preached on the Lord’s Prayer, actually just its first line: “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6.10). And I explored the question, “What is required of us to pray this?”
You can read a little of the sermon below, and I would be happy [...]
Simone Weil & Theology’s Invitation
Posted in Education, Theology on August 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I have not historically found myself at home in the writings of Christian mystics, so I don’t spend a great deal of time in them. However, I find Simone Weil’s description below quite beautiful – and very near the mark for how we might think about the theologian’s practice of “pushing all those who come near [...]
Divine Teaching: Part 3
Posted in Book Reviews on August 15, 2009 | 1 Comment »
McIntosh moves into the second part of his volume by grounding his theological endeavor in salvation. He maps the options by posing either the order of knowing or the order of being. He then offers his rationale for beginning with salvation:
Christians believe that the place where our way of knowing and God’s way of being most [...]
Jonathan Edwards and the Philosophy of History: Part 2
Posted in Book Reviews, Jonathan Edwards on August 13, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Picking up where we left off, I start the major section of the work, entitled simply “Time.” Zakai places Edwards in a day divided by biblical-centric evangelicals focusing their intellectual capacities on religious experience, while the world increased in scientific and philosophical imagination. Zakai offers some explanation:
One of the main reasons for the growing privatization [...]
Divine Teaching: Part Two
Posted in Book Reviews, Theology on August 10, 2009 | 3 Comments »
McIntosh continues on by addressing Christian belief. He states, “By now it should be abundantly clear, as I tried to warn you at the beginning of this book, how weak and hapless a thing theology really is in and of itself – apart, that is, from its divine source. And here will come the first [...]
A New Doctor, Pannenberg and Reconciliation
Posted in Uncategorized on August 7, 2009 | 16 Comments »
I am excited to announce that our very own Kent Eilers is now Dr. Kent Eilers! Kent flew over to Aberdeen for his viva and came out on the other side with an hours worth of minor corrections (mostly random footnoting stuff and accent marks). Kent finished his corrections as we watched the fifth Harry [...]
Rowan Williams on seeing the church’s future in the church’s past
Posted in Rowan Williams, Theology, Tradition on August 5, 2009 | 13 Comments »
I am working on a book that explores historical “retrieval” as a mode of theological reasoning, and I find Rowan Williams characteristically on the mark in his brief (but excellent) little book Why Study the Past: The Quest for the Historical Church (2005). I especially like the way he turns loose his doctrine of the church as the Body [...]
Conference: Theology and the Humanities
Posted in Uncategorized on August 4, 2009 | 3 Comments »
INITIUM SAPIENTIAE — THEOLOGY AND THE HUMANITIES
August 23rd-25th, 2009
King’s College, University of Aberdeen
A conference examining the place of Theology in relation to the Humanities Gathering scholars from North America and the United Kingdom, this conference will explore such questions as:
What is a realistic idea of the relationship of Theology to the Humanities in the modern [...]
Jonathan Edwards’ Philosophy of History
Posted in Book Reviews, History, Jonathan Edwards on August 3, 2009 | 9 Comments »
After reviewing Ben Quash’s volume addressing von Balthasar’s theology of history, I thought I would wade back over to my personal area of interest and take a look at Jonathan Edwards’ philosophy of history. Avihu Zakai’s volume, put out by Princeton Press (and mostly written at the Center of Theology Inquiry) is entitled: Jonathan Edwards’s [...]
