If you love the church and yet love academics, or love academics and yet love the church—don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you have to choose.
The Scholar's Head with the Shepherd's Heart – An Interview with CPT President, Todd Wilson
Six Questions I Ask Pastors That Are Interested in Pursuing a PhD
I have been asked several times by pastors if they should pursue a PhD (or related research doctoral degree). The short answer is, “It depends.” I have several questions that I ask them to help diagnose if I would or would not recommend them pursing a research doctoral degree, especially if they plan to serve in vocational ministry. Here are some of those questions:
Gratitude for the Great Tradition: On John Webster's "Theology in the Order of Love" (Part 2)
According to Webster, this posture of gratitude entails a willingness to lay aside our own pressing interests. It also entails a willingness to pay close attention to the interests of others. This humble displacing of self offers the hope of immeasurable enrichment. Attention to the traditions of the church is attention to the the saints of God as they strain to hear his voice and pass on what they have heard. And, says Webster, it ushers us into “the possibility of a more spacious domain, a greater store of intellectual goods.”
As we sit in our studies and pay heed to Augustine, or Luther, or Edwards, they invite us to leave cramped and crowded walls of our own small understanding, and to step with them into the soaring cathedral of divine truth.
Gratitude as Intellectual Virtue: On John Webster's "Theology in the Order of Love" (Part 1)
Prayer and thanksgiving are not just something we do at the beginning or end of a morning’s theological work. They are the atmosphere in which theology lives, the native air our thinking breathes as the motion of our mind comes from and returns constantly to the God from whom, through whom, and for whom our intellectual labors exist.
Conversion is Complicated – Faith, Doubt, and the Changeableness of the Human Heart
My text that Sunday morning was Romans 3:9-18, an exploration of human depravity, and I remember my goal was to get the hearts of my hearers “ready” and “needy” for a clear explanation of the gospel, which would come the following Sunday. I prepared well for my message; I was genuinely excited for our congregation and positive that we’d see lives changed as a result. The only problem was that, as I walked on stage to preach, I didn’t believe any of it. Not in God, not in the Gospel, not in the spiritual reality of the church. In a flash I was a stone cold atheist.
Apostasy, Mystery, and the Means of Grace
When any Christian, particularly a leader in the church, renounces faith in Jesus, troubling spiritual and cognitive dissonances ensue for believers. The reactions range from fierce denunciations of the apostate, blame directed at the apostate’s theological and ecclesial tradition, and a melancholic sense of doubt over one’s own standing before God. Sometimes these reactions are all wrapped up together. Understandably, then, Christians reach for an explanatory theological framework for the reality of apostasy, and two readily present themselves.
Falling Away or Cut Off? Romans and the Question of Apostasy
The recent departure of Joshua Harris not only from Christian ministry but from Christianity altogether has brought questions related regarding apostasy and falling away to the forefront of recent evangelical dialogue. Can a true believer fall from grace? If someone commits apostasy, were they ever really saved? If it is indeed possible to lose your salvation, how does it happen? What’s the condition? How should we understand the notion of perseverance? And what does the Bible say about the matter? What do the key texts say about the issue?
2019 Student Paper Contest Results
We are very pleased to announce the results for our 2019 student paper contest on theology and technology.
St. Irenaeus, the Beatific Vision, and the Instrumentalization of Creation
Irenaeus consistently resisted the anti-body emphasis that emerged in later Christian theology. His eschatology is remarkably focused on the resurrection of the body, and the renewal of the cosmos; and he works overtime to avoid the “angelic soteriology” so prevalent in the later Christian tradition, namely the idea that humans become equal to the angels when they die. For Irenaeus, human beings, made in the image of the embodied Son of God, are at the top of the celestial food chain. Humans don’t become “equal” to angels when they die, but rather “pass beyond the angels” and ascend to God himself (Adversus Haereses 5.36.3).
Can we still learn from the Puritans?
It’s easy these days to dismiss the wisdom of the past. Given our improved technology and all our current collected learning, surely learning from the past would lead to regression, right? Plus, weren’t all these people basically racist, patriarchal, and generally mean-spirited? That’s, at least, how some perceive the Puritans. After all, we use the word “puritanical” only in a negative way, to denote someone who is self-righteous, morally rigid, and generally un-likable.
