Sitting along the South China Sea

Yesterday, I was sitting along the South China Sea and thinking about a book that I read earlier this year called The Promise of Trinitarian Theology and one of the passages was about the richness of God's being and how everything in turn because God is Trinity is different in life. We no longer can look at things the same.......

Thoughts on Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas

My thoughts? I think that he is brilliant! I've made myself read through Plato and other philosophers and it's downright fascinating how Thomas can quote from them and then in turn relate it to Christian theology and doctrine without blinking an eye. Aquinas is fascinating in many respects both as a philosopher himself and a theologian and it's hard to distinguish the two. So, should you read Thomas Aquinas?? The answer is yes!

Worship Wars

NT Wright on contemporary worship music.

Final Cut Pro X

Final Cut Pro X is the most awful software I've every used in my life! I've been a Final Cut Pro user since version 1 and before that I was a Premiere user on the Mac. I've never seen such a goof up piece of garbage! Sure you can edit with it and make sense out of your movie scenes/clips, but it's a far cry from being a professional app. Along with Final Cut Pro X Apple has discontinued Apple Color, which with all it's faults was a great program(along with Shake). So, which leaves me no option but returning to Adobe or Avid, because Final Cut Pro 7 is almost outdated as an editing app!


The bottom line is that most professionals have left Apple to the kids and iPhone junk! Apple in my mind has turned to less creative stuff and its materialistic junk. Creative professionals need a company that will stand behind them and Apple has turn out to be not that type of company. So bye, bye Apple!!

Back from Hong Kong

Hong Kong was lovely, but the people there are down right stinking rude. They will cut in front of you in a coffee line, make fun of your chinese, etc. Lovely city, but crappy people(character). Lovely country though of old and new.

Master of Puppets Mario Version

Super Mario version of Metallica's Master of Puppets.

Listen

Liturgical Theology-Simon Chan

"This kind of worship that gives worshipers an immediate "high" may not even be good for their spiritual development in the long term; what truly forms worshipers is regular church attendance in a church that practices normative liturgy." Simon Chan-Liturgical Theology  


I think this is an important quote, because many in the free church today seek an immediate high. They go to the extreme ends of the earth, to far cities, or drive for hours just to find that new high. We can never do that as Christians to have real sustained growth in holiness(sanctification). Hence, we need Word and Sacrament.

Working my way through Summa Theologica byThomas Aquinas

Working my way through Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas has been a joy. But I will say that it's not for the faint in heart, because the work is so stinken long. I'm saying that, because it might just take me a full year to read through it and on top of that you really need some knowledge of philosophical history and terms to really digest some of the stuff he is saying at times.

Predestination: John Calvin vs. Thomas Aquinas

More on the doctrine of Predestination and Thomas Aquinas from a interesting Catholic blog. I say interesting, because it looks like they were all once Reformed and now in the Catholic church.


Read. 

Summa Theologica and Predestination

I've been working my way through Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas and I found out for first hand that his doctrine of Predestination is much like Calvin's own. Calvin never invented it, but it's been part of Church and Church history. 


Here is a good post entitled Aquinas on Predestination at Helm's Deep. 

Reading, reading and more reading

I just completed reading Simon Chan's Liturgical Theology and all I can say again is wow! These Pentecostals of today are fascinating and so smart about theology. I can remember a day when there wasn't such a phrase "Pentecostal Scholar"....how things have changed!

Ken

Calvin on being a good minster of the Word of God and Scholarship

"None will ever be a good minister of the word of God, unless he is first of all a scholar." -- John Calvin

How My Mind Has Changed in This Decade: Part Two by Karl Barth

Read more....."The positive factor in the new development was this: in these years I had to learn that Christian doctrine, if it is to merit its name and if it is to build up the Christian church in the world as she must needs be built up. has to be exclusively and conclusively the doctrine of Jesus Christ -- of Jesus Christ as the living Word of God spoken to us men.....I should like to call it a christological concentration -- I have been led to a critical (in a better sense of the word) discussion of church tradition, and as well of the Reformers, and especially of Calvin." 

Hillsong United - Hosanna

Comparable to a hymn it's Hillsong United's song Hosanna. 

