As recounted in my last post, there is real value in exploring your tradition’s response to theological questions. This being the case, I thought that I should take a dose of my own medicine. To this day, despite my Reformed leaning, I have never actually spent any serious time reading Calvin. After challenging you all to spend more time studying the theologians that have impacted your beliefs, it seemed only right that I would begin

Avestan was tired of the desert. Not the most astrologically-minded of the magicians, Avestan had wandered far longer than he had intended—not that any intend to wander to begin with, but once one starts wandering, it is hard to stop. Avestan had begun wandering one day when he tired of looking up all the time, and decided the stars really had nothing to say to him. Everything he needed was on his camel, his back,

Recently I have been thinking about the topic of tribalism. By tribalism I mean adapting one’s behavior and thinking to accord with the group of people with which we are associated. I have been thinking a lot about this issue not because I am thinking about becoming a St. Louis Cardinals fan (my fellow Cubs fans will be happy to hear). Rather I have been thinking about tribalism in the context of baptism and the

The final tenet of the Calvinist TULIP doctrinal statement is the “Perseverance of the Saints.”  This teaching contends that after having undergone a genuine conversion experience, a Christian, being regenerated by the Holy Spirit, cannot turn from the faith and forego that seal of salvific assurance, having joined the elect.  Christ stated that no one can be snatched out of the hand of God [John 10:28-29].  Since it requires irresistible grace and unconditional election for

Headlines of religious and secular sites have abuzzed with the recent news of Pope Francis’ opening of the Holy Door of the Vatican in proclamation of the Jubilee of Mercy (also known as the Year of Mercy). Pope Francis speaks of this Year of Mercy as a “revolution of tenderness,” a subtle yet strong act against the violence and the suffering of our age. During this Year of Mercy, the Holy Father urges us to

Oh sure there’s the baby shower But after that there just the waiting Well, and the nursery decorating And the putting things in order And the bag for the sudden flight And all the fears for the future And all the perhapses of the past And all the pushing pushing push And the breathe I know it hurts When all you need to decorate Is fresh straw and a star window Your hospital births lambs

In my favorite scene of the Jim Carrey flick Bruce Almighty––after Bruce has been given Divine powers only to abuse them, then hit rock bottom and seek reconciliation with his girlfriend––Bruce asks God [played by Morgan Freeman]: “How do you make someone love you without affecting their free will?” To which Morgan Freeman responds, “Welcome to my world, son.  You find an answer to that, you let me know.” For the Reformed Calvinist, this problem

I grew up in a small, quiet, unnoticed town in Michigan. Tucked in a corner of that town, hidden in the hills and woods, is a small, quiet, unnoticed church. You probably wouldn’t find it unless you were looking for it or happened to live on the humble, residential road that hosts it. On a crowded Sunday, it might boast about fifty attendees. Compared with the mega-churches, the televised multimedia worship experiences, and the intrepid

These are hard times. All we have to do is look around us and we see that our world is in serious trouble. Where can we turn, where can we go? People try to blame guns, abortion laws, or terrorism. But until we see ourselves in Christ as the solution to these problems we will never make any progress. We are not helpless. When it comes to sin, nothing is really new under the sun.

Do the best things only happen when we pray? If so, from your lips to God’s ear; only you hear me. For every Rachael there’s a Leah For every Lot a wife and daughters For every Shunamite woman a Shunamite woman So we sit in the darkest place at the darkest time Rendering to Caesar our inheritance Marrying and giving in marriage Watching sheep and stars by night And Christ comes when nobody is looking

On the Rich Man and Lazarus Our whole life is one of choices, and they all have consequences. Yet at the same time we did not choose to be male or female, short or tall. We did not choose to be born on the day or century we were born.  We are here at the corner of two streets, Lemon Creek and Garr, because we choose to be and yet we did not choose for

By Blake Hartung The last book of the Bible, the Revelation (or Apocalypse) of John, has been a consistent source of mystery and bewilderment for Christians since its composition in the last decade of the first century. This is of course, shouldn’t be too surprising; we are, after all, talking about the book that has given us such bizarre tableaux as a pregnant woman clothed in the sun pursued by a dragon, four colorful horsemen,

This article marks the close of my bi-weekly writing at Conciliar Post. It has been a joy to contribute and discuss the faith here. I hope I have produced a coherent framework in these articles for viewing all five branches of Christianity as one common faith to be embraced and learned from across denominations and lines of tradition. In my final regular article, I have no intent to malign Protestantism since I myself continue to

The Calvinist teaching of Limited Atonement is an understanding based upon a penal substitutionary model of Christ’s accomplishing salvation on the cross.  That is, salvation is understood to consist in Christ receiving God the Father’s wrath and punishment on the cross in the place of mankind, which results in a legal acquittal in the sight of the Father of people who accept this substitutionary gift.  However, since not everyone will accept this gift and be

Remember Lot’s wife? She used to go to the market on the corner And on Tuesdays she played bridge With the girls in her play-date group – If wine glasses are playing cards, anyway Or sometimes they’d have margaritas With a nice thick salt rim Remember Lot’s wife? Three days a week she drove the carpool Took a minivan of kids to school And even, in summers, to the pool Dance classes on odd days

Without the Bible—and more specifically, the New Testament—the Christian faith would not exist today. This is a fact that Christians of any branch would readily agree upon. But how did we get this collection of 27 New Testament books?1 How do we know that we have the correct books—that we haven’t left any out or included any spurious ones? To frame the question more poignantly, can we trust the collection of books we call the

A dying Christmas tree in the living room In the front window so passersby can watch it die Has a pile of disguised boxes beneath it Each with another reminder of my mortality Here is a box that reminds me I stink to high Heaven Here a box so I can drink my troubles away Here a box to keep dung from dungarees There are boxes of distraction Gift cards for my lack of openness

I have many thoughts and explanations to put forth on this topic so I will get right to it. THE DOCTRINE OF UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION I cite John Calvin to articulate what Reformed Christians refer to as “Unconditional Election” today: In conformity, therefore, to the clear doctrine of the Scripture, we assert, that by an eternal and immutable counsel, God has once for all determined, both whom he would admit to salvation, and whom he would

Luther and Lutherans have the market cornered on justification, sola fide.  Calvin and Reformed thinkers spend all their time trying to elaborate on the notion of election (I wish I had a nice Latin word for it, but I digress).  Baptists, well I guess it would be sola Scriptura, at the very least something about the individual conscience of the believer and reading Scripture.  These are all traditions that I have been shaped by in

In a recent article for Conciliar Post, Eastern Orthodox Ben Cabe hinted (though did not explicitly argue) that Protestantism as a whole is a heretical movement. Cabe argued that Protestantism is divorced from Apostolic Succession and is thus separated from the faith passed down by Christ. In order to make his case, his analysis of what is heretical hinges on Church history, tradition, and liturgy. In this past month’s issue, Christianity Today ran a cover