Category: Uncategorized

  • Kierkegaard on Solitude

    It is an awful satire, and an epigram on the materialism of our modern age, that nowadays the only use that can be made of solitude is imposing it as a penalty, as jail. What a difference there is between those times when, no matter how secular materialism always was, man believed in the solitude…

  • Lindbeck on The Intepretive Schemes of Religion

    Religions are seen as comprehensive interpretative schemes, usually embodied in myths or narratives and heavily ritualized, which structure human experience and understanding of self and world. Not every telling of these cosmic stories is religious, however. It must be told with a particular purpose or interest. It must be used, to adopt a suggestion of…

  • Mission Precedes Ecclesiology

    To be authentic, mission must be thoroughly theocentric. It begins in God’s redemptive purpose and will be completed when that purpose is fulfilled. The God-given identity of the church thus arises from its mission. This order of priority is foundational. Yet for some sixteen centuries Christians have been taught to think of church as the…

  • The Wisdom of Youth

    “Why is it that you have to be at least thirty-five years old to run for President?” asked the Toluca Lake resident. Matthew proposed a constitutional change that would let kids vote and give grade-schoolers a shot at leading the free world, not that it doesn’t seem like we’re already there. One “good thing that…

  • Yoder – Beyond Legitimate Ends

    What Jesus renounced is not first of all violence, but rather the compulsiveness of purpose that leads the strong to violate the dignity of others. The point is not that one can attain all of one’s legitimate ends without using violent means. It is rather that our readiness to renounce our legitimate ends when they…