From the Archives: How I Found a Way Out of My Spiritual Desert

3rd October, 2016

Acedia

Over the centuries, Christians everywhere have experienced an apathy of body, mind, and spirit. From the monk who keeps checking the time until the day is over to the college student who aimlessly surfs the internet all day, this apathy can affect anyone, regardless of their spiritual maturity.

This spiritual and physical apathy is called acedia. Acedia isn’t quite depression, as there are a few differences. Some might call it a “spiritual desert,” but it feels deeper than that. First, acedia is a distinct lack of feeling anything. There’s no happiness, no sadness, no anger – just apathy, about everything. Second, there’s no apparent cause. With depression, a cause – either biology or trauma – can be found. The person who suffers from acedia doesn’t care about anything, doesn’t care that he doesn’t care, and often doesn’t care to find a solution.

A Review of Walter Brueggemann’s “Money and Possessions”

Joe Johnson

30th September, 2016

Church

Money and possessions matter. They might not always come up explicitly in our ordinary, everyday conversations, but when Jesus tells His disciples to sell their possessions because “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,”¹Luke 12:34, NRSV. or bluntly says, “You cannot serve God and wealth,”²Luke 16:13, NRSV. His words are especially challenging for many of us because they ring deeply true, even if we usually avoid thinking about them. Nevertheless, we often try to keep faith and money in separate spheres of life. In his new volume, Money and Possessions, Walter Brueggemann insists that this is both unsustainable and undesirable: “We live in a society that would like to bracket out money and possessions (politics and economics) from ultimate questions. The Bible insists otherwise.”³p.12.

References [ + ]

1.	↑	Luke 12:34, NRSV.
2.	↑	Luke 16:13, NRSV.
3.	↑	p.12.

Eschatology and Real Life

Chris Wermeskerch

21st September, 2016

Church

Some people may wonder whether or not there’s a purpose to studying eschatology. Some may think that the study is a foolish endeavor that comes with a mild thrill from decoding symbols and numbers, or that they will get lost in a jumble of technical terms, leaving them to wonder if there’s anything to actually look forward to (you mean all of Revelation already happened?). Others, enamored with the Left Behind series, have sometimes gone off-track and retreated from the world. However, this is not what God imagined when God gave us insight into His eschatological vision for the world. If God, in Christ, is actively reconciling the world to Himself,¹2 Corinthians 5:17-21. and in that reconciliation He is freeing creation from its bondage instituted by Adam,²Romans 8. we must, in virtue of our participation in Him, let our eschatology affect the way we live.

References [ + ]

1.	↑	2 Corinthians 5:17-21.
2.	↑	Romans 8.

From the Archive: The Apocalypse Is Not About You

Matthew Hartke

19th September, 2016

Church

Like many people in my particular stream of evangelicalism, I used to believe confidently that I was living in the end times.

Holding my Bible in one hand and the daily news in the other, I could see clearly that they were talking about the same things: conflict in the Middle East, natural catastrophes, globalization, and the world wide web. It was all the fulfillment of prophecy. Once I started seeing the pattern, it was everywhere — not just in Daniel and Revelation, but throughout the Psalms, Prophets, and Gospels too.

Getting to Know Gregory of Nazianzus

Joe Johnson

26th August, 2016

Church

The history of Christianity is filled with important turning points. One of most far-reaching of these was the Arian controversy, which culminated in the councils of Nicaea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD). In the introduction to his exceptional book on the development of trinitarian theology during and after this period, Khaled Anatolios encourages contemporary Christians to look not only at the specific creedal formulations produced by these councils, but also at “how such formulations were interpreted in the immediate aftermath” of them.¹Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 1.

Among the various church fathers involved in the development of Nicene Christianity, many people know about Athanasius, the Alexandrian bishop who went into exile five times and probably did more than anyone else to ensure that orthodox Christian thought successfully resisted the Arian heresy.²John Behr, The Nicene Faith: Formation of Christian Theology, Volume 2 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 163,167. However, Athanasius was not alone. Fewer people are probably familiar with the group of theologians known collectively as the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus). Nevertheless, they also played an important role in interpreting and defending Nicene orthodoxy.³Bryan M. Litfin, Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction. 2nd Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 155. Today, we’re going to spend some time getting to know one of them.

References [ + ]

1.	↑	Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 1.
2.	↑	John Behr, The Nicene Faith: Formation of Christian Theology, Volume 2 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 163,167.
3.	↑	Bryan M. Litfin, Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction. 2nd Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 155.

Reviving the Church’s Imagination: A Review of Kevin Vanhoozer’s “Pictures at a Theological Exhibition”

Joe Johnson

12th August, 2016

Church

In the eyes of a fair number of Christians today, the imagination doesn’t seem to count for very much—or at least that’s how Kevin Vanhoozer describes things in the introduction to his new essay collection Pictures at a Theological Exhibition. He believes that many evangelicals unfortunately view the imagination essentially as “a factory for producing images of things that are not there” (p.18). “Maybe it’s important for telling good stories at night or writing gripping novels, but it’s not that important for theology,” they might say.

When the imagination isn’t considered theologically useful, it seems like the value of analytic activities like systematic theology tend to get over-emphasized while artistic expressions like poetry get marginalized. For Vanhoozer, though, both systematic theology and poetry have important roles to play in the Christian life. He writes, “We need both the clarity of crisp concepts and the intricacy of lush metaphors in order to get sound, life-giving doctrine” (p.13). His overall indictment is that many contemporary believers don’t think having a developed biblical imagination matters. In a world where “many Christians are [simultaneously] suffering from malnourished imaginations, captive to culturally conditioned pictures of the good life,” this is a sadly ironic state of affairs (p.20).

Trump, Clinton, and Jesus: Our Behavior During Election Season

David Marshall

5th August, 2016

Church

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who views this year’s Presidential election situation as “normal.” In the one corner, we have a celebrity with no political experience; in the other, we have a former president’s wife. Both candidates are incredibly controversial, which has led many to proclaim they will “simply” choose the lesser of two evils.

Except for a large group of Americans, Christian and otherwise, their choice isn’t evil. While Trump may have seemed like a joke at first, we are now seeing people who legitimately want him as president and view him as the best choice for making America “great again.” They applaud his ability to speak his mind and perceive him as being the next logical step to correct our Obama-stained nation. And for those who are in Hillary’s camp, the desire to be #neverTrump has convinced many to look at this woman (a woman running for President! Let that sink in for a moment) as someone who may actually have a chance to continue Obama’s legacy of civil rights and protection. Surely her appeals to minority demographics and attempts to ensure individual freedoms are something to vote for, right?

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