Tried With Fire

It is no good telling the bereaved mother that Christ still loves and cares for her if she has only been taught to think of Christ in terms of how he works on her own feelings and in her own experiences. She needs to be able to see that God is much greater than her experience of him; she needs to know that, whatever her current feelings of anguish and despair, God is trustworthy and loving; and she needs to know that assurance is not necessarily about emotional highs but about knowing that God is faithful even though the whole world appears to be falling apart around her. Such will only be possible if the theological environment in which she lives and worships teaches her to understand Christ above all in terms of his historical work of redemption for the people of God; and that will only come about when the emphasis in preaching focuses not on ourselves but on the Christ of the Bible. Setting Christ above all in the context of biblical history rather than our own experience will pr...

There's no place like Rome, there's no place like Rome... When I read this section in Reformation , my first thought was the latest evangelical fad of dabbling with Roman Catholic or Eastern mysticism. Maybe I'm wrong, but you can judge for yourself: Where I differ from these gurus is in my analysis of the human condition and nature of salvation. If we were to agree with them in seeing human beings as always searching for God, as having an innate spirituality which leads them to yearn for deeper and more authentic spiritual experiences, then we would regard the current interest in alternative religions as a positive sign and see our own task as presenting to the spiritual consumer our own product, Christianity, as a more adequate means of fulfilling the so-called "felt needs" of individuals. If, however, in line with the biblical, historic Christianity, supremely that of the Reformers, we regard human beings as sinful and turned inwards towards self, then w...

According to the well-known "secularization theory" of Max Weber, religion - under the conditions of modernity -  goes through various stages. First, religion is privatized , its domain shrunk to the island of private subjectivity. Statements such as "Jesus is alive" and "Jesus is Lord" are no longer regarded as objective, public claims based on historical  events but become references to one's personal experience. As for "Jesus is alive," in the words of the famous gospel song, "You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart." And typically, "Jesus is Lord" refers to my personal decision to make Jesus my Lord and Savior. While the apostles testified to historical events of which they were eyewitnesses, "giving your testimony" in evangelical Christianity today typically means talking about one's inner experience and moral transformation. Once privatized, religion becomes relativized .  No longer ...

"At the end of the day, the gospel is believed because God - because God - so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son and so on. The power and persuasiveness of the gospel lies in the fact that God acted in history to save humanity in and through his Son, Jesus Christ. The experience of this salvation by the individual people and by whole churches is a source for great rejoicing but should never be allowed to eclipse the emphasis on the great saving acts of God's redemptive history. The gospel is the story of what God has done for sinners in Christ; it is not first and foremost the experience of God by any particular individual ; and, if testimonies are to be given in a useful way, they must reflect this fact. Too often, however, testimonies can become nothing more than extended reflctions upon individual experiences of God. To make room for this sort of testimony is, I would suggest, to place our own evangelical church life on the path towards liberalism which, a...