Sorting by

×
Skip to main content
Category

Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Reading the Catechism Harmonically

MARCH 2012: NOT MY OWN: REFLECTIONS ON THE HEIDELBERG by Scott Sherman Question 54: What do you believe concerning "the holy catholic church"? Answer: I believe that the Son of God through his Spirit and Word, out of the entire human race, from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers, protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life and united in true faith. And of this community I am and always will be a living…
Scot Sherman
March 1, 2012
Uncategorized

Donald Bloesch: Ecumenical Evangelical

JANUARY 2012: INTERVIEW by Richard E. Burnett Editors' Note Donald Bloesch (1928–2010) was a professor of theology at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary from 1957 until 1992. His major works— the seven-volume Christian Foundations series (InterVarsity) and a two-part systematic theology, Essentials of Evangelical Theology (Hendrickson)—are known to be accessible and scholarly. Gabriel Fackre, Abbot Professor of Christian Theology emeritus at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, Massachusetts, a longtime friend of Bloesch, shared some observations about Bloesch withPerspectives.…
Richard E. Burnett
January 1, 2012
Uncategorized

POETRY by Walter Wangerin, Jr.

For the Twelfth Night Sing softly the cherries, Red, red, sweet and good; Sing apples and oranges, The cinnamon food. Dance swiftly the cider, Spin more than you should; For liquor and laughter Will lighten your load. Declaim the roast turkey And riddle the sauce; Potatoes are stories Of fortune and loss. Pipe merrily carrots, Drum beets till they bleed; They root down to darkness Who started as seed. Oh, candy the greetings You give to your guests; The wassil…
Walter Wangerin, Jr.
December 16, 2011
Uncategorized

Still in the Weeds on Human Origins

C. John Collins has taken on the important task of explaining who Adam and Eve were in view of evolutionary theory—which he accepts, at least in its broad outlines. More importantly, Collins wishes to instill in his readers a firm confidence in Adam and Eve as the historical "headwaters" of the human race, and so retain the biblical metanarrative of creation, fall, and redemption. In other words, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? is an apologetic for the traditional view…
Peter Enns
December 16, 2011
Uncategorized

One Hundred Pages Waiting

Thirty-three years ago I broke a promise. I told a friend leaving for the summer that I would write to her. Six weeks later I faced her accusing smile, digging for excuses. Instead, I shoveled myself into an epic act of atonement; in penance I would deliver a one-hundred-page letter. I strapped myself to the task, determined to grind out every page, to pay for my omission and prove to all doubters I could. Starting with profuse and drawn-out apology,…
Robert Vander Lugt
December 1, 2011
Uncategorized

Everything That Rises

Like penicillin, silly putty, and LSD, leavened bread was most likely discovered by accident. Most sources say the Egyptians were probably the first to experience it. Wild yeast from the air mixed with the grain-andwater dough mixture that constituted the first, cracker-like bread. Gluten and carbon dioxide by-products from this reaction formed bubbles in the elasticized dough, and voilà—a risen loaf. My own discovery of yeast breads bordered on accidental. My junior year of college I spent a semester in…
Alissa M. Goudswaard
December 1, 2011
Uncategorized

In Search of a General Secretary

Beginning about a year ago, it was my privilege to serve on the search committee for a new general secretary for the Reformed Church in America (RCA). The eventual result of our search was the nomination of Rev. Dr. Tom De Vries, and his subsequent election by the General Synod of the RCA last June. Enough time has elapsed now for me to offer these first reflections on the search committee process. Right off, let me say that I have…
Daniel Meeter
December 1, 2011
Uncategorized

Black Bag Theology

I'm Reformed for a bunch of reasons. My reasons aren't the same now as they were back when I was an arrogant eighteen-year-old, when I wielded a theological hammer in the shape of a tulip. It's taken living a while. It's taken being in ministry for fifteen years. It's taken therapy. And what I've come to is the sober realization that the rabbit hole goes far deeper than my theological texts could have shown me. The great Harvard poet Robert…
Chuck DeGroat
December 1, 2011
Uncategorized

An Eagle’s Cry

It was five in the morning, the time in his experience—between four and five—when the condemned was wakened to be led out. It was always five in the morning that his stomach independently from his thoughts remembered another time, another country. He was only thinking of the lone, little goldfish he had put in the horses' drinking trough. His grandson had won it with a well-placed tennis ball at the Alachua County fair. There was no way he could tell…
Lawrence Dorr
December 1, 2011