Category: Theology
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Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz (1943-2012)
This past weekend (on May 13), the hispanic feminist liberation theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz died. Is “hispanic feminist liberation theologian” too much of a mouthful? She thought so, too. Each of those adjectives is accurate as a description of her work, but all strung together like that, they sounded like a tangle of disparate threads.…
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Imitating Jesus' Dependence on the Father and the Spirit
Klaus Issler‘s new book Living into the Life of Jesus: The Formation of Christian Character (IVP, 2012) is a unique product. It looks like a spiritual formation book, and it is. From its green cover with a picture of a lone figure walking down a path into a gauzy landscape, you can tell it’s going…
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The Ascension: Christ Among Us, Christ Above Us
My awesome little Baptist church follows the church calendar (Yes, that’s right.), and this Thursday is Ascension Day. After preaching at our midweek service last year, I became the church’s unofficial Ascension nut, and I’m getting ready to preach again. It’ll be our third sermon on the Ascension, each with a different approach, and between the…
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How to Teach Salvation: Three Mysteries
There are three great mysteries in Christian theology: the Trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement. These three mysteries are all mysteries of unity: The mystery of the Trinity is how the three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are the one, only God. The mystery of the incarnation is how the divine nature is united to…
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The Myth of Trinitarian Marginalization
It’s a commonplace in contemporary theology to say that the doctrine of the Trinity was marginalized in the modern period, until it was recovered by Barth and Rahner. The doctrine was kept around, so the story goes, but it didn’t matter to theologians, and didn’t do any real work that made a difference. That’s the…
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Proving the Resurrection
I’ll admit it. I’m skeptical about attempts to prove the existence of God or, indeed, any of the major tenets of the Christian faith. Reinhold Niebuhr once quipped that ‘the doctrine of original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith.’ I’m not sure I’d even go that far. There’s a lot…
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Catherine of Siena
Today (April 29) is the day Catherine of Siena died in 1380. Catherine was a Dominican Tertiary, that is, not a nun, but a layperson so associated with monastic life that she participated in many ways, and wore the habit. The Roman Catholic Church has identified her as a saint (1461), as a patron saint…
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Peter Böhler, who Witnessed to Wesley
Peter Böhler (b. 1712) died on this day (April 27) in 1775. Böhler was a pastor and missionary from the Protestant group called the Moravians. About the Moravians, and their founder Hus, and their leader Zinzendorf, and their ancient ecumenical entanglements, much could be said! But as for this particular Moravian, Peter Böhler, his theology and…
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Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation
Today (April 26) in 1518, Martin Luther engaged in a public debate now famous as the Heidelberg Disputation. The occasion was the General Chapter meeting of the Augustinian monastic order in Germany. It would have been just another meeting, but in late 1517, Luther had posted the 95 Theses for debate. The general meeting in…
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Mapping Modern Theology
I’m glad to see that Baker Academic has released Kelly Kapic and Bruce McCormack’s Mapping Modern Theology: A Thematic and Historical Introduction. This is a great textbook for understanding what’s happened in systematic theology over the last couple of centuries. I was honored to be invited to contribute a chapter (on the Trinity, of course). There’s…
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Happy Birthday, Charles E. Fuller
Today (April 25) is the day when Charles E. Fuller was born in 1887. Fuller is famous for the classic radio show The Old Fashioned Revival Hour, and for founding Fuller Theological Seminary. Charles Fuller started broadcasting in 1925, and the Revival Hour started in 1937, but it already sounded intentionally old-fashioned then. And Fuller…
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Ames' Very Concise Theology
Puritan theologian William Ames (1576-1633) wrote the Medulla Theologiae, which is available in English as The Marrow of Theology (trans. John Dykstra Eusden). It’s a fine little systematic theology for many reasons. But in this age of Twitter, I’m struck by how Ames chose to express his thought. He wrote out the whole system of doctrine…