Torrey Gazette is the combined work of everyday Christians blogging on books, family, art, and theology. So pull up a seat and join us. Family Table rules apply. Shouting is totally acceptable.
All in Theology
"Deep Comedy," according to Leithart, is something that can only be achieved in and through the Christian worldview. What is "deep comedy?" it is the world that the Bible says that we inhabit. The Bible, through the communication of the Trinitarian God, teaches that creation (the world we inhabit) need not be a perpetually decaying world.
The pursuit of peace apart from Jesus (the Prince of Peace) or His gospel (the gospel of peace) is doomed to failure because it (the pursuit of peace apart from Christ), just like the Galatian Judiazers, is based on works of the law which cannot bring true peace.
Far from disparaging the commands of God by ignoring them (like many reformed/pietists) or calling people to earn their salvation through adherence to a moral code (like Moral Therapeutic Deists), Smith shows that the purpose of the law is to subvert any claim on autonomy and direct the community of the church into a lifestyle that is aimed at the way the world is truly suppose to be; aimed at the Kingdom.
In the end, Deviant Calvinism isn’t that deviant at all. Whether or not it is Scripturally deviant remains an entirely other matter.
17 “Son of man, when the house of Israel was living in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds; their way before Me was like the uncleanness of a woman in her impurity. 18 Therefore I poured out My wrath on them for the blood which they had shed on the land, because they had defiled it with their idols. - Ezekiel 36:16-18
In our Adamic nature we are prone to chafe under our limits (for this was how Satan tempted our parents in the garden: "You will be like God"), however, when we rest in the sovereignty of God we find that we can not only accept our role as limited creatures but actually rejoice therein!
A responsive & corporate liturgy takes the focus away from the individual and paradoxically strengthens the individual. Conversely, a liturgy that caters to the individual ironically isolates the individual in the experience they are having.
This prophecy is relevant. The whole fabric of Old Testament prophecy revolves around the concept of God giving His people a new heart and Spirit.
6 Utterly slay old men, young men, maidens, little children, and women, but do not touch any man on whom is the mark; and you shall start from My sanctuary.” So they started with the elders who were before the temple.
While truth in the form of theology & philosophy is very helpful it is stories that ultimately grab us! In fact it is stories that grab us first as children before we even have the capacity to understand theological treatises. Christians should not shy away from stories but instead embrace them and learn to tell them better!
Much of our post-modern world is very inconsistency in the way its views hold together. People aren't taught to think how economic policy and gay mirage hold together and are connected. That's why you can have "conservative" pundits claim that all they care about is the economy and want to leave the "moral" issues out of politics.
Bible verses in themselves do no persuaded and change minds. They certainly don't alter ingrained theological patterns. It is the interpretation of these verses that define theology and it is these crucial interpretations that are effected by our presuppositions.
Unfortunately, most of the time people hear or see the word "apocalypse" today they immediately associate it with some sort of catastrophic, end of the world, event that's portrayed in movies like I Am Legend or the forthcoming Left Behind movie. This is unfortunate considering the menial amount of work required to clarify such confusion.
The Reformers did not exhaust the fullness of justification. There is indeed a robustly corporate view of justification that the Reformers–rightly preoccupied with Romish theological abuse–simply did not address explicitly in the 16th century. In this sense, Wright needs to be read and listened to attentively.
First, our love for God's law is included by election. Second, this election is both corporate and individualistic.
