Reflecting on God’s providence, John Webster writes: ‘God’s governance secures the creature’s freedom. If this fails to commend itself, it is because it contravenes a destructive convention according to which true freedom is indeterminacy and absolute spontaneity or it is nothing at all. To say that is to deny creatureliness. Freedom is existence in accordance …
The last few years have seen a fair share of books arguing that religion is the cause behind all that is wrong with the world. Although the Christian Church has undoubtedly had its hand in a number of morally dubious activities over the years, a more historical perspective suggests that this is only one side …
First as a pastor in Detroit and then as a seminary professor in New York, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) was an influential voice for Christian ethics in the twentieth century. The cross of Christ was a particularly important theme in his thought.1 In this passage from “The Christian Church in a Secular Age,” Niebuhr explains that …
Repentance, the First Key to the Kingdom—Reinhold Niebuhr Read More »
On Saturday November 19th 1836, Charles Simeon (1759-1836) was buried in a vault in the world-famous chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, England. Despite wanting a simple funeral, his was probably the most remarkable the town had seen. Every shop was closed and University lectures were suspended. An enormous procession saw eight Masters of colleges and …
We hear the Bible’s accounts of Jesus birth from Matthew and Luke a lot this time of year. Those accounts are so familiar that sometimes we assume there is nothing new to be gleaned from them. But here are 10 things you may not have known about the Bible’s Christmas stories. Around the year AD …
10 Things You May Not Know About the Christmas Story Read More »
Philip Schaff, the distinguished nineteenth-century church historian, calls the saying in our title “the watchword of Christian peacemakers” (History of the Christian Church, vol. 7, p. 650). Often attributed to great theologians such as Augustine, it comes from an otherwise undistinguished German Lutheran theologian of the early seventeenth century, Rupertus Meldenius. The phrase occurs in a …
In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity Read More »