Tag: Church
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Two Kinds of Ecclesiocentrism, Ecclesiocentrism vs. Liberalism, Church Discipline, and More
I have called myself “ecclesiocentric” but I think the meaning of the label often gets confused with other things. If ecclesiocentrism means cultural and political retreat (eg, pietism), I want no part of it. An ecclesiocentric church will assume the center. An ecclesiocentric church will operate out of and build upon the reality that Jesus…
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Political Theology and the Principalities and Powers – Quotes and More
From Oliver O’Donovan’s book The Desire of Nations, summarizing the meaning of Christendom: The more the political character of Israel’s hope engages us, the more we need to know how it has actually shaped the government of nations. The more the problem of our own modernity engages us, the more we need to see modernity…
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Worship before Warfare. Liturgy before Dominion. Consecration before Conquest.
An X post rom January ’25: Before Joshua could conquer the land of Canaan militarily, politically, and culturally, Abraham had to conquer it liturgically. Abraham toured the land of Canaan, building altars, places of worship, which laid the foundation for the conquest to come. Liturgy is the basis of dominion. The key to cultural transformation…
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The Reformed Tradition and the Civil Magistrate
Presbyterian PSA: The Westminster Confession of Faith (revised 1788) teaches that the civil magistrate has the duty to “maintain piety, justice, and peace” in society. Obviously, the definition of these terms is to be derived from Scripture. The office of civil magistrate exists under God, “the Supreme Lord and King of all the world,” and…
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The New Right Meets Ecclesiocentrism
The goal of Christian cultural engagement is not to anger the left or “own the libs” or “drink liberal tears.” The goal is to be faithful to Scripture in all of life. Yes, a by-product of faithfulness will be transgressing progressive dogmas. And when that happens, the attitude of the New Right to the left’s…
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Life in Negative World (notes)
We recently had a men’s discussion of Renn’s Life in Negative World book. I really liked the book, though it is far from perfect. Obviously Renn is a sociologist not a pastor or theologian, but I still thought some of his interaction with Scripture could have been deeper. He really missed a lot of opportunities to bring…
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CREC Polity
I was recently asked if the CREC is Presbyterian. This is part of my response: It’s a very attenuated version of presbyterianism — small “p” presbyterianism, I suppose. We certainly are presbyterian in a fundamental sense because we have presbyteries and they perform many of the roles traditionally granted to presbyteries (eg, appeals court, examining…
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Easter Miscellanies
Here are some things that have been on my mind during this Easter season: In the sermon on 4/7/24 on Matthew 27:57-28:20, I made the assumption that the guards at the tomb where Jesus was buried were Roman. The question was asked afterward if they could have been Jewish guards. The text is not clear…
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