After Darrell Todd Maurina kicked up some dust with his post at the Baylyblog on 2k, he made the following comment: Men such as Dr. Darryl Hart have accused me in the past of holding the same position as the Bible Presbyterians and Carl McIntyre. That is an important accusation and it needs to be… Read More→
Mark Edwards, Spring Arbor University, has touched a nerve among historians who profess some version of Protestantism by commenting on the new book, Confessing History, edited by John Fea, Jay Green, and Eric Miller and suggesting that the Conference on Faith and History is the intellectual arm of the Religious Right. The historians involved in… Read More→
The Christian Reformed Church has had a historic presence in western Michigan. But according to a recent story in Christianity Today, the Grand Rapidians are turning their cosmological gaze eastward toward Detroit. First, there’s the Detroit Kingdom Enterprise Zone (KEZ), a church planting and community development effort empowered by the CRC and RCA’s Church Multiplication… Read More→
One of the other themes of the Twenty-Seven Propositions describing two-kingdom theology is the notion that the Bible is binding on all people: 7. Scripture is not given as a common moral standard that provides ethical imperatives to all people regardless of their religious standing. The Reformed confessions testify that the moral imperatives of Scripture… Read More→
I always get nervous — better, agitated — when folks who do not belong to Reformed Protestant communions weigh in on Calvinism’s boundaries and definitions. It is a little like Canadians telling U.S. citizens about what the United States stand for — though, given our provincialism in the U.S. I often learn from Canadians, not… Read More→
If anyone wants evidence of the expanding meaning of redemption to the point of obscuring “the only redeemer of God’s elect,” take a look at Christianity Today’s list of 2012′s most redeeming movies: Our annual Most Redeeming list . . . represents the year’s best movies that include stories of redemption. Several feature characters who… Read More→
Put simply, the Bible speaks narrowly to the church but broadly to believers. This, at least, is the unexamined logic of neo-Calvinism. Two-kingdom proponents and neo-Calvinists both distinguish between the institutional church and its members. This distinction allows us to recognize that Christians properly do things that the church can’t do. Christians work as artists,… Read More→
In arguably his most important book, The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry writes the following about the Amish (in ways that neo-Calvinists might find instructive and inspirational): First, the Amish communities are, at their center, religious. They are bound together not just by various worldly necessities, but by spiritual authority. . . Whereas most contemporary… Read More→
Recent interactions with Dr. K. and his followers have confirmed at least to (all about) me that no end (or substance) is in sight for the fine tooth comb applied to two kingdom theology. In an earlier exchange, potential clarification of views went essentially nowhere. Dr. K. did admit finally that Misty Irons may not… Read More→
Should a Christian Be Worried about Riding a Bus Driven by a Non-Christian?
In roughly two weeks the missus and I will be returning to Turkey with students and faculty from the College. We spend a lot of time on a bus in order to go from Istanbul, down to Ephesus, out to Urfa, and back through the center of the country to Ankara and back to Istanbul… Read More→