What we have seen over the past several weeks is a dynamic interplay between four realities: worldview, theology, culture, and cultus. Worldview and theology affect one another and constitute religion; culture and cultus affect one another as liturgy. But this kind of mutual formation occurs at a macro level as well, between religion and liturgy,… Continue Reading
Everyone has an implicit worldview—a fundamental orientation of the heart expressed in assumptions about reality, and most people have an explicit theology—conscious beliefs expressed in stated propositions. The combination of worldview and theology is what constitutes a religion. Expressed in this way, all people have a religion, whether they acknowledge it or not. Even atheists… Continue Reading
Broadly speaking, theology is how we intentionally answer the questions James Sire provided (see last week’s post) that form the assumptions at the core of our worldview. What we believe about the nature of reality, the purpose and meaning of life, the basis of right and wrong, and most importantly God form our theology. Theology… Continue Reading
Security companies enjoy a kind of odd gratitude for criminals. After all, without the threat of crime, security companies would have little in the way of business. It’s thanks to the attempted and successful acts of crime that security companies develop their walls, fences, locks, and alarms. Christians, too, should have a similar kind of… Continue Reading
A critic recently approached me about our hymnal and rebuked us for (among other things) including hymns written by Catholics in our hymnal. It is no secret that we include Catholic and Orthodox hymn texts. For example, we include the very ancient Te Deum (“Holy God, We Praise Thy Name”). We include works by or attributed to… Continue Reading
This is the sixth post in this series (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5). The whole of the first five parts could be summarized in the final paragraph of the last post: In sum, the Christian religion is subservient to Christ’s authority. Christ gave that authority to his apostles and prophets, and they sealed… Continue Reading
Kevin T. Bauder There’s a lot of talk about gluttony out there. I mean a lot. Billy Graham wrote a Q&A about it. Joe McKeever rebukes it. John Piper tells people how to conquer it. Rachel Held Evans has compared it to homosexuality, and Kevin DeYoung has weighed in for the Gospel Coalition. Besides articles… Continue Reading
Kevin T. Bauder The Texas morning was already warm and getting warmer. A friend had stopped by just to say hello, and I asked him how he intended to spend what promised to be a hot forenoon. He replied, “I’m going to go to the hardware and buy some ice cream.” Looking at him quizzically… Continue Reading
Kevin T. Bauder Imagine a man who has, somewhere deep within his cranium, a pair of dice. Every time he has to make a decision, a spasm in his brain casts these dice. How the dice roll is what determines the choice. In other words, every decision is pure, random chance. Would it make sense… Continue Reading
Kevin T. Bauder Genesis 1:28 is sometimes called the cultural mandate: “And God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” The context… Continue Reading
Jeff Straub As I sat and listened to the talk, I could well have been in the early years of the twentieth century listening to an old liberal like George Burman Foster or Shailer Mathews, noted modernists of the University of Chicago. Though Foster and Mathews have long been dead, the ethos of their theological… Continue Reading
Kevin T. Bauder Some professing Christians believe that baptism is a sufficient condition of the forgiveness of sins. Others believe that baptism, while not a sufficient condition of forgiveness, is nevertheless a necessary condition. Roman Catholicism belongs to the former category; the Stone-Campbell (the Churches of Christ and the Christian Churches) movement to the latter.… Continue Reading
Kevin T. Bauder Our understanding of Christ connects directly to the gospel. Gospel means good news. The goodness of the good news stands out only against the backdrop of the bad news, and the bad news is that we are sinners who stand under the just condemnation of the eternal God. The good news is… Continue Reading
Jeff Straub This year marks the 500th anniversary of Luther’s 95 theses. Last week I reflected on a recent trip I made to Germany and Switzerland to see the Luther and Calvin sites. I was fairly sympathetic to Luther in particular and to the Reformation in general. One reader, pushing back a bit, wondered if… Continue Reading
Jon Pratt One of our local sportswriters described Sergio Garcia’s recent victory at the Masters golf tournament as a triumph of fate. Similar attributions to blind chance frequently find their way into sports columns. Why did the Chicago Cubs finally win the World Series? Baseball gods. Or Michael Phelps winning multiple gold medals at age… Continue Reading
I still confess the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The Scriptures teach repeatedly that no man is or can be saved by his works. This matter is central in importance to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul teaches that the Gospel is that Christ died for our sins and rose again in accordance with… Continue Reading
Over the past year or so I have been asked repeatedly to express an opinion about the current Trinitarian debates. I have hesitated to speak for several reasons. First, the Holy Trinity is a mystery that I do not fully understand. Second, what we can understand (however relatively and partially)—that is to say, what is… Continue Reading
Every pastor and Christian leader feels a certain pressure to be relevant. We do not want Christianity to slip away into an oblivion. We do not want the church to go “backward” during our watch. This impulse has led many to the conclusion that Christianity must “keep up with the times.” One of the criticisms… Continue Reading
First Things, founded in 1990 by the late Richard John Neuhaus, has become the flagship neo-conservative journal of opinion. Its mission has been to argue for a “religiously informed” public philosophy. Not surprisingly, the journal has brought together conservative writers from the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions. One of the evangelicals who writes for First… Continue Reading
I want to discuss Limited Atonement (Definite Atonement, Particular Redemption—I choose to use the traditional terminology). At the moment, I am not concerned with the question of whether Limited Atonement is true. What I am concerned with is the way that some Calvinists argue for it. Before we can even discuss the argument, however, we… Continue Reading