Double Predestination: The Elected Ones and the Crowd of the Condemned By Jürgen Moltmann

Here is an interesting essay by Jergen Moltmann commenting on Karl Barth and his reworking of Calvin's doctrine of Double Predestination. 

“The doctrine of election is the sum of the Gospel because of all words that can be said or heard it is the best: that God elects man; that God is for man too the One who loves in freedom,” said Karl Barth in § 32 of his Church Dogmatics (trans. is from Bromiley ed.). Why is this so? Because “God took upon himself the condemnation of sinful men with all consequences, and elected man to participate in his eternal glory (§ 33).” Is Barth teaching “double predestination?” Yes! But in a new dialectical form: God took the condemnation upon himself in order to embrace all in his election of grace. This is the new dialectical form of the old doctrine of “double predestination.” 

He goes on further and address what some say is Barth's Universalism. 

"Another question is whether universalism is the result of this reformulation. The answer is “No,” because we are witnesses of the Gospel not judges in the final judgment of God. Whether God will in the end embrace all with his transforming grace is His sake, ours is the witness of the Gospel to everybody."

Read more... 

Batman - Year One Animantion

If you haven't watched it yet, Batman-Year One is out on Animation by DC Animations and it's fabulous. It tells the story leading up to Dark Knight. 

A Moka Pot

My wife and I are going shopping today and one of the items that we are looking to purchase is a Moka Pot. The unit is found in most traditional italian homes and produces a coffee similar to espresso and not to far from a Turkish coffee.

My taste buds have changed more European in the last 4 years from living abroad, because I've been exposed to all the richness of the European products that make Singapore a former colony.

So cheers,

Ken

Was Calvin a Calvinist? Or, Did Calvin (or Anyone Else in the Early Modern Era) Plant the “TULIP”? Richard A. Muller

I've read most of this and will finish it up later today, but the ending of the article is tantalizing enough to read it more. 

"By way of conclusion, we return to the initial question, “Was Calvin a Calvinist?” The answer is certainly a negative. Calvin was not a “Calvinist” — but then again, neither were the “Calvinists.” They were all contributors to the Reformed tradition. The moral of the story, perhaps, is to recognize the common ground on which Calvin, the various Reformed confessions, and the so-called “Calvinists” of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries stand, and if you must, “gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” but don’t plant TULIP in your Reformed garden." 

Read more...

Ken

An Idiot Abroad

This is the most funniest show besides the Rev that I've watched in a long time.

Karl Pilkington who is the main travel host is one of the most lovable persons on the planet and yet he is has one of the most odd perceptions of life in the world....so funny! 


Ken

Spanish Wordproject with audio

Here is a great resource for those who speak spanish and english and want a parallel translation on the desktop for free.

Ken

Van Til and the Trinity

One of the things that I've written on Van Til is that he made the doctrine of the Trinity into a paradox instead of a mystery in his writings in his systematic theology. 


I wrote: 


"To me Cornelius made the Trinity out to be paradoxical instead of a mystery with the wording of it in his Introduction to Systematics which I read along with most of his other books. But with that said, I owe a lot to him and his writings. I just wish that he would of cleared this up or at least updated his Trinitarian theology. At least he could of explained himself more and I think we’d all be helped if he did."

Why I’m Not Anglican – Response

Read this..pretty cool response!

Reformed Theology in the Church of England by Lee Gatiss

Listen

Obedience

...Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did. 1 John 2:6


I had a guy tell me that I wasn't saved because I drink moderately a few times a week or on vacations every day. What I mean by moderation is 1 to 2 drinks, which is moderate both in alcohol and calories. 


Scripture forbids all sorts of drunkenness, but we don't find commandments against moderation. What we do find is that alcohol is blessing if used properly and that it brings joy to the heart. 


Ken


*That isn't my photo, because I found it on google search, but I do have that same bottle sitting by some of my german beer glasses. Calvinus as I remember was a good ale. 

