The Little Friar

In my morning stroll, my mind drifted to that parable Jesus tells in Matthew 25 -- most often called "the parable of the sheep and goats". The King puts the sheep on his right hand and says this to them: "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." The sheep are shocked.  Consulting their memory they don't ever recall seeing the King on earth: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?" The King replies with t...

Perhaps the one act that marks off being Christian  (more than any other) is forgiveness . In a very radical (as in the root ) way, Christians (both corporately and individually) are marked as forgiven and forgiving people.  At the beginning of Christian life, Baptism dramatically enacts God's forward-giving and -accepting of us into the very triune life.  The past is "washed away".  All our guilt and shame is removed.  Or, more appropriately, the past is drowned  and left behind, floating corpse-like in the water.  In that way, baptism does what we humans can't otherwise do:  It breaks the power  of the past.  So when we emerge from the water, there's a "new life", wholly open to a future with God's Kingdom.  Thing is, forgiveness isn't left in those waters.  Each day, every moment, we're sustained by that very forgiveness.  "Forgive us our debts!", the community prays at multiple points in the day.  That's because w...

It's 5.45am.  I've been awake now for 3 hours, after tossing-and-turning the two hours before that.  In all, it's been a restless night.   So many things have my mind racing.  Not the least of which, how to respond to certain situations -- I'll spare everyone the details -- that initially wanted to release my anger.  Now, I'm far more sad.  Responding in anger, I think, is easy.  Anger is the emotive response our culture does well.  We know how to respond in anger to those who abuse or mistreat us, or those we know.  Finding myself emotively angry, even if justifyingly  so in others' eyes, isn't necessarily wrong.  It's all in what we Christians do  with such anger.   Because, let's be honest, anger controls us -- controls me  -- in ways we hardly want to admit.  We are taught that our anger (along with our happiness) are truer, more trustworthy emotions.  I shouldn't deny them, sublimate or control them, be...

A friend asked if I'd suggest the best bits of Barth's Church Dogmatics .  I still think there's nothing better than diving into the whole (the traditional T&T Clark set is pictured above), but all the volumes can be overwhelming, unless you have about 3 years to finish. So, that said ... Here are five sections, that, for me, are the great peaks of the Church Dogmatics , the sections where you meet Barth at his very best.  And these are the bits that I tend to revisit most often myself: from II/2:  §33 (on election) from III/2:  §47 (on time) from III/3:  §50 (on the nothingness) from IV/1:  §59.1 (on the Son in a far country) the IV/4 fragment (on baptism) So, what have I forgotten? Any other sections that stand out for you? Anything else that can be mentioned in the same breath as these great meditations?

In A Beautiful Defeat:  Find True Freedom and Purpose in Total Surrender to God , Kevin Malarkey sets out on his "pilgrimage" to highlight a simple truth -- that the most difficult struggles of our lives become the very points at which God delivers us.  Delivers us from a deadly love of ourselves, our world, and the very powers that control us and it.   He begins that pilgrimage with a confession most of us Christians are reluctant to make:  Our lives are a struggle.  And along the way, he highlights 10 markers for the journey, along with accompanying "action steps" and prayers for each marker.  In Part I, "A Call for Authenticity",  Malarkey looks at all the "dirty little secrets" of our lives, the very sources of our struggles and how we Christians are called to live "with" our struggles, not from them.  Part II outlines Jesus' "Call for Surrender".  In it, Malarkey talks about the beginning of our "mission" in...

In Blessed are the Balanced:  A Seminarian's Guide to Following Jesus in the Academy , two faithful theologians and pastors, Paul Pettit and R. Todd Mangum, attempt to set out "a balanced approach to healthy spirituality and rigorous scholarship" (p. 9).  In their view, so many students graduate seminary "with a head full of biblical and doctrinal knowledge, but with a heart that has grown cold to God" (p. 7).   They rightly point out the dangerous warning signs to a seminary education that promotes such a dichotomy (pp. 15-16). Christian faith requires what philosopher Michael Polanyi called "personal knowledge":  A knowledge gained by participation rather than mere observation.  Hence, Pettit and Mangum highlight that genuine "Christian maturity" finds its "balance" through "consecrating" study (chapter 2). And it's here that the over-arching metaphor for Blessed are the Balanced  becomes troubling.  "Balance...

