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To keep the main thing the main thing
Walking my way through Marsh’s biography on Bonhoeffer, there is a time in New York where Bonhoeffer attends Union Seminary for a year. He also encounters Reinhold Niebuhr. He leaves after a year of study at Union frustrated because he found their theological approach too weak.
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The essence of the gospel
I am opening a new (to me) biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer because I want to examine his life from the lens of a historian and biographer who does the research properly. I am wanting to engage Bonhoeffer again through his writings as well.
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Quick thoughts
This morning I was meditating on spiritual heritage. Two things I am thankful for this morning: The theological roots of being Anglican. It sharpens my mind and widens my theological perspective. It roots me in the blessedness of the Kingdom and delivers me from the escapist sectarianism I knew before. The spiritual roots of my Pentecostal heritage and my connection…
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The messy kingdom
The gospel of Jesus Christ is more political than anyone imagines, but in a way that no one guesses… The political metaphor, “kingdom,” insists on a gospel that includes everything and everyone under the rule of God. God is no religious glow to warm a dark night. Christ is no esoteric truth with which to form a gnostic elite. The…
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Repairing the world
The God in whom we believe is the creator of the world, and he will one day put this world to rights… That solid belief is the bedrock of all Christian faith. God is not going to abolish the universe of space, time, and matter; he is going to renew it, to restore it, to fill it with new joy…
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Facing the apocalypse
Anxiety is up. Frustration is high. Anger boils over. AI will take over the world. “I, Robot” was right all along.
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Jesus and the Powers, Part 8
The final chapters in the book, Jesus and the Powers, are a struggle for me. Chapter 7 is the struggle. Chapter 8 is the summary. The fact of the matter, for Wright and Bird, is that government of some form is necessary. I can’t disagree. For all the shouting people do about corrupt government (on the “right” or the “left”),…
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The root of war
“We have only to open our eyes and look about us to see what our sins are doing to the world, and have done. But we cannot see. We are the ones to whom it is said by the prophets of God: ‘Hearing hear, and understand not; and see the vision, and know it not.” Thomas Merton, Seven Storey Mountain…
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Jesus and the Powers, Part 7
There are governments to resist. We wrestle with the need to submit to a point and then how to resist when there are violations of conscience and crossing allegiances, but then there is a need to understand there are things to resist. The how is tricky, and it takes the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit. This isn’t about…
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Jesus and the Powers, Part 2
NT Wright and Michael Bird don’t deny the certain benefits of Christendom, but they also dive into the destructive use of power in that time period as well. We have to reach for something more.
Tag: Theology
