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Posts from the ‘Eschatology’ Category

Mar 16

24 Comments

A Relentless Divine Reach

In light of what’s going on in Japan, the theological controversies dominating the headlines these days can seem fairly trivial (to put it mildly), but I did want to post an intriguing quote from William Willimon’s Why Jesus? I’m not terribly interested in the question of whether or not Rob Bell believes in a hot (or long) enough hell to satisfy the demands of this or that understanding of orthodoxy, but I am, and have always been, very interested in (and dependent upon) the “relentless divine reach” of Jesus: Read more

Mar 3

46 Comments

On Rob Bell and Reading the Bible

While I am increasingly growing bored, annoyed, alarmed, and bemused by the furor around Rob Bell’s new book and the universalism it may or may not betray, I did want to pass along an excellent post that a friend sent me this  morning. I think that Jason Boyett is identifying a very important point about the nature of Scripture and how it relates to the theological positions we hold, whatever they might be: Read more

Feb 28

26 Comments

Fear Wins?

Today was an odd day in the blogosphere. It seemed like every third post that came through the reader had something to say, or linked to someone else who had something to say, about Rob Bell’s forthcoming book Love Wins, and whether or not Bell has placed himself beyond the pale by declaring himself to be a universalist (you can start here, if you like, and follow the link trails). Like nearly everyone else offering commentary on this book, I have not read it. The main reason for this is because the book hasn’t been released yet, which makes the hysteria around what it might say even more grimly amusing. It’s interesting to observe how threatening some people find even the possibility that Bell might not believe in a very specific conception of hell. Read more

Feb 25

17 Comments

Evil Will Have Nothing to Say

Two of my projects this week have been working on an article on suffering and the sovereignty of God, and preparing a class for this Sunday on the varieties of approaches to the problem of evil. Consequently, I’ve been raiding the bookshelf over the last few weeks in order to reacquaint myself with some of the authors and ideas that I leaned on more heavily during my university and grad school days. Read more

Feb 7

15 Comments

Compensation and Promise

From the “interesting things I’ve come across over the last week or so but haven’t had time to post about” file, comes Vancouver Sun religion columnist Douglas Todd’s latest piece on the increasing polarization of religion in Canada. The sociological data is in, and apparently we Canadians (and West Coasters, in particular) are increasingly abandoning the “ambivalent middle” when it comes to questions of faith. Whether it’s the existence of God or the nature of religious observance, we’re either really for it or really against it. Read more

Jul 22

14 Comments

On Conversion

Today, a friend passed along a couple of sourceless yet memorable quotes about conversion and the idea that being a Christian is about Jesus being our “personal” saviour (I’ve reflected a bit on the language of “personal relationships” with Jesus before here). Given that Mennonite Brethren issues have been on the menu here over the last little while, and given that the early MB’s were very interested (perhaps at little too interested?) with issues of personal conversion and assurance of salvation, I thought these would be worth passing along: Read more

Jun 14

32 Comments

The Naked Anabaptist 6: Justice

Well, I am moving at a downright glacial pace to the conclusion of my series on Stuart Murray’s The Naked Anabaptist. If anyone’s still following along, I’m on to the the sixth of Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptists: Read more

May 12

9 Comments

The Only Question That Matters

I’m still mulling over some of the excellent lectures I heard last week at Regent College’s Pastors Conference on Science and Faith. One lecture, in particular, focused on the “new atheists” (who are increasingly becoming, well, not new) and their often simplistic misunderstandings of the scope of science, the relationship between science and faith and the roles both play in our consideration and adoption of world-views (incidentally, I noticed today that David Bentley Hart has another wonderfully entertaining and insightful critique of the new atheism up over at First Things). The basic idea in the lecture (delivered by Denis Alexander) was familiar enough: just because science can explain one level of reality very well, it is not thereby equipped to explain or even suited to address every level of reality. All that was very good, if relatively standard stuff. Read more

Feb 23

1 Comment

Exile

I read very few novels during the six years I was in formal studies—there was too much required reading for my courses and, when combined with the ordinary demands of small kids and everyday life, there wasn’t much time (or energy!) left for reading fiction. One of the joys of seeing my university and grad school days receding in the mirror has been the ability to start reading novels again. It’s nice to be able to read a book without the expectation of evaluating it and demonstrating comprehension looming large in the background. Read more

Jan 11

46 Comments

A Religious Response

Some of the toughest questions I have been asked as a pastor are some variation of the following: Why is God allowing this to happen to me?  The life situations that prompt these questions can range (and have ranged) from the relatively insignificant to the profoundly traumatic and unsettling, but the brute existential fact underlying life on this planet is that things do not always—or even often—go as we want them to.  If one chooses to believe that a good God presides over a world that so frequently and sometimes agonizingly frustrates even the most basic human desires and aspirations, the questions of theodicy become even more acute.  If God is in control and he’s supposed to be so good, why all this misery?  Why any misery for that matter? Read more