Why I am a Protestant, Reformed, and Evangelical Christian by Dr Peter Jensen

The Right Reverend Dr. Peter F. Jensen is the Archbishop of Sydney, Australia and formerly Principal of Moore Theological College in Sydney


Listen

Grace

"We saw in the last chapter that, because death and corruption were gaining ever firmer hold on them, the human race was in process of destruction. Man, who was created in God's image and in his possession of reason reflected the very Word Himself, was disappearing, and the work of God was being undone. The law of death, which followed from the Transgression, prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape. The thing that was happening was in truth both monstrous and unfitting. It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption. It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil; and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits……. It was impossible, therefore, that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself." St. Athanasius

In Reformed theology I've heard it said many times that it would of been perfectly ok for God to leave mankind in their sin and not save them. So is that true? I've heard some outside Calvinism use such a statement in order to discredit Reformed theology in order to paint Calvin's God as a monster. 

So where is the truth in all of this? Well, I think that Athanasius sets forth perfectly what is found in Calvinism's preaching of the Gospel. Athanasius vivid painting of God's grace in the above passage is quite frankly beautiful. We in ourselves are undeserving of God love, but he has chosen through his grace to have mercy on his elect by sending his Son and through is sacrificial death, resurrection and the sending of his Spirit he is saving his people. Simply put. 

Question 30: Does God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery ?

Answer: God does not leave all men to perish in the estate of sin and misery,into which they fell by the breach of the first covenant, commonly called the covenant of works; but of his mere love and mercy delivers his elect out of it, and brings them into an estate of salvation by the second covenant,commonly called the covenant of grace. Westminster Larger Catechism

The Trinity: Why We Should Teach It By Frank D. Macchia

 "I went on to note that even the simplest expressions of the gospel imply the Trinity."


Read more...

Double Predestination, Anglicans and Karl Barth

"Another distinctively Reformed teaching that was important in the development of Anglicanism was the doctrine of double predestination.  This taught that God, from all eternity, predestined some people to eternal life (election) and predestined others to eternal damnation (reprobation)…….Though double predestination was a prominent belief in Anglicanism's formative years, the Articles of Religion are silent on this and in later generations the doctrine fell distinctly out of favor." Anglican Influences

I had to google that one and find it, because while reading the Irish Articles and comparing them to the later Articles it's apparent that the Anglican church changed it's position or have chosen to remain silent on double predestination. This seems to be the position throughout Reformed Christianity, some are double like Calvin and some aren't double like his contemporaries and later generations. 

Karl Barth on the other hand wasn't silent like the later Anglican Articles on his doctrine of election and his rejection of of an absolute decree. "In keeping with his Christo-centric methodology, Barth argues that to ascribe the salvation or damnation of humanity to an abstract and absolute decree is to make some part of God more final and definitive than God’s saving act in Jesus Christ. God’s absolute decree, if one may speak of such a thing, is God’s gracious decision to be “for” humanity in the person of Jesus Christ (Barth calls this God’s “Yes”). " The Theology of Karl Barth 

While retaining the resemblance of early Reformed tradition Barth rethinks and rewrites election."With the earlier Reformed tradition, Barth retains the notion of double predestination, but he makes Jesus simultaneously the object and subject of both divine election and reprobation: Jesus embodies God’s election of humanity and God’s rejection of human sin. He is the electing God and the elect man. As the electing God, Jesus elects all of humanity in himself. And thus, as the elected man, all who are “in Christ” are elect in him. Non-believers, it is said, have simply not realized or recognized their election in Christ." The Theology of Karl Barth 

Some though have charged Barth though with universalism with his rewriting of Calvin's doctrine of double predestination, but other scholars like Ben Myers says no. "He(David Congdon) draws extensively on Karl Barth’s theology in support of a universalist view of grace. Naturally we can try to press Barth’s theology in this direction if we wish. But we shouldn’t forget that Barth himself was always sharply critical of “universalism.” 

"For Barth, the grace of God is characterised by freedom. On the one hand, this means that we can never impose limits on the scope of grace; and on the other hand, it means that we can never impose a universalist “system” on grace. In either case, we would be compromising the freedom of grace—we would be presuming that we can define the exact scope of God’s liberality. So Barth’s theology of grace includes a dialectical protest: Barth protests both against a system of universalism and against a denial of universalism! The crucial point is that God’s grace is free grace: it is nothing other than God himself acting in freedom. And if God acts in freedom, then we can neither deny nor affirm the possibility of universal salvation." Why I am not a universalist 

Ok, there is a lot here that I found just on the web, but more to come as soon as I read more about Karl Barth and church history. 