I went to Duke Divinity School.  So I always have to remind myself that not everyone, as a result of their seminary training, was introduced to Karl Barth the way I was.  So it's important I think, considering the size of his magnum opus -- Church Dogmatics  -- to find ways working pastors might become familiar with Barth, even if just for learning his biblical and theological accuracy. So, where to begin? If you're a preacher and would like easier access to Barth's theology, here are my recommendations.  1.  My first semester at Duke, back in the day, we were required an introductory seminar in "The Church's Ministry".  Part of our reading for that semester was Karl Barth's  Evangelical Theology , a compilation of lectures delivered in 1962. Barth, of course, was Swiss.  So he spoke German.  But his English was meticulous.  Thus, this is an exciting and exquisite introduction to Barth's mature thinking.  Above all, it highlights th...

Why does the New Testament talk about repentance  as a "change", or to use St Paul's language, a "transformation", of our minds  (Mark 1.15, Romans 12.1-2)? Seems rather odd, doesn't it, when contrasted with the way lots of us understand the Cross.  For most of my life, I've heard that Jesus is the reason God looks at us differently.  Jesus is the reason God changes his mind about us.   In this view, God's default position toward us is one of judgment.  Our sin, it seems, is so hideous that God can't see beyond it.  Even Jesus, when he carries that sin on the cross, finds himself abandoned, "forsaken", by God (Matthew 27.46, quoting Psalm 22.1).   Now, though, when God looks at those "covered in the blood" of Jesus, he doesn't see our sins, he sees his Son.  Jesus, then, changes God's mind about us.  So in what way is repentance a changing of our  minds? I think this regular way of depicting the Cross has things backwa...

In his simply beautiful, Dancing on the Head of a Pen:  The Practice of a Writing Life , Robert Benson, the acclaimed writer of books on life and spirituality, sets out to answer a question often posed to writers:  "Can you tell me how to write a book?"  In the 12 chapters that compose this masterpiece, Benson describes his own "practice" of a "writing life".   He's quick to point out the debts he owes to other writers.  He's cobbled together his own practice from so many sources.  He's honed his craft utilizing the tools and tricks of good reading and writing over the years.  And that craft shines in the book with all the poetic intensity of a masterpiece from a master writer.  Standing on the shoulders of so many good writers, he's learned how to write by "dancing on the head of a pen" -- reminiscent of the medieval thinkers who spoke of theology as dealing with such intricate questions as how many angels might dance on the head...

"[God] knows the Nothingness.  He knows that which he did not elect or will as the creator.  He know Chaos and its terror.  He knows its advantage over his creature.  He knows how inevitably it imperils his creature.  Yet he is Lord over that which imperils his creature.  Against him, the Nothingness has no power of its own.  And he has sworn faithfulness to his threatened creature.  In creating it he has covenanted himself with it in solidarity.  He would rather let himself be injured and humiliated in making the assault and repulse of Nothingness his own concern than leave his creature alone in this affliction.  He deploys all his glory in the work of his deepest condescension.  He intervenes in the struggle between Nothingness and the creature as if he were not God but himself a weak and threatened and vulnerable creature.  This is how God himself comes on the scene." -- Karl Barth,  Church Dogmatics  III/3, p. 358...

" True respect for the mystery [of the incarnation] can express itself, among other ways, just in the attempt to understand it fully", according to Pannenberg.  As an undergraduate I delved into various theologies, hoping they could guide me in a quest better to understand the God of the Bible.  But it was not until I picked up my copy of Jesus:   God and Man  (1964) by  Wolfhart Pannenberg  for a series of seminars by our philosophical theology prof that I made significant progress.  Others had helped me to see the transcendence of God and the majesty of the creator, but Pannenberg brought me face to face with the manifestation of God's glory on planet earth.  It was here that the discovery of the historical Jesus became relevant to my expedition of  fides quaerens intellectum .  Instead of  assuming  Jesus' divinity, Pannenberg saw the task of Christology as offering reasons why one should embrace the divinity of Jesus. ...

