Westminster Speaks

To Whom Shall We Go?

14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 EST

Major catastrophes inevitably stimulate conversations about major matters. Where is God when tsunamis hit and bury entire villages, killing thousands? Where is God when pilots intentionally decimate buildings with their own airplanes and rip mothers from their own children? Where is God when violent earthquakes crush bodies and infrastructures beyond their breaking points? Such tragedies launch transcendent questions.

Why would a loving God allow unthinkable horror? Is He impotent? Do great calamities grant greater evidence of greatest ineptitude?

The Preacher As Prophet

05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Crisis in preaching is as much a crisis in the doctrine of God and of Scripture as it is in confidence in the means of communication; indeed, the crisis in the latter is surely a function of a decline in the former two points.

A sound doctrine of God and a solid doctrine of Scripture are critical. Also, a careful study of the movement of preaching from Moses to the close of the apostolic era is surely a very useful exercise.

Forsake Not Your Mother

16 Sep 2009 03:00:00 EDT

No experience in my life has elicited greater heart-sickness than witnessing the AIDS orphans in South Africa…helpless, unclothed children, walking the dirty hillsides, wandering aimlessly, scrounging for food, living only to die. For the estimated 3.5 million such orphans in South Africa, there exists neither home nor hope...

Truly Catholic

30 Jun 2009 03:00:00 EDT

Most Reformed people probably do not think of themselves as catholic. Now, there is a sense in which that is correct: if you are a member of the Reformed, then, by definition, you are not a member of the Roman Catholic Church. At least, if you are, and the minister or the priest finds out about it, you are going to be in some considerable trouble. Yet there is also a sense in which Reformed people are catholics. To be catholic, after all, really only means to be part of the one great communion of saints, of all those who call upon Christ for salvation and who are entrusted with the faith once for all delivered to the saints...

Rethinking the Rules of Planet Blog

05 Jun 2009 03:00:00 EDT

Blogging is not a sin. No, really. It’s not. No commandment says “Thou shalt not blog,” and good and necessary consequence doesn’t place blogging on par with pornography. Real Christians really blog, but sad to say, much of this blogging doesn’t look really Christian. With thanks to technology and the hankering to be heard, blogging has found its place, and is indeed morphing into its own accepted, self-propagating, self-attesting genre of the written word. But by its very nature it’s unique. It has none of the editorial, marketing, and vetting protections of other published formats.

Man-Zero Ministry in a God-Zero World

26 May 2009 03:00:00 EDT

In 2006, lawyer Michael J. Kline informed two of the brand managers for Coca-Cola Classic that they could sue their own company's Coca-Cola Zero brand. What ensued was an unprecedented reality TV-styled marketing campaign. In “Candid Camera” like settings, two actors, posing as Coke Classic brand managers seek to establish the case that the sugarless Coke Zero tastes so much like the Real Coke Classic that they have a legitimate intellectual property suit. The charge? “Taste infringement.” In a number of mildly humorous to quite hilarious encounters, attorneys are captured on tape, with responses ranging from stumbling nonsensical utterances to verbal aggression.

Second Life or New Life?

17 Apr 2009 03:00:00 EDT

"...at the start of the twenty-first century, docetism is back, but with a new twist. It is not Christ who has only the appearance of humanity; rather it is human beings themselves. Newsweek ran a fascinating article on the web sensation, Second Life where people create avatars, or virtual characters, and live out their lives in virtual reality. The phenomenon is fascinating for a variety of reasons..."

Machen's Worrier Children

16 Mar 2009 03:00:00 EDT

Some months ago, I wrote a short piece for the e-zine, Reformation 21, about the tendency of Reformed Christians over the last twenty or so years to be rather embarrassed about their heritage and to be continually fretting about whether they are relevant or not...Well, if Time magazine is to be believed, the worrier children can stop wringing their hands...

Waves, Hamburger Helper and an Immovable Rock

09 Mar 2009 03:00:00 EDT

There was a day when I liked the sea. That day has come and gone. Don’t get me wrong. I still love to walk on the beach. I love to watch the waves. I am compelled by the majestic “signals of transcendence” (to co-opt a Peter Berger phrase), which propel my mind God-ward before the immense ocean and its teeming life, as it is set against a horizon extending beyond the eyes’ reach. But it would take a presidential-sized stimulus package to convince me to get on a boat in the Pacific...