Ken

XI. Of the Justification of Man

We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only, is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.

TOM WRIGHT THE SHAPE OF PAUL'S THEOLOGY Paul and the faithfulness of God 2011

This link is excellent, especially when Wright explains monotheism in trinitarian-pauline terms. 


Ken

Bultmann on What Schleiermacher Got Right and Wrong

Read

The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination

Read, quite interesting. 

Currently reading

Ancient Philosophy: A New History of Western Philosophy, Volume 1


I haven't been on here much, but I plan to be on here more. I am currently reading Philosophy and then moving on the early church fathers. 


Should be a fun end to the year and a fun beginning to the next. 


Ken :)

David Hare interviews Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams

Read here.......

Veli-Matti Karkkainen on Wolfhart Pannenberg

Small review that I wrote almost a few years ago. 

"No other theologian on the contemporary scene has labored so untiringly to establish the intellectual credibility of Christian theology, nor shown a wider intellectual breadth in dialogue not only with biblical, historical, and contemporary Christian views, but also with philosophy, science, history of religions, and cultural disciplines. This is in keeping with his advocacy of a coherent theology of truth. Everything is to be related to the whole." Page 124, Wolfhart Pannenberg: Trinity as "Public Theology".

That is one of the quotes that Veli-Matti Karkkainen makes about Systematic Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg in his book The Trinity and Global Perspectives. Being outside of America for the last 2+ years I've had the privilege of seeing the world with my own two eyes and have experience breaths of fresh air being in the new heartland of Christianity. Also with those privileges, I've been able and open enough to study European theologians and read some of the best Pentecostal theologians also.

Even though I am Reformed, Reformed theology and theology in general isn't confined to a certain group of individuals from California who act like small popes. Theology is never healthy in a vacuum. With that said, cessation isn't accepted by the majority of scholars around the world, but only in certain pockets.

To conclude, it's been a joy to work through Pentecostal theologian Veli-Matti's books.

Institutes of the Christian Religion Book 1

Some books aren't meant to be read fast and that goes for Calvin's work. No pastor should be pastoring without having the Institutes. Calvin packs so much in every well thought through sentence that is an invaluable resource to have when starting out in ministry. 

One thing that Calvin's Institutes isn't is a Systematic theology. You will have to go other places for that, but what is left in Calvin's work is a Spiritual theology that can be preached from with his examples both in history and the situations he encountered. 

Simply put through out Book 1 is the Reformer's God who is for us. We only know the Triune God in relation of what he did for us through the suffering, death, resurrection of his Son and the giving of the Spirit. He wasn't a God who died outside of us like sometimes developed in later Reformed theology, but he brought his elect with him. When Christ died, we died to sin, and when he rose for our justification, we also rose with him to newness of life. In other words......Union with Christ. 

So if you haven't read Calvin in a long time or maybe you have just read his work through what has been rehashed through American Reformed theology, then this is the time for you to get back to the Reformer's own thoughts on the Protestant Reformation.

Ken

Mind, Spirit, Soul and Body by N.T. Wright

‘Mind, Spirit, Soul and Body: All for One and One for All

Reflections on Paul’s Anthropology in his Complex Contexts’

By the Rt Revd Prof N. T. Wright

University of St Andrews

An exegete among philosophers! I don’t know whether that is more like a Daniel among the lions or like a bull in a china shop. We shall see.

When I was teaching in Oxford twenty years ago, I had a student who wanted to study Buddhism; so I sent her to Professor Gombrich for tutorials. After a week or two he asked her to compare the Buddhist view of the soul with the Christian view. She replied that she didn’t know what the Christian view was. He wrote me a sharp little letter, saying, in effect, ‘You’ve been teaching this young woman theology for a whole year and she doesn’t know what the soul is.’ My reply was straightforward: we had spent that first year studying the Old and New Testaments, and the question of the ‘soul’ simply hadn’t arisen.

