Christians in Context: from orthodoxy to orthopraxy.

Saturdays with C. S. Lewis - There Is No Other Stream

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

"Some Saturday C. S. Lewis" was introduced and explained here. And yes, I know that it's Sunday, but I didn't want to double on Ian's post from yesterday, so I decided to save Lewis for today. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. In any case, the following quote is from chapter 2 of The Silver Chair. "Are you not thirsty?" said...

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Lay Your Weapons Down, Ye Jars of Clay

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Clausen) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:02:00 +0000

The band that has without doubt shaped my Christianity most profoundly is Jars of Clay. Their recent album, 'The Long Fall Back to Earth' (2009) does not disappoint: its subtlety of lyric and adept diagnosis of the modern condition impress upon us Christians the very 'triumph through tragedy' theme so integral to the reality God is unfolding...

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Doxology Without Substance (And the Solution to that Problem)

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:04:00 +0000

Mark Johnston of Ref21 reflects today on why preachers choose what book or topic to preach on, highlighting his recent selection of Ephesians. The whole thing is worth a read, but I especially appreciated this comment, stemming from the observation that Ephesians is so doxological: That grasp of doxology desperately needs to be recovered in many...

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Book Review: Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges

jared@redeemeromaha.org (Jared) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:42:00 +0000

Jerry Bridges wrote one of the best books I've ever read on Christian sanctification in Pursuit of Holiness. But if Pursuit of Holiness is Sanctification 101, then Respectable Sins is Sanctification 301. While the former book focused on the broader subject of sanctification and dealt with the more common besetting sins, the latter focuses on the...

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A New, Important "How To" Book on Cutting Edge Technology for Churches

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I found this book at a $1 bookstore by my home and thought I should let our readers know in case one of you would like me to pick it up for them and ship it. There is just no way I could keep such a gem for myself when others most certainly struggle to operate all this high-tech stuff more than us young whipper-snappers! Maybe it will be the...

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"I Do Not Permit a Woman to Teach or Have Authority"... in Seminaries?

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Before we get going, I should remind you that I am an evangelical. This includes the belief, among other things, that I am an inerrantist. I am also a complementarian. Just about all of my past writing on CiC on the subject can be found here. Got it? Good, because those are important presupposition for where this post is going. You won't be...

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Saturdays with C. S. Lewis - Pleasure is the Enemy's Invention

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:32:00 +0000

"Some Saturday C. S. Lewis" was introduced and explained here. The following quotation is from The Screwtape Letters, in which Screwtape, a senior demon, advises his nephew Wormwood on the art of tempting humans. From that perspective, the "Enemy" is God and "Our Father" is Satan. "Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its...

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This Week's Recap as a Biblical Conservative in San Francisco

norm@christiansincontext.org (Norman Jeune III) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:37:00 +0000

I'll keep this short and sweet; a Biblically conservative Christian in San Francisco is now officially the greatest anomaly I can conceive of. I had a number of interesting encounters this week. I was told that Jesus, Luke, and John were definitely homosexuals. I was also told in another conversation that John (the beloved disciple) was definitely...

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Brian Walton Reviews Where the Wild Things Are

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Since Jared has us thinking about film today, I should point out my friend Brian Walton's thoughtful review of Where the Wild Things Are, which I've not yet seen. If you haven't seen it either, I suspect you too will want to after you read Brian's review. Here is the final paragraph:The emotional arcs of the characters drive the film rather than...

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Book Review: Faith, Film, and Philosophy

jared@redeemeromaha.org (Jared) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:58:00 +0000

If there was one thing I wish I'd known before reading Faith, Film, and Philosophy, it would have been the fact that it should have been called "Philosophy, Film, and Faith" instead. By sheer quantity of content, there is more philosophy than film or faith, and more film than faith. For you left-brain readers, that would be: philosophy content >...

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A Little Sarcasm: All Constantinople Talks Theology

norm@christiansincontext.org (Norman Jeune III) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:01:00 +0000

"If you ask any one in Constantinople for change, he will start discussing with you whether the Son is begotten or unbegotten. If you ask about the quality of the bread, you will get the answer: 'The Father is greater, the Son is less.' If you suggest taking a bath you will be told: 'There was nothing before the Son was created.'" Gregory of Nyssa

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C. S. Lewis on Saturdays - Adoration vs. Gratitude

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:34:00 +0000

"Some Saturday C. S. Lewis" was introduced and explained here. The following quotation is from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, which is Lewis's side of a correspondence between him and his fictional friend, Malcolm, and was published in 1964. And by the way, "C. S. Lewis on Saturdays" rings better than "Some Saturday C. S. Lewis". Sorry...

