Happy Reformation Day!

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, "Repent" he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

With these opening words of the Ninety Five Thesis, Martin Luther launched an attack on the Roman Catholic teaching on indulgences and began to lay the foundations for what would soon become the Protestant Church. On this day, we celebrate the faithless of God to his Church as shown through men like Martin Luther and others throughout the history of the Church who were dedicated to the proper understanding and clear teaching of the infallible Word of God.

Today we, as the Church, are living in the light of the truths of the Gospel that Luther, Calvin, and the rest of the Reformers unveiled. As God works out his plan for the expansion of his Kingdom in time and space, we look back with inexpressible gratitude to such key points in that plan. As we continue in the purposes of God, may we constantly rediscover the truths of God's grace in the person and work of Jesus Christ. As we do this, we will undoubtedly live out Luther's call to a life of repentance. As the vision of Christ is made clearer to each one of us, it will not fail to realign our thinking, to adjust our beliefs, and bring us to a place of repentance. From this place of repentance we will truly be able to say that we are "always reforming."

Evangelicals Out of the Box

Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to post recently. It's certainly not for lack of subjects to write on, that's for certain. As soon as I catch a break from some schoolwork and other activities, I'll have a multitude of issues to put some thoughts down about.

I just wanted to put up a link to an interview with James K.A. Smith on the NPR show Speaking of Faith. Jamie Smith has become one of my favorite writers/bloggers and I believe that he has many important things for the evangelical community (especially those in the Reformed branches) to hear. Be sure to listen to some of the Behind the Scenes audio, especially the clip on An Intellectual and Spiritual Faith. It's always exciting to come across a Reformed Christian who also considers himself charismatic. Jamie's explanation of how these two traditions complement each other is spectacular. It is truly encouraging to hear a Reformed intellectual who not only recognizes the importance of manifestations of the Holy Spirit, but who also considers them to be an integral part of life and worship.

Grieve Not the Spirit

Are we doing the Holy Spirit justice in the Church today? This is a broad question, no doubt, and certainly one that needs clarification. However, it seems that a question of this breadth might be needed to even find a starting point in the discussion, considering the general neglect of the third person of the Trinity that is to be found throughout much of the Church. While all of orthodox Christianity acknowledges the deity of the Holy Spirit and His equality with the rest of the Godhead, it seems that His role in the place of Christian doctrine and in the life of the individual believer gets a lot less airtime. As Vincent Barcote, assistant professor of theology at Wheaton College puts it, we need to seek an answer to what it means to be "fully Trinitarian as opposed to functionally 'binitarian.'" In his article, What is to be done in Theology, Barcote discusses this subject as well as other ways that he sees theology as needing to develop.

Surely, Barcote is right. There are countless ways in which we speak of Christ: His incarnation, propitiation, atonement, intercession, and countless other doctrines. Similarly we speak of the Father regarding His election, reprobation, grace, wrath, and on and on. Certainly, these few truths that we have been shown about the first two members of the Trinity do not even begin to scratch the surface of the true depths of God's character and action. There is more to be discovered through study and there is much, much more we will never begin to comprehend. Why is it then that so often we seem satisfied to relegate the Holy Spirit to the role of simply being our conscious? While His role in revealing sin and guiding the believer in truth is an essential aspect of His role, surely we would say that he is doing even more than this! Without in any way minimizing or devaluing the Spirit's role in the application of redemption and the progress of sanctification, can't we begin to unearth and develop in our thinking and practice the countless other ways in which He operates in the life of the believer and the progress of His Church?

It would seem that a large part of this development would have to involve a better acknowledgment and understanding of the experiential aspect of the Holy Spirit's ministry.
While the purposes of the Father and the work of the Son tend to lend themselves more easily to systematic understanding (without in any way being confined to this type of classification) there is an aspect of the Holy Spirit's ministry that refuses to be put into these categories. Times of revival such as the Great Awakening and some of the strange yet wonderful manifestations that accompanied them attest to this aspect. I must confess, coming from a church that would be identified by most as more charismatic than reformed, this element of experiencing the Spirit is one that has always accompanied any discussion of doctrine or teaching, and I see it as being no only beneficial, but crucial to a proper understanding of life in the Church.

I would like to invite anyone interested to comment on these thoughts, as well as expound upon or critique them. Please be sure and take a few minutes to read the Barcote article. He has much to say on this subject as well as others and there in much in the way further discussion and provocation.

Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition

James K.A. Smith's latest effort, Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, has finally been released and I am patiently (i.e. checking my mail hourly) awaiting my copy from Amazon. Smith has co-edited this work with James H. Olthuis as a follow-up to his previous release, Inrtoducing Radical Orthodoxy, which outlines the thought and objectives of Radical Orthodoxy as put forth by John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward among others. RO is a movement that originated in the UK, primarily at Cambridge, and is being exported with the help of scholars like Smith who are doing research in the area of postmodernity and its relation to Christianity. I won't embarrass myself by attempting any sort of detailed explanation of the tenets of RO (having read Introducing I found it to be very thorough, enlightening, and occasionally confusing). In broad terms, it is an attempt to do away with the myth of a secular arena that excludes the religious. It is critical of Modernity, seeing it as having played a primary role in bringing about the sacred/secular divide. In response, it seeks to rediscover an ontological understanding of the Christian faith that provides a basis for the development of all aspects of society. It focuses heavily on the incarnational and sacramental aspects of the faith and lends much focus to reapplying the thought of Augsutine and Aquinas. While Smith provides an excellent outline (as well as a comprehensive bibliography) of the movement, he also offers some critiques. Primarily, he seeks to supplement the basic teachings of RO with principles from Dutch Reformed theology in the heritage of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyewerd.

I would encourage anyone interested to pick up a copy of Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition (or Introducing Radical Orthodoxy for that matter) and offer any thoughts or comments that they might have. I can't wait to delve deeper into waters of RO and especially to see the accounts that some of the preeminent Reformed theologians have to offer.

Augustine and the Problem of Evil

I decided to kill two birds with one stone and post some selections from a Philosophy of Religion essay that I just turned in this afternoon. Considering the fact that it was it was finished around 3 a.m. on Sunday night, I didn't think it turned out that bad. But then again, I'll have to wait and see my professor has to say about that.

For many people, the idea of the existence of God, at least in Judaic-Christian sense, seems altogether impossible and perhaps even unfavorable. While this is true for a multitude of reasons, there is one that seems to eclipse all the rest. That reason is the existence of evil. For those who would bring this objection, the idea that a God who is both all-good and all-powerful would allow evil to come into the world that he supposedly created is totally unthinkable...

These are powerful objections. They cannot simply be brushed aside by those who do believe in a loving God as begrudging protests by those who simply refuse to see the plain truth. On the contrary, these questions must be taken seriously even by those who whole-heartedly believe in God. Even those of this position can and are often times troubled by the seriousness and difficulty of such objections. It was for this very reason that St. Augustine, the most influential and ingenious philosopher theologian in the history of the Church, did not neglect this issue, but faced it head on, putting forth the classic Christian understanding of evil...

"What, after all, is anything we call evil except the privation of good?" (Augustine 19). In other words, evil is not to be understood as a separate entity from good. Evil and good are not two separate powers that somehow balance each other out. Instead, evil can only be said to exist in so far as good exists. Goodness is required for existence...

When a person is sick and then recovers, or is restored to health, it is not to be said that the sickness has left their body and gone somewhere else. The sickness does not exist in and of itself somewhere apart from the body. Instead, the body, which was at the time of sickness deprived of its wholeness or rightness, is restored to its former good disposition. However, it is important to note that while evil cannot exist apart from something that is good, good can exist all on its own. Augustine forged this idea in the attempt to defend against concepts of good and evil that would pit the two against each other equal powers...

While, again, the concept [evil as depreciationon] provides an excellent basis for understanding how evil can exist in the first place, most people would want to assert that there is a very strong aspect of reality about evil that Augustine fails to account for. This thought is expressed by William Edgar in his book, The Face of Truth. As he put it, "this view was an advance over the popular idea at the time of evil as a powerful force, nearly equal to God. It relativized evil, making it something negative, without substance, which notion has a grain of truth in it. But Augustine borrowed too heavily from Plato and his theory of ideas and shadows" (Edgar 105). Augustine certainly cannot be accused of ignoring this concern altogether, but his attempts to make evil understood in a more concrete sense do seem to come up lacking...

Books that Change Lives

I have found that there are certain books that really do change your life. These type of books come along every so often and are totally unique to each individual person. Some of them may be classics; the type of books that are acknowleged as standards in their particular genre. Others may be more obscure, holding a special meaning for the reader. Regardless of how well a book of this kind is known, they all have one thing in common. They cause the reader to look at the world in a totally different way then he or she did before they cracked open the pages. This kind of book is read at a time in the readers life when the message that it conveys is needed. It may not appear to be a life-altering message, but it communicates to the reader exactly what they need to hear at that time. These books change us, imparting some type of wisdom or understanding of the world that we would never be the same without. They shape our thinking in such a way that we can point to them as turning points in our lives. In thinking about this concept of the "life-changing book," I have thought of a few books that fit this description for myself:

Chosen By God - R.C. Sproul
Orthodoxy - G.K. Chesterton
On Christian Liberty - Martin Luther
God Will Bless You - Charles Spurgeon
Confessions - St. Augustine
The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper
Chronicles, Vol. 1 - Bob Dylan

Please feel free to leave a comment with a title or two (or a list if you like) that might fit the description for you.