Now of course that was a slightly polemical stance, but I still think it was justified. The problem is that there are a great many things which have become central topics of discussion in later Christian thought, sometimes from as early as the late second century, about which the New Testament says very little; but it is assumed that, since the topic appears important, the Bible must have a view of it, and that this view can contribute straightforwardly to the discussions that later thinkers, up to the present day, have wanted to have. The most striking example of this is the referent of the word ‘justification’: as Alister McGrath points out in his history of the doctrine, what the great tradition from Augustine onwards was referring to with that word is significantly different from what Paul was referring to when he used the word. That’s fine; we can use words how we like and, with that character in Alice in Wonderland, can pay them extra on Thursdays; but we must then be careful about importing back into our reading of scripture the new meanings which we have assigned to technical terms which, in the first century, simply didn’t carry those meanings. We should also pay attention to the question of whether the word may, in its original scriptural context, carry other meanings which we may simply be screening out.

Read more.....

Holiness and the Reformed Faith by Douglas Kelly

Listen....

The Pursuit of Holiness

I took some divergence from my other reading and started reading The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, which has been such a blessing. Jerry was at our church a few years back, but I was back home in the U.S at the time so my wife was the only one in my family to see him. So, this week I decided to read one of the books that she picked up, which has been sitting in my library since then.

I highly recommend this book.

Ken

I believe in the Communion of Saints by A.W. Tozer

"I believe in the communion of saints."-Apostles' Creed
THESE WORDS WERE WRITTEN into the creed about the middle of the fifth century.
It would be difficult if not altogether impossible for us at this late date to know exactly what was in the minds of the Church Fathers who introduced the words into the creed, but in the Book of Acts we have a description of the first Christian communion: "Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers."
Here is the original apostolic fellowship, the pattern after which every true Christian communion must be modelled.
The word "fellowship," in spite of its abuses, is still a beautiful and meaningful word. When rightly understood it means the same as the word "communion," that is, the act and condition of sharing together in some common blessing by numbers of persons. The communion of saints, then, means an intimate and loving sharing together of certain spiritual blessings by persons who are on an equal footing before the blessing in which they share. This fellowship must include every member of the Church of God from Pentecost to this present moment and on to the end of the age.
Now, before there can be communion there must be union. The sharers are one in a sense altogether above organization, nationality, race or denomination. That oneness is a divine thing, achieved by the Holy Spirit in the act of regeneration. Whoever is born of God is one with everyone else who is born of God. Just as gold is always gold, wherever and in whatever shape it is found, and every detached scrap of gold belongs to the true family and is composed of the same element, so every regenerate soul belongs to the universal Christian community and to the fellowship of the saints.
Every redeemed soul is born out of the same spiritual life as every other redeemed soul and partakes of the divine nature in exactly the same manner. Each one is thus made a member of the Christian community and a sharer in everything which that community enjoys. This is the true communion of saints. But to know this is not enough. If we would enter into the power of it we must exercise ourselves in this truth; we must practice thinking and praying with the thought that we are members of the Body of Christ and brothers to all the ransomed saints living and dead who have believed on Christ and acknowledged Him as Lord.

Read more....

Can hope be wrong? On the new universalism

I made myself read Rob Bell's book called Love Wins last week and it wasn't a good experience for me and all I could was to think of the Westminster Confession!! I don't think Rob Bell is a true Universalist, but I agree that he's a New Universalist. Bell has pointed questions that can lead the unlearned down that path of his New Universalism.


Here is a good article by James K. A. Smith.

Ken

Addition: Universalism again, as always(possibility), that's written in favor of Bell's book.

Institutes of the Christian Religion Audio

If your like me and like reading along with audio, than here is a treasure.

Ken

P.S. For any Calvinist, I think the Institutes should be read every year.

Who is this blogger

I'm Ken and from America living in South East Asia. I'm a part-time actor and in film. I have been in a few international commercials and have had a small role in one movie. Things I love, my wife, cooking, hiking, jogging, THEOLOGY, beer, traveling, Calvinism, Pentecostalism, and Michigan.

Rob Bell

I haven't read his book nor I will either, because it doesn't interest me. I do think that many Reformed jump on Bell before even reading his book and turned a mole hill into a mountain. I think there are better targets like Kenneth Copeland who has worse theology than Bell himself.

