UPDATE: I’m going to take this post from Ed Stetzer as indicative that Keller isn’t a theistic evolutionist, and delete this post. Thanks for participating.
Sorry for taking up your RSS space.
Recommendation and Review: Running Scared by Edward Welch
It’s going to be a bit of a book review week here at IM. I’m backed up with several books I’ve needed to review and I’m going to try and get them all in in the next few days.
The Biblical counseling movement has never gotten very high marks from me. I’ll spare you the specifics for some other time. I have, however, taken notice that there are a range of people in the movement with different approaches to the practice of Biblical counseling. Some seem to “zero out” the language and insights of secular psychology and offer the Bible as a psychiatric textbook for the most complex problems. This has always seemed to me to be irresponsible, dangerous and ill-founded.Continue reading “Recommendation and Review: Running Scared by Edward Welch”
Internet Monk Radio Podcast #88
The megachurch and vanishing evangelical young people.
You all need to buy “The Gospel for Those Broken by the Church” and more Reformation theology gifts from New Reformation Press.
The Church: Flawed and Finished (Final F.A.Q.)
UPDATE: What makes unity more difficult? The continued propagation of new dogmas about non-essential matters that divide Christians from one another.
1. It’s surprising that you say denominations are inevitable when you seem to spend so much time saying they are wrong. Contradiction?
Human beings are diverse in the fact of creation. I believe cultural diversity is a gift of God; a merciful and potentially beautiful expression of his own diversity. So I don’t believe that denominations are wrong, per se. There’s something there of God and the Gospel in each one that can’t be seen the same way in the others.
But we have to admit that the actual history and behavior of denominations is more about sin, pride and willful ignorance and exclusion than anything of the character of God. Almost every denomination with any history at all has to equip itself with a kind of defense technique to overlook things that are wrong- even terrible- in its story.
If you are going to take the post-evangelical route, you have to approach every denomination with appreciation and honesty, especially your own. That won’t be the route to a lot of applause, I can assure you.Continue reading “The Church: Flawed and Finished (Final F.A.Q.)”
The Church: Flawed and Finished (5)
This is the last post on the subject of the Church: Flawed and Finished. The others are directly below. I will be doing an F.A.Q. post on the topic.
What is the connection between the flawed church in history and the completed, finished perfect body of Christ?
Is it the fact that God knows the difference? Of course, he does, and that is a great encouragement. Does it mean that among all these flawed churches, there is one denomination that will one day be vindicated as having been the true Body of Christ? If our fragmentation into denominations is, itself, one of those blemishes that will be removed, we ought to be wary of saying our denomination is a preview of the finished church.Continue reading “The Church: Flawed and Finished (5)”
Sermon: Lessons From A Fight
Since it’s Lent, the lectionary text was Matthew 4:1-11, Jesus’ test in the wilderness.
I chose a bit of an imaginative beginning, made sure I anchored this story in the Gospel, then used it as a window to talk about the lessons for our own trials and temptations. Pay attention to what kind of community Jesus’ is creating. That’s a much overlooked point.
I cited C.S. Lewis about as much as the text itself. Hey, I’d trade Obadiah for Mere Christianity any day.
Continue to pray for Pastor Ted, who hopes to be back in the pulpit in three weeks.
The Church: Flawed and Finished (4)
Before moving on into more posts on the relationship of the historical church and the ideal church, I want to ask and briefly answer some questions.
1. To what extent is the historical church flawed?
Like the human beings that make up the church, the historical church is fallen, sinful and affected by sin in every way that all believing persons are fallen and sinful. The fact of fallibility is universal to all persons and all aspects of the church.
2. Does the church get anything right?
This is a key question. When we look at the disciples and the churches in the epistles, there is much that is right. Paul reminds the Corinthians of the Gospel, but he is confident that they know an believe the Gospel. Even with the apparent leadership crises in these churches, the churches are called to engage in acts of repentance and discipline. The churches are held responsible for moral and ethical failures precisely because they are capable of knowing and doing the right things to do.Continue reading “The Church: Flawed and Finished (4)”
The Church: Flawed and Finished (3)
This series looks at how imperfect and flawed congregations can possibly be the church of Jesus. The first two posts in the series are here and here.
When scripture speaks of the church in ideal terms, it is always from the viewpoint of God’s finished work of love and new creation that begins and ends with the church. Only with proper context can we speak of the present historical church as, in any way, ideal.
It is crucial to see how the church as an ideal reality is always spoken of from God’s point of view. it is not a claim we make, but a gift of God’s promise given to a very imperfect church. It would wrong, and even dangerous, for the historical church to assign to itself in the present the qualities of the finished church.
Several passages demonstrate this. Let’s look at one of the most appealing of ideal images; one constantly used by all Christians.Continue reading “The Church: Flawed and Finished (3)”
The Church: Flawed and Finished (2)
The introduction to this series is here. I was somewhat “motivated” recently when a Protestant convert on EWTN said “Protestants have Christ, but they don’t have his bride.” I found the statement quite…..interesting, especially in view of how I believe the scriptures describe the church in history and in God’s plans.
This second post deals with the presentation of the church in Paul’s letters and Revelation 2-3.
The New Testament is a book that is full of historical photographs of the church. These photographs are the epistles; letters with the purpose of building up, correcting and encouraging congregations.
The two primary sets of “photographs†I want to point us to are the Pauline epistles, particularly the Corinthian correspondence, and the brief epistles from Jesus to the seven churches in Asia minor, found in the Revelation chapters 2 and 3.Continue reading “The Church: Flawed and Finished (2)”
The Church: Flawed and Finished (1)
Some recent comments on EWTN drove me back to my Bible and some time thinking through my concept of how the church is both fallible and perfect; flawed and finished; historical and eternal. I’ll share several brief posts walking through the relationship between a very human and flawed historical reality and its relationship with the perfect bride of Christ.
Because of my encounter with Roman Catholicism in the past year, I’ve spent a good deal of time asking questions about the church in the New Testament.
One of the key issues for me concerns the fallibility of the church in history and how this relates to the “perfected” images of the church used elsewhere in the New Testament.
The most basic image of the church in the New Testament is that of the disciples in relation to Jesus in the Gospels.Continue reading “The Church: Flawed and Finished (1)”
The Internet Monk Archives 