Jesus Creed

As a college student, and over in Belgium on a mission trip where I learned so much about the bigness of the Church, I was fortunate enough to be able to sit daily and listen to John R.W. Stott preach. He said something that has never left me, and it pertains to what we are…

Kevin Corcoran, from Calvin, writes in Books and Culture on a topic that many of my students have recently asked me about: hell. The questions came up well before McLaren’s book, which I’ll be working my way through shortly. Corcoran is asking a question that needs to be asked at some serious levels, both lay…

Robert Bellah is not the only social historian who has observed that Protestantism and individualism are related — and some have contended that the former gave rise to the latter, making America a “Protestant nation.” Andrew Delbanco’s The Real American Dream would be one such example. Perhaps so — maybe individualism is a Protestant thing.…

Scholars and theologians alike today like to bang the drum of individualism, and I’ve done the same myself. It is a big drum, and it sounds loud, and most fear its power. Andrew Delbanco, for instance, in his happy little survey The Real American Dream, set out American history in three stages: an orientation to…

We were up in Oregon (practice saying “Or-ee-gun” and not “Or-ee-GON”), went to be with Trinity Covenant, which is an absolutely splendid church — and I can say that about a lot of churches, and also about this one. Lots of good things going on; thriving at so many levels. Chris Haydon asked the community…

Up here in Oregon and last night had a session with high school students and then shifted to the “adult” body of the church for a Jesus Creed talk — and I spoke about what it is and how it fits into the six theories of the Christian life. Meeting God’s good people around this…

When I was teaching at TEDS one of my students showed up to class late, and then proceeded to tell me her “story”: she knew God wanted her to come to class on time, she knew Satan was against her getting to class, and some demons had gotten into her tank and sucked out all…

Kris and I are off to Salem OR this weekend to speak to the good people at Trinity Covenant Church, pastored by Chris Haydon. I’ll try to get a blog or two in if we find access to the internet.

Theologians at least since Luther, who was developing the rhetoric of Nicolas of Cusa, have often used what is called the via negativa. In essence, the via negativa is to describe something (say the Emergent movement) by saying what is not (say, not traditional Evangelicalism). Luther is known for his rhetoric about the theology of…

I have been asked maybe fifty times in the last month this question: “What is driving the Emergent movement?” “Who am I,” I come back at ’em, “to answer that question?” But then like a truck in wet sand, I can’t avoid sinking into an answer. Here’s what I say, or something like it. And…

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