Subversive Christian Unity

This is, as you see, the Engel scale, which tries to explain and gauge individual progress on the spiritual journey. Looking at it this morning I asked myself whether the same scale might apply to churches as well as individuals. I sometimes think of alarming questions, and this one alarmed me very much. What if there are church congregations that are nominally Christian, but in their preaching and teaching, and in the understanding possessed by the members, fall somewhere below ten on the scale? If there are some churches that are pre-Christian on this scale, but calling themselves fully Christian, then that has big implications for church unity. How can we unify with a church that is something other than what we ourselves mean when we say "Christian"? For it is clear that we and they would mean different things by it, if we are above and they are below step ten. In the hypothetical pre-Christian churches I am talking about, disciple making would be absent...

Here is something I had not seen before: an argument that creation of the earth in six days, of twenty-four hours each, does not conflict with modern science. See the slides linked below. How the argument works: Due to relativistic time dilation, the amount of time seen to pass on the earth would be variable. It would depend on the location of the observer. Six days from God's external point of view could well be long millions of years when seen from the local time rate perspective, on earth. The Bible's time scale shifts then, after telling us about that initial stage of creation, to talking about earth days, after Adam shows up to observe days from our perspective. Other possible explanations exist as to why Genesis explains things as it does, some of them at least as plausible. But insofar as this new, highly scientific approach adds one more such possibility to the discussion, it strengthens the overarching point that people have been making all along. A woodenly liter...

The man is to lay down his life for the woman. This means that all his life decisions are framed with her safety and wellbeing in mind as matters of highest priority. I was called to task for something I wrote lately . The charge against me was that I had taken too high a view of Christian marriage. The particulars of the charge were as follows. Surely, with all the dysfunction and divorce going on, I was too idealistic about marriage and the good it can, and should, produce. I was thus too negative toward those who opt for alternatives to marriage, such as living together or having a long term affair. I deny the charge. The divorces that I see involve violations, whether by one spouse or both, of the way marriage is intended to work. I heard of a case where a husband divorced his wife because of her mental health issues. Whither, then, "in sickness or in health"? The only way such a divorce could at all be conceived of as a loving act is if he were the cause of her m...

Grace is given to us not so that we can excuse our own sinful purposes but so that we can fulfil God's higher and better purposes for us. The misuse of God's grace to excuse (not only forgive) things God calls sin is the problem leading to schism. "Go and sin no more" turns into "go and sin."  Love does not mean that one is infinitely indulgent. God is infinite in love, but his word promises us either his mercy or his wrath. Of course it does not diminish the goodness of God that some people will not like their eternal outcomes. God is good, whether or not you choose to join into that with him. We risk doing the sinner no good,  but harm instead, when we assure him that whatever his moral failings, God's grace is sufficient for him. While saying so is true in a very real sense, it is dangerously misleading if the statement is not carefully qualified. Antinomianism is false, after all, and it comes to us speaking those very same words. It is dange...