Bible and Mission

  What is to be made by Christians of God's judgement and the punishments stipulated in the Law?   Is God not merciful and forgiving?  What are we to make of judgement within the Church?  Are Christians called to forgive everyone without distinction? The claims that God is an impartial judge (Deuteronomy 10.17; Job 34.19; Luke 20.21; Acts 10.34; Romans 2.10; Galatians 2.6; 1 Peter 1.17) who judges the peoples with equity (Psalm 67.4) and who will one day judge us for every deed and secret thing run throughout Scripture (e.g., Psalm 62.12) Ecclesiastes 12.14; Matthew 16.27; John 5.22, 27; Acts 10.42; 17.31; 24.25; Romans 2.6, 9-11; 2 Timothy 4.1; Revelation 20.12-13).   Paul writes, ‘ For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil ( 2 Corinthians 5.10). The Church is also to judge those within it who are persistent in sin (cf. Matthew 18.15-20).  In 1 ...

  To the memory of Charlie Kirk How do we sort ourselves out, wanting free speech while concerned about certain kinds of speech?   Is all speech of equal worth?   What speech is worthy of concern?   Who gets to regulate such things?   What do we say about speech in the public square, and what do we say about it as Christians in our own community? Let’s begin by defending free speech.   Without it, societies turn into tyrannical and oppressive institutions.   The great divide between the USA and Great Britain or Europe is that the former defends free speech while the latter oppose hate speech.   The problem for the USA is that free speech offers very little regulation for some really nasty people.   The problem on the other side is that someone or some group gets to decide what ‘hateful’ means, and we have enough evidence in the past few years that Christians are being targeted for their age-old beliefs under the laws of hate speech. ...

  Scripture—Old and New Testaments--offers many passages on 'mission'.  It is a major theme in the Bible even though the word does not appear in the Hebrew and Greek and only four times in the English Standard Version.   (The English word comes from the Latin, mittere , to send.)   One important text for the Church's understanding of mission is  Acts 13.1-3, which gives a very abbreviated narrative of a particular group of Christians in the city of Antioch (today in Turkey).   They are part of the Antioch Christian Community but seem to form a special Antioch Mission, and they send two of their members on a new sort of Christian mission.    Thinking about this mission, we might also draw out some lessons for ongoing mission today.  Barnabas and Paul are sent out on a mission to the Gentiles in distant lands, reaching beyond the Hebrew and Hellenistic Jews.   Luke writes: Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Ba...

  L. M. Heyns and H. J. C. Pieterse divide the development of Practical Theology from the mid-20th century onwards into four approaches. [1]   A pragmatic approach ignores theory and simply addresses practice--how to practice ministry well.  A pastoral theological approach trains pastors for Christian ministry.  It is ecclesiastical, training ministers for church ministry.  The former approach focusses on practice, while this approach first defines what the church is and what this church in this tradition is.  A hermeneutical theological approach is normative and bases practice on biblical hermeneutics and historical criticism.  Unlike the former approach, it questions ecclesiastical traditions and asks after first principles.  The fourth approach rejects this: an empirical or operational, scientific approach rejects any normative, deductive approach to practical theology.  Rather, practice addresses real life situa...

On the 17 hundredth anniversary of the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), orthodox Christians need another ecumenical council.   The Council of Nicaea produced the Nicene Creed, a statement of faith that articulated orthodox, Christian teaching on the doctrine of God.   While the creed has its roots in affirmations of the faith in Christian contexts, such as baptism, it also was a response to the Arian heresy on the doctrine of God, which rejected the full divinity of Jesus Christ. Today, we need a catholic (universal) statement by orthodox Christians that pushes back against the heresies of our times that are dividing the Church.   We need a statement on the doctrine of creation.   The challenges we face on the doctrines of creation and of humanity are several: understanding creation care, diverse cultures, nature, gender, marriage, sexuality, children, family, work, and sin.   Many societies today are governed by a notion of freedom that is so individualistic that ...