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A Natural Limit to Pride?

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Clausen) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:46:00 +0000

My good friend Byron draws attention to another distressing indication of what a grand mess of things we enlightened humans have made. Go here for the day-ruin. I'm not very interested in the science, much less the debate over whether this climate change stuff is happening; it does not seem to me in the right of us Christians to try and evade the...

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Kevin DeYoung on Reaching the Next Generation

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Kevin DeYoung posted part 3 today in a 5-part series of daily posts on how to reach the next generation of non-believers for Christ. Part 1 is called "Grab them with Passion", part 2 is "Win them with Love", and part 3 is called "Hold them with Holiness". I recommend all of them, but I especially appreciated today's. DeYoung advocates a simple...

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Theologian Trading Cards: There's nothing like a good dose of heresy!

norm@christiansincontext.org (Norman Jeune III) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:06:00 +0000

I've been spending most of my evenings lately working on Theologian Trading Cards; one church figure after another, drafting what will be the back of each card. It's been a great exercise for fine tuning my knowledge of historical theology. I finished the team of heretics about a week ago, which was great fun, and looking at church history...

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What do you mean God is love?

norm@christiansincontext.org (Norman Jeune III) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 04:01:00 +0000

I haven't picked it up in a few years, but I was reading Tozer's "Knowledge of the Holy" and I thought I would share his thoughts on the statement, "God is Love". In one sense, I think he's just stating the obvious, but then again, I've heard so many statements fitting the profile of Tozer's contention that I thought it would be interesting to...

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The Limitations of Mapping the Genome

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Peter Leithart has a fascinating post about genome mapping and the apparent fact that biology's fundamental principles about genomes and their relationship to the form and diversity of living things have been completely wrong. Here is the conclusion: The upshot is that two of the most aggressive and exciting scientific projects of the last half...

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Some Saturday C. S. Lewis - Limpets and the Rejection of a Personal God

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 09:00:00 +0000

"Some Saturday C. S. Lewis" was introduced and explained here. The following quotation is from Miracles, which was originally published in 1947 and revised in 1960. Why are many people prepared in advance to maintain that, whatever else God may be, He is not the concrete, living, willing, and acting God of Christian theology? I think the reason...

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The Futility of Apologetics?

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:08:00 +0000

Eph. 4:17-18: "So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart." At least in this passage, futility of mind,...

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The Pacifist Offense, Redux

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Clausen) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:39:00 +0000

Following commentary on select passages from Paul, with a keen investment in Colossians, John Howard Yoder has this to say: Let us avoid with great care the two possible misunderstandings of this critical statement about social pressure to which the Apostle Paul has led us. What he says is not, as some conservative religious groups would say, that...

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Some Saturday C. S. Lewis

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:24:00 +0000

Seeing as how nobody has mastered the art of the orthodoxy to orthopraxy movement like C. S. Lewis, and since nobody is more quotable, I figured I'd start something new on CiC: Some Saturday C. S. Lewis. We'll see how long it lasts, but for starters, I present you with this quote from Miracles: It is always shocking to meet life where we thought...

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The Pacifist Offense

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Clausen) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:06:00 +0000

It is one of the more haunting and enigmatic 'aspects' of the Gospel. Indeed, it is certainly the case that the Gospel received through the apostolic witness is simply unintelligible without it. I am writing about the humility and radical non-violence of Christ. That humility which Paul captures in, say, Phil. 2.6-10. That radical non-violence at...

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Where's Karl Barth When You Need Him?

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:01:00 +0000

What could be a better follow-up to yesterday's post that implied such an unabashedly simplistic view of the authority of Scripture? Why, a post dealing with Karl Barth, of course. Well, not exactly dealing with him. Just telling you that if you can't find the portion of the Church Dogmatics that you're looking for in your library, Glen...

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In Defense of Proof-Texting

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:26:00 +0000

This will be quick: appealing to a particular passage of Scripture in defense of your position during theological argument is not somehow against the rules. It probably just means you have a conservative, high view of Scripture's authority. Most times it is easier for your theological dialogue partner ("opponent" is what they used to be called,...

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The Romans 7 Debate: How a Believer Who Holds a Non-Believer View Can Still Relate

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Faris) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:01:00 +0000

Romans 7:14-25 is notorious. The much-debated question is this: is Paul describing the internal struggle of his present Christian life, regretting how often he is unsuccessful in fighting sin, or is he using all the first person pronouns and present tense verbs to vividly describe what it was like to always fail to live a holy life before God...

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