Here’s an abrasively honest passage from a good, little, recent introduction to Christian faith I’d been meaning to read for a while and finally got to. The church, rather than being an association of like-minded people, is more likely to be a group of people you would never choose to be friends with if they […]
It is most likely Paul himself who privileges this name [ekklesia] for those Christian communities, which otherwise might have been much like other Hellenistic supper clubs and like-minded associations. And his privileging of this name had a reforming, pastoral intent. Paul’s extensive use of the word — sometimes in the plural for the various assemblies; sometimes in the […]
Yet it is not we who are to build, but God. No human being builds the church, but Christ alone. Anyone who proposes to build the church is certainly already on the way to destroying it, because it will turn out to be a temple of idolatry, though the builder does not intend that or […]
Christianity’s First Doctrine (logically, not historically) the doctrine of God’s Trinity is not some further teaching, additional to a teaching which would count as a ‘doctrine of God,’ but simply is the Christian doctrine of God, the Christian account of how the word ‘God’ is to be used. from Easter In Ordinary (1988), 267, n21; […]
a failure to give appropriate attention to the vicarious humanity of Jesus means that everything, the whole of the Christian faith, life and ministry are now cast back on us to do. At this last moment, it turns out, we are dependent on our faith, our worship, our obedience and so on, rather than on Jesus’ response […]
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