Category: ecclesiology
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Two Ways Complementarian Churches Can Be More… Complementarian
Read more: Two Ways Complementarian Churches Can Be More… ComplementarianComplementarianism. Evangelical churches embrace this term to define their position on women and church leadership. But we lack a shared vision of what this might look like in our churches. The idea of complementarianism is rooted in the principle that men and women are better together, or in more Biblical language, “It is not good…
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Faith and Love: The Inconvenient Truth About a “Personal Relationship With God”
Read more: Faith and Love: The Inconvenient Truth About a “Personal Relationship With God”How’s your relationship with God? It’s a question many Christians and religious people ask of each other. When I answer this question over the years, I typically work my way through the same cluster of questions—am I praying and spending private time with God, am I avoiding certain sins, am I maturing in my likeness to…
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Is This the “End of Protestantism?” A Review of Peter Leithart’s Latest Book on Church Unity
Read more: Is This the “End of Protestantism?” A Review of Peter Leithart’s Latest Book on Church UnityLEITHART, Peter J. The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2016. pp. 225. $21.99 (Hardback). ISBN: 978-1-58743-377-1. As of 2003,[1] there are roughly one thousand distinct Christian denominations in the United States. It was the prayer of Jesus that his children will join together as “one” as God…
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DuPriest: “Christian Unity begins in Friendship”
Read more: DuPriest: “Christian Unity begins in Friendship”In 1985, drawing heavily both from Jeremy Taylor’s “Discourse on Friendship” and his own personal experience, the Episcopalian English professor, Travis DuPriest, argued that “Christian unity begins in friendship.” Why is this worth knowing? For one thing, it’s happening. For another, it is true to who we are, both as humans and as humans united…
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Domesticated Jesus and Highlighter Christianity
Read more: Domesticated Jesus and Highlighter ChristianityLesslie Newbigin tells an illuminating story about his time as a foreign missionary to India. In the Hindu Ramakrishna monastery, there is a gallery of portraits of the great religious teachers of humankind. Among them is a portrait of Jesus at which worship is offered every Christmas Day. Lest anyone mistake this worship for a…
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Do You Know Why You Go To Church?
Read more: Do You Know Why You Go To Church?What is the local church? Not physically so much, but what is the point? I asked this question for years ever since I started going consistently of my own volition in my senior year of high-school. I really only went because I had friends there, and occasionally I’d hear an interesting point about some passage…
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#PorteOuverte
Read more: #PorteOuverteThursday’s attack in Nice, France (le 14 juillet) follows a painful procession of recent attacks that have occurred throughout our world, many within the past month of Ramadan. France, still collectively recovering from Le Bataclan (and Hebdo before it) finds herself in a heartbreakingly familiar and now seemingly permanent state of alertness and grief. Elsewhere…
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Will The Real Replacement Theologian Please Stand Up?
Read more: Will The Real Replacement Theologian Please Stand Up?As I have shared a couple of times on the Two Cities, I have been reading Calvin’s Institutes this past school year and I finally finished. While I am no Calvin expert I am a huge fan of his work, so in addition to reading the Institutes this past school year I also frequently referenced…
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Can You Critique The Church?
Read more: Can You Critique The Church?I was reading Josh Carroll’s post about the disease called “Critiqueomania” and I found that I myself have had rather severe bouts of this plague. Some of these outbreaks have been part of my former angst, but others seemed very well meant. Some were definitely “Critiqueomania,” but there were other times where my criticism was well…
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The American Church: Ark or Kingdom?
Read more: The American Church: Ark or Kingdom?At many points in its colored history, the church’s unity and its holiness have appeared to come into conflict. On one side, people argue, “The only way we can call ourselves holy, is by staying united. Unity is holiness.”