"Probably"

02 Feb 2009 03:00:00 EST

“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” So tout 800 British bus billboards, funded by the British Humanist Association and the pope of atheism, Richard Dawkins. The atheistic campaign, which notably did not have the courage to exclude the word “probably,” weighed the evidence and concluded that society in all probability couldn’t handle the bald proposition “There is no God.” But as The New York Times writer Ruth Gledhill noted in her Jan. 6, 2009 article, campaign organizers were shocked by the influx of resources to their campaign, as they raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a few days.

Why Westminster?

26 Jan 2009 03:00:00 EST

Approximately half of my sixteen years of teaching theology has been spent at Westminster. Prior to that, I was on faculty at two secular universities in the UK. The obvious question, therefore, is why did I make the move, at least in the eyes of the wider world, from being a mainstream academic to being a seminary professor, with all of the sectarian connotations that can have? And why did I bring my wife and children across the Atlantic, thousands of miles from family, friends, and all that is familiar, to do so?

Lion-sized Fears In a Bear Market

14 Jan 2009 03:00:00 EST

Dorothy was afraid of the forest, its unknowns, its wild beasts. Her apprehensions on the road to Oz have become a household refrain: “Lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my!” However frightened Dorothy may have been, only one of those beasts seems now to threaten our livelihood. In our economic crisis, media moguls whine loudly, “Bears and bears and more bears! Oh, my!” Their opining comes all too close to home. The bear market seems to be almost more than we can bear.

Review of Roger Olsen's "Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities"

04 Apr 2008 03:00:00 EDT

Given the choice, I would always rather have my opinions presented and explained by a competent opponent than an incompetent friend; but my strong preference is for a competent friend to undertake the task...

Islam and the West

01 Jan 2008 03:00:00 EST

For the last four years I have had the privilege of teaching church history at a Reformed confessional seminary. Our seminary curriculum is unique in that we require students enrolled in the Master of Divinity program to complete four church history courses.

The Church Between Cultures: Rethinking the Church in Light of Globalization of Immigration

01 Jan 2004 03:00:00 EST

Mohammed and Fatima,* a middle -aged Moroccan couple, live in the south of France with their 7 children. Their marriage of 25 years was arranged by their families. Fatima's family was very anxious to form an alliance with Mohammed's family because several of Mohammed's family members, like Mohammed, have good jobs in France...

Psalm 8: What is Isreal's King that You Remember Him?

01 Jul 2003 03:00:00 EDT

Walter Brueggemann represents the majority opinion when he identifies Psalm 8 as a "song of creation" that gives "articulation to creation faith." Read in connection with the creation story, the psalm bears witness to the dignity and worth that all humans have despite the Fall. Accordingly, the "man" and the "son of man" in v. 4 are usually interpreted "in an entirely democratic fashion" to refer to humanity in general. The fact that the New Testament understands Jesus to be the "fulfillment" of the psalm does not diminish its general application to the dominion that all humans exercise over creation.

Worship In All of Life

01 Jan 2003 03:00:00 EST

It has become a truism to speak of the globalization of world culture. McDonalds, the world-wide web, the Visa card, rap music, cell phones, all these represent icons of the network that has become our common experience around the world. Inevitably, such globalization has affected the church.

Special Interview with Dr. Edward T. Welch, Professor of Practical Theology

01 Jan 2003 03:00:00 EST

PEACEMAKER MINISTRIES: Our annual conference theme this year, Christ, the Cornerstone of Reconciliation, comes from one of the four core convictions of Peacemaker Ministries, that genuine peace between people can be found only through Jesus Christ. When you hear that, what thoughts come to your mind?

ED WELCH: My first thought is that I had better know Jesus Christ if I am going to be some sort of ambassador of reconciliation.

Gender in Bible Translation: How Fallacies Distort Understanding of the New Testament Gender PassagesTools

01 Jan 1998 03:00:00 EST

How do we handle gender in English Bible translation?

What Can Miserable Christians Sing?

31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

"Some years ago I wrote a little article, `What Can Miserable Christians Sing?' I dashed it off in about 30 minutes one afternoon, and yet I have received more positive letters and emails about that one little piece than anything else I have ever written. It seemed to strike a chord...And today (25 May 2010) I find the article has once again returned to my inbox; this time cited by my friend, the well-known British journalist, John Macleod. Who would have thought that a 30 minute editorial would have such an apparently long life?"