• Why Be Good?

    So a Christian who lives in this confidence toward God, a knows all things, can do all things, undertakes all things that are to be done, and does everything cheerfully and freely; not that he may gather many merits and good works, but because it is a pleasure for him to please God thereby, and he serves God purely for nothing, content that his service pleases God. On the other hand, he who is not at one with God, or doubts, hunts and worries in what way he may do enough and with many works move God.

    -Martin Luther, Treatise on Good Works

  • The Bible Makes Sense

    …anyone who calmly and patiently reads the Bible as a whole may very well leave many questions about the details open, yet he soon learns to distinguish between where the path is leading and where it is not. But this unequivocal character is not a fact to be grasped by historical or abstract hermeneutical methods. In order to be perceived, it presupposes contemplation of the Gestalt as a whole and, thus, a way of looking in terms of the whole: within the living context of faith and Church.

    Benedict XVI, Dogma and Preaching

  • Eschatology, Eschatology, Eschatology…

    If Christianity be not altogether thoroughgoing eschatology, there remains in it no relationship whatever with Christ…. All that is not hope is wooden, hobbledehoy, blunt-edged, and sharp-pointed, like the word `Reality’….But to wait is the most profound truth of our normal, everyday life and work, quite apart from being Christians…. We ask nothing better or higher than the Cross, where God is manifested as God. We must, in fact, be servants who wait for the coming of their Lord.
    Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans

  • Don’t Be An Imaginary Sinner!

    If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that through God’s glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.

    - Martin Luther, A Letter  to Melanchthon Letter no. 99, 1 August 1521,

  • Godly Capitalism?

    “We should only go into markets where we can make a significant contribution to society, not just sell a lot of products. These things, along with keeping excellent as an expectation, these are the things that I focus on.” – Tim Cooke, Apple CEO

  • Which Presidential candidate’s record includes cutting taxes, keeping health care in the private sector, and being tough on terrorism?

  • Joe Scarborough: “Huntsman was the only small gov’t conservative in the race.”

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  • Why Presidential Elections Matter

    I was having dinner with some friends the other night when the question arose, “How important is the Presidency anyway?”. The person that asked it wondered why they were inundated for two years straight with presidential politics on every imaginable media outlet. It’s seemingly inescapable. Do we really need to focus on presidential elections this much? Is it just some deranged cult of personality hero fetish? Do we need to tune all of this stuff out?

    No, we don’t.

    Several people of different political persuasions catalogued various policy achievements of past presidents, money spent, judges appointed and wars fought. But the presidency is much more than a list of policies enacted or decisions made. It’s an institution, one that helps Americans know who we are, what we want, and what our hopes and dreams are.

    This time around around we have seen a Republican party torn. Republicans don’t like Obama for a number of reasons, and Willard Mitt Romney seems like the man to beat him. And yet, Romney isn’t coasting to an easy coronation. There are social conservatives who don’t trust his reliability on abortion and gay marriage. There are fiscal conservatives that think Romney will be the return of the Bush era big government conservative with a vengeance. There are libertarians that worry about expansive government overreach that will continue to erode what little is left of the Constitution’s authority. There are dovish conservatives who worry that we just can’t handle another decade of military adventurism and nation building.

    It looks as if this discordant host will not prevail and that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee. But this is not a foregone conclusion. Five million dollars in Newt’s coffers certainly make things more interesting (interesting is of course a clinically neutral term). But whether or not the five million dollars the former Speaker of the People’s House will make the difference in the coming weeks, the subsequent elections still matter.

    The exit polls in New Hampshire revealed something interesting. Ron Paul’s supporters said that they would support Romney as the nominee if he wins, but that they wanted to send a message. They wanted to send a message. Presidential elections matter and they get enough media coverage to make us want to be Amish and swear off social media for a reason. Presidential elections give us a chance to regularly revisit our ideals as a people. They give us all together as Iowans, Alaskans, Pennsylvanians and Californians to decide what makes us a people, and what would serve to make us a more perfect union. The primaries do divide us, but they also unite us. They help us to identify what are the most important questions, and what the answer to those questions are. True in the end when November rolls around we only get two choices, but those choices are the product of a refining process, one that winnows it down to what matters most to the most of us.

    So this election season, don’t tune out. Tune in and make your voice heard. The conversation won’t be the same without it.

  • The Baptism of Jesus

    “What happened to Jesus at his baptism…was given its counterpart in the church when the Holy Spirit sent by the Father in the Name of the Son came down upon the Apostolic church, sealing it as the people of God redeemed through the blood of Christ, consecrating it to share in the communion of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and sending it out into the world united with Christ as his Body to engage in the service of the Gospel.”

    -T.F. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation

  • Apologetics Made Perfect In Weakness

    When we read the apologetics of the second and third centuries, can we altogether avoid the painful impression that what we have here—as though the persecuted can only regard themselves as spiritually undeserving of the external pressure brought to bear on them—is, on the whole, a not very happy, a rather self-righteous, and at any rate a not very perspicacious boasting about all those advantages of Christianity over heathen religion which were in themselves incontestable but not ultimately decisive? In these early self-commendations of Christianity a remarkably small part is played by the fact that grace is the truth of Christianity, that the Christian is justified when he is without God, like Abraham, that he is like the publican in the temple, the prodigal son, wretched Lazarus, the guilty thief crucified with Jesus Christ. Instead, we have the—admittedly successful—rivalry of one way of salvation, one wisdom and morality with others, of a higher humanity consummated and transfigured by the cross of Christ with a decadent and defeated humanity which has rightly grown weary of its ancient ideals. How strangely did a man like Tertullian see the danger which threatened at this point, and at the same time never really see it at all, but actually help to increase it. And to the extent that the fact that grace, that Jesus Christ, is the truth of Christianity was never completely concealed in the doctrine and proclamation of the Church, did not the fact that Christianity is the special religion of grace and redemption easily appear to be its final and supreme advantage, although it was robbed of its real meaning and power to convince by the fact that the Church was not content with grace?

    -Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.2.17

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