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of "natural theology".  My mentor, Stan Hauerwas, said it best in his 2000 Gifford Lectures, With the Grain of the Universe :  Natural theology, far from giving us causal explanations ("god") for the universe, merely results in a theologia gloriae , leaving no room for the cross.   But here's my new idea:  What if, instead of the usual "first cause" arguments that we get with natural theology, it instead offers us a unification  of lots of different explanations?  In other words, what if all the various (strange) phenomena in science could be brought together in a wholistic way theologically, under the rubric of natural theology ? What if nature bears transcendence, but not in a "natural" way?  Not out of its own essence, since there's  no mere  uninterpreted nature, but only different constructed "readings" of nature (think Young's Double-Slit Experiment from your general physics da...

The Celebrate Recovery Bible  is one of those resources for which I had such high hopes.  As a pastor, a number of those persons I see in pastoral counseling and pastoral care have what John Baker calls "hurts, hang-ups, and habits".  Make no doubt about it, "sin is addicting", as Rick Warren says in the Foreward.  It's addicting because it offers us ways of dealing with past hurts, current hang-ups, and destructive habits in ways we misleadingly think we can control.  But sin ends up controlling us.  Whether it's alcohol, prescription drugs, porn, body dymorphic issues -- the list is nearly as endless and varied as the varieties of human living.  So Christians need  resources that help us maneuver, with grace and kindness, through those hurts, hang-ups and habits, in order to thrive with the abundant life Jesus has for us.   Most churches, of course, turn to programs like Alcoholics Anonymous.  So Baker and Warren's alternative -- Celeb...

There's an ancient philosophical adage that says, "Know Yourself". Joseph Hallinan's Kidding Ourselves:  The Hidden Power of Self-Deception explores all the ways in which that's so difficult.   What Hallinan advances seems, at first, to be counter-intuitive:  Far from being a defeating defect, self-deception has its benefits.  It even gives us the optimistic edge over dreary realists.  So there's a great deal of power, according to Hallinan, in not  knowing ourselves.  The power, according to the book, is found in our sense of control.  Our health, success and even survival depend on maintaining that sense of control in our lives -- and bolstering the hope that comes from that powerful sense of control.  Hallinan goes on to develop his thesis will a review of study after study.  Written in an accessible prose, Kidding Ourselves  wants to say, riding the pop psychology wave of science -- as if science has all the right answers -- tha...

One of the vows I take at ordination and reffairm each year as a brother in my religious Order, the Order of St Luke, is:  "I will seek the sacramental life".  Our "Rule of Life and Service" explores what that means in this paragraph:  " We are called to become aware of God's presence through eucharistic living.  We seek to live out our baptism into Christ’'s death and resurrection.  We receive with gratitude all that God has given us and offer it up to God.  We receive it again from God, transformed to use for the sake of the world.  We join the Church though the ages and around the world in recognizing that all time is in God's hands.  As we faithfully pray the Daily Office, and live so as to embody our prayers, we endeavor to live the sacramental life.  By so doing, we seek to be formed as a means of grace for all those we meet and serve in Christ's name". What does it mean for me  to live out that vow? I think it involves how I move ...

It's strange, I think, that so few theologians these days actually read John Calvin.  And, no, this isn't a joke.   I'm no Calvinist.  I barely make a good "protestant", whatever that may be.  But I do appreciate Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion .   No matter what you might think about Calvinist theology, the  Institutio  is one of the most remarkable theological works ever written.  And don't be taken in by those rumors about Calvin's gloomy austerity -- as far as works of dogmatics go, the  Institutes  is almost unrivalled for its sensitivity to scripture and its pervasive pastoral warmth.  If you want to learn what it really means to think theologically, you could hardly find a better guide than Calvin.  Even his mistakes are full of momentous significance; even in his worst moments, he is a magnificent figure who towers above most others. Take, as an example, the question that vexes so much protestantism. ...