Nov 3

42 Comments

A Disjunctive Prayer

On Sunday I preached from Revelation 21:1-6—a passage that I would guess is among the more well-known and well-loved in all of Scripture. It  speaks of a new heaven and a new earth where the old order of things has passed away. No more tears, no more death, no more pain… It is a world that seems too good to be true. It is a world that scarcely resembles the reality that Revelation’s first hearers/readers were familiar with. Or that we are familiar with. For as long as it has been around, there has been a disjunction between this text and the lived reality of those who read it, hear it, and hope for what it promises. Read more

Sep 15

27 Comments

A Pastorally Adequate Theodicy

Way back in my first year as a philosophy student at the University of Lethbridge, I took a class which dealt with the various philosophical responses the problem of evil (free will defense, best-of-all-possible-worlds defense, process-theology defense, etc). The class was taught by a flamboyant, bombastic, atheistic Jew who claimed, nonetheless, to be angry at God and to be determined to personally offend each one of us and force us to abandon our simplistic understandings of important questions like the problem of evil. I think he liked the idea of taking the first class to try to terrify and overwhelm a bunch of 18-19 year old kids (many of whom were “religious” in some form or another) who had never seriously thought about some of these questions. Maybe it made him feel important or smart or irreverent or superior. I don’t know. But at least initially, I wasn’t very impressed. It seemed like a rather adolescent and petulant display and I wasn’t much looking forward to the class. Read more

Apr 13

4 Comments

The Way God is Made

Those who believe in the immortality of the soul believe that life after death is as natural a human function as waking after sleep.  The Bible instead speaks of resurrection. It is entirely unnatural. We do not go on living beyond the grave because that’s how we are made. Rather, we go to our graves as dead as a doornail and are given our lives back again by God (i.e., resurrected) just as we were given them by God in the first place, because that is the way God is made.

All the major Christian creeds affirm belief in resurrection of the body. In other words, they affirm the belief that what God in spite of everything prizes enough to bring back to life is not just some disembodied echo of human beings but a new and revised version of all the things which made them the particular human beings they were and which they need something like a body to express: their personality, the way they looked, the sound of their voices, their peculiar capacity for creating and loving, in some sense their faces.

The idea of the immortality of the soul is based on the experience of humanity’s indomitable spirit. The idea of the resurrection of the body is based on the experience of God’s unspeakable love.

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

Apr 1

The Comb-Over and the Kingdom—Redux

Just over two years ago, while studying at Regent College in Vancouver, I posted the following tongue-in-cheek reflection on the theological significance of the comb-over.  My stats counter tells me that I am closing in on 1000 views for this post making it quite easily the most viewed post in the short history of this blog (and providing me with an unsolicited dose of humility—I’d like to think I’ve posted on more important and interesting topics, but the numbers don’t lie…). Of course it’s possible that these lofty (for me) stats are due, in large part, to the fact that the post seems to pop up pretty high on the list when “combover” is entered into a search engine, but I prefer to interpret them as unambiguous evidence of my obvious wit and theological dexterity.

So, in honour of approaching the millennium mark for this post, and because it’s April Fool’s Day (and what could be more foolish than attempting to stretch a few wispy strands of hair across an otherwise barren skull… perhaps writing about it?!), I thought I would re-post a lightly edited version of the original.  If nothing else, it provides a reminder that the theological graduate student is, indeed, a very peculiar animal. Read more

Mar 30

12 Comments

Citizens of Heaven

On Sunday I concluded a two month class on Philippians with a discussion of Philippians 3:20 and what Paul might mean when he referred to the church as “citizens of heaven.” This is one of those passages that has been badly misunderstood at various points in the history of the church and which continues to be misunderstood today. More often than not, I think, this passage has been taken to mean something like “this earth/this body are a kind of necessary evil that I must endure until I get to my real home which is heaven.” Simply put, I think this is wrong. Read more

Feb 23

4 Comments

Kingdom Living: Dynamic Disequilibrium

What follows is part three of an ongoing conversation between Mike Todd and myself about the economic theory of George Soros and the nature of the kingdom of God. Read more

Feb 21

24 Comments

Reflexivity: A Response

As promised, here is Mike’s response to the previous post. Read more

Feb 17

20 Comments

Reflexivity and the Gospel: A Conversation

A few weeks ago I received an email from Mike Todd (a friend made during my time at Regent College) who was wondering what I thought about an article by Hungarian financial speculator George Soros.  Now those who know anything whatsoever about me will undoubtedly consider this a somewhat strange request.  What on earth could I possibly have to say about an article on market theory?  And you would not be alone in your curiosity—the request caught me off guard as well.  To say that economic theory is not a body of knowledge with which I am well-acquainted or competent to discuss would be an exercise in spectacular understatement. Read more

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