*Note: I read it, and it was like pulling my beard.

Bell comes clean

Richard Mou(Reformed), here

"I told the USA TODAY reporter that Rob Bell’s newly released Love Wins is a fine book and that I basically agree with his theology. I knew that the book was being widely criticized for having crossed the theological bridge from evangelical orthodoxy into universalism. Not true, I told the reporter. Rob Bell is calling us away from a stingy orthodoxy to a generous orthodoxy.

Let me say it clearly: I am not a universalist. I believe hell as a condition in the afterlife is real, and that it will be occupied. I think Rob believes that too. But he is a creative communicator who likes to prod, and even tease us a bit theologically. Suppose, he likes to say, we go up to someone and tell them that God loves them and sent Jesus to die for their sins. Accept Jesus right now, we say, because if ten minutes from now you die without accepting this offer God will punish you forever in the fires of hell. What kind of God are we presenting to the person? Suppose we told someone that their human father has a wonderful gift for them, offered out of love for them—and then we add that, by the way, if they reject the gift that same father will torment them as long as they live. What would we think of such a father? Good question, I think."

There's more to Calvinism....

If you are a part of the New Calvinism that has sprung up in America or if you have grown up in it you might want to read this, because I'm writing to you also. There is more to Calvinism than the White Horse Inn, debates over Federal Vision, criticizing, John Piper, and Rob Bell and that's just scratching the surface in American Reformed Theology, which historically occupies so little depth and substance.

Ken

Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume

If you have been wanting to read Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics and haven't, well here is a good upcoming abridged version of the dogmatics. It's only 976 pages, much the same size as Louis Berkhof's Systematic I would image, though I'm just comparing page numbers. 


Ken

Karl Barth

One thing when studying Karl Barth that needs to be pointed out is that one doesn't have to become a Barthian to learn from Karl Barth.


Ken

God Lets Loose Karl Bart

"Beware," warns Emerson, "when the great God lets loose a thinker in this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city and no man knows what is safe or where it will end.’’ Nothing less than conflagration appears to have broken out in the religious thought of Europe. Many incendiaries may be pointed to, but there is one whose torch seems to have burned more brightly and to have been applied more effectively than that of any of the others.
Five years ago one began to hear, at the tables of the student clubs and restaurants of Germany, the name of Karl Barth. A young theologian recently called from Switzerland had made an amazingly impressive debut at the University of Göttingen. His chair-- that of Reformed or Calvinistic theology-- was subsidized in part by American Presbyterians, and was not in itself sufficiently exalted to catch the eye of Lutheran Germany. This circumstance made only the more significant the number of students who soon crowded his lecture hall, and the number of students, professors and townspeople who filled and overflowed any church where he had been advertised to preach.


Read more...

THE HISTORIC HOPE OF THE CHURCH

"The question of the relationship of the Rapture to that of the Tribulation may be set in proper perspective if we first survey the history of prophetic interpretation. The hope of the Church throughout the early centuries was the second coming of Christ, not a pretribulation rapture. If the Blessed Hope is in fact a pretribulation rapture, then the Church has never known that hope through most of its history, for the idea of a pretribulation rapture did not appear in prophetic interpretation until the nineteenth century." 


Read more....

Throw out the damn tongue speakers!

Tumult reigned in the patio. One man stood on a chair, shouting, "Throw out the damn tongue speakers!" according to Bennett.


Some Renewal history here. 

Wind of Terror, Wind of Glory

"Our spirituality encourages us to proclaim our victories, but we lament in silence. We have room for a God who is active in our affairs. We even have room for a Satan who is active in our affairs. But we have little or no room for a God who seems indifferent to our suffering. Certainly, we have no room for a God who moves to afflict. But the Scriptures give us such a testimony."


Read more...

Space, Time, and Sacraments - N.T. Wright

Great series of messages on the Sacraments.


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Trinity Relationality Sex

“Now in the confession of the Trinity we hear the heartbeat of the Christian religion: every error results from, or upon deeper reflection is traceable to, a departure in the doctrine of the Trinity.”


Read more.....

