John Muether answers questions about his new biography, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman at Westminster Bookstore's blog. You can read the book's introduction here.As Christians, we need to deeply understand how the gospel impacts and gives us a responsibility concerning knowledge as well as understand how a lost world around us is drowning in a storm of information that they don't know what to do with. We live in a unique time in terms of knowledge. Never before in the history of mankind have so many people had the ability to learn (literacy) and had the access to such a vast array of information and even other cultures. With a vast network of libraries and information systems, particularly the internet, one only needs to travel one block over or click a button to access just about everything mankind has ever known or experienced. But mankind is adrift in its thinking. This boom of knowledge it would seem has led to only more despair.Daniel J. Solove, associate professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, examines another facet of information technology's societal impact in his book The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale University Press, 2007). Its full text is available online for free. (HT: Question Technology)
Boundless Webzine features an excerpt from Thabiti Anyawile's book by that title. Here's a sample: There is a place in Christian theology — stemming from a deep reflection on the Person and work of Christ — for radical jeremiads against bigotry, injustice, and oppression of all kinds. The earliest African Americans understood this and, consequently, were able to hold both a conventional Christology and an active political praxis. The two are not mutually exclusive, and yet, the theological trajectory followed in the last seventy-five years seems to treat them as such.
To the extent that African American thinkers obfuscated the centrality of Jesus' spiritual mission to purchase a special people for Himself, then they participated in that grand lie of the serpent in the garden that promised knowledge beyond imagination but only ended in the destruction of souls.
This is no victimless crime. Materialism and black nationalism masquerading as Christology overthrow the faith of many — shrouding the cross of Jesus in the temporal affairs of this world, which in turn choke the seeds of the Gospel.
Tony Snow reviews Dinesh D'Souza's latest book and concludes:D'Souza calls atheists cowards. Not quite: They're like the man who perishes in a fire because he refuses to believe the net below will hold. What's So Great About Christianity performs a wonderful and overdue service. It engages atheists exhaustively and carefully, exposing atheism more as a bundle of sentiments than a coherent doctrine.
Joy runs through and through the New Testament but theologians for the most part have muted this happy note...Theologians as a race tend to be solemn folk, and it is good to see this emphasis on the sheer merriment of being a Christian. We are indifferent theologians if we have lost the song in the heart. (Because of Christ: Living Out the Gift of God Through Faith, pp. 28,29)You can read Benedetto's work here thanks to Shane Rosenthal who offers this introduction:
The following treatise was arguably the most popular book of the short lived Italian Reformation. It is estimated that 40,000 - 80,000 copies were printed between 1541-1548, of which very few remain today due to the fact that most were burned once the title was placed on the list of prohibited books during the Inquisition. The treatise was originally published anonymously under the title Trattato Ultilissimo Del Beneficio Di Geisu Christo Crocifisso, and was for a few hundred years mistakenly attributed to Aonio Paleario (1503-1570), a martyr for the Reformation cause in Italy. But most scholars now agree, based on records from the Inquisition itself, that the "Trattato" was written by Don Benedetto, a student of the Spanish Reformer Juan de Valdes (1498?-1541) and friend of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562).
You see, many people, knowing that my Mom and my wife's Dad died, offered prayer and comfort and words of hope. Most often we heard, "they are in a better place." But as I listened I thought, "that is not the last word on this." Jesus did not die and rise again so when we die we go to a better place. He died and rose again so that death will be swallowed up, this mortal shall be clothed in immortality, and our parents (and all who fall asleep in Christ) will be re-embodied.
It is surprising how very little the New Testament talks about life after death -- and how much it talks about (to borrow a phrase) "life after life after death." I have changed my words now -- when people ask me about Mom, I tell them that she has died and is waiting the resurrection of her body. I want to point to the real hope we have -- death swallowed up, being re-embodied and without sin, forever.
Matthias Media has produced a new evangelistic booklet adapted from their popular Two ways to live gospel outline. "It explains the Christian gospel in simple, easy-to-read language." Read the full text of the new tract here.I replied to his book for one reason only: His portrait of his parents was wrong and destructive. It left me alternately grieved and outraged,and I wanted to witness to the truth as I see it before God. I hope one day we can sit down and talk it over amicably.
Some say [religion] is a form of belief in God. But that would not fit Zen Buddhism, which does not really believe in God at all. Some say it is belief in the supernatural. But that does not fit Hinduism, which does not believe in a supernatural realm beyond the material world, but only a spiritual reality within the empirical. What is religion then? It is a set of beliefs that explain what life is all about, who we are, and the most important things that human beings should spend their time doing. For example, some think that this material world is all there is, that we are here by accident and when we die we just rot, and therefore the important thing is to choose to do what makes you happy and not let others impose their beliefs on you. Notice that though this is not an explicit, "organized" religion, it contains a master narrative, an account about the meaning of life along with a recommendation for how to live based on that account of things.Related Posts:
Some call this a "worldview" while others call it a "narrative identity." In either case it is a set of faith-assumptions about the nature of things. It is an implicit religion. Broadly understood, faith in some view of the world and human nature informs everyone's life. Everyone lives and operates out of some narrative identity, whether it is thought out and reflected upon or not. All who say "You ought to do this" or "You shouldn't do that" reason out of such an implicit moral and religious position. Pragmatists say that we should leave our deeper worldviews behind and find consensus about "what works"-- but our view of what works is determined by (to use a Wendell Berry title) what we think people are for. Any picture of happy human life that "works" is necessarily informed by deep-seated beliefs about the purpose of human life. Even the most secular pragmatists come to the table with deep commitments and narrative accounts of what it means to be human (The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, 15,16).
Don’t give the impression that some sermons are biblical, exegetical, theological, doctrinal, while others are practical, pastoral, relevant and helpful. Strive to demonstrate that both sides are really on the same side - there really is no contest.