On Pentecostal women (that is to say, ladies)

"Such women are the engine room of the church. To a great extent, even the formal power structures depend on their secret society, their prayers and prophecies and discerning of spirits. They exercise a tremendous social and theological power, even in churches where the official theology is repressive and the official power rests solely in the hands of men. All this is, as I said, explicit and transparent in Pentecostalism – but isn’t the same thing true in churches semper et ubique? "


Read more of this great article!

Let Your Sins Be Strong: A Letter From Luther to Melanchthon

Sorry for the spacing problem.

"If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but 
the true mercy.If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the 
true, not an imaginary sin.God does not save those who are only 
imaginary sinners.Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let 
your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the 
victor over sin, death, and the world.We will commit sins while we 
are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides.We, 
however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new 
heaven and a new earth where justice will reign.It suffices that 
through God's glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the 
sin of the world.No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to 
kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day.Do you think 
such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager 
sacrifice for our sins?Pray hard for you are quite a sinner."   

 Read more...
    

God Lets Loose Karl Barth

"Beware," warns Emerson, "when the great God lets loose a thinker in this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city and no man knows what is safe or where it will end.’’ Nothing less than conflagration appears to have broken out in the religious thought of Europe. Many incendiaries may be pointed to, but there is one whose torch seems to have burned more brightly and to have been applied more effectively than that of any of the others.

Five years ago one began to hear, at the tables of the student clubs and restaurants of Germany, the name of Karl Barth. A young theologian recently called from Switzerland had made an amazingly impressive debut at the University of Göttingen. His chair-- that of Reformed or Calvinistic theology-- was subsidized in part by American Presbyterians, and was not in itself sufficiently exalted to catch the eye of Lutheran Germany. This circumstance made only the more significant the number of students who soon crowded his lecture hall, and the number of students, professors and townspeople who filled and overflowed any church where he had been advertised to preach.

He was remembered by many as having been himself a student in Tübingen and Berlin little more than twelve years before. Even then he had been marked as a man of unusual, if not wholly conventional, vitality. Born in Basel, in 1886, he had returned at the end of his university career to be the minister of the church in the little town of Protestant Aargau, north of Lucerne; and there, during the war period, he had preached on Sunday mornings before the good peasant folk, to the antiphonal booming of guns in near-by Alsace. The sombre thought of guns and of the stricken and perplexed Europe, governed then by guns, gave him long hours in his study. He studied, dreamed and wrote, until, almost simultaneously with the armistice, was announced the publication of his commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans. It was this which elicited his call to Germany.....

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Why Calvin is so cool

This post is a little old, but it's pretty good.

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New Header

I just added a new header inspired by the Geek Squad. I don't know if I like it yet, but it may grow on me.

Ken

P.S. I leave it up for a week and them im changing it.

The Cosmopolitan Nature of Pentecostalism

"A third set of ideas, reflected in prosperity theology, represents a theological trajectory within a movement that constantly emphasizes life, blessing, and wholeness as emerging from ever increasing degrees of immersion into God’s presence. There is an ongoing debate within Pentecostal circles as to how best to think about prosperity, and Pentecostals who prioritize economic prosperity clearly push too far in one direction. "

"Part of Pentecostalism’s appeal in the global south, however, stems from its continuous message of human flourishing—that God is concerned with the material well being of the individual as much as with the spiritual well being, and that these are intimately related. Pentecostals largely do not dichotomize between healing of the body and healing of the soul nor do they push salvation into a distant future. Salvation concerns the healing of the human person, body and soul, in the present moment, which stands in continuity with future consummation. "

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On theology and friendship

.....Jürgen Moltmann has somewhere remarked: "We are not theologians because we are particularly religious; we are theologians because in the face of this world we miss God."


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Why Calvinist, Evangelical Calvinist?

Why Calvinism? I thought I would, briefly, share my road to self-identifying as an Evangelical Calvinist; my personal salvation history. I was born into a Conservative Baptist pastor’s home (not only was my dad a pastor, but a gifted Evangelist). I was exposed to the Gospel in the womb.....Read more.

This is a place where people can explore theology

I'm a theology geek and this blog is an extension of my explorations.