It’s as if Paul could foresee the misuse, how many would mistake this verse for a social program, even the key verse in all of his writings. So he writes: “I mean…..,” to point out what he means (Galatians 4:1). 1. It is not a social program. Paul understood the world was coming to an […]
Forde got out of Biblicism; you can, too (4)
“Once justification had again been reasserted in radical fashion, it was natural that heavy pressure would be brought to bear on the received understanding of law. John Agricola rightly sensed that justification by faith could not simply be combined with the older idea of law as an eternal order, still evident in some of Philip […]
Medjugorje Marian visions – not out of the blue
“Hapsburg Austria occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878, terminating four centuries of Muslim Ottoman rule. They then decided to regularize the position of the Catholic Church in their new province by restoring an episcopal hierarchy. But in Herzegovina, the Franciscans had tilled this particular corner of the Lord’s vineyard alone, under Muslim persecution, and without bishops, for […]
Forde got out of Biblicism; you can, too (3)
“[The two kingdoms doctrine’s] great contribution to the problem of social ethics is exactly to strip men of their mythologies. For the very fact that it insists that whatever other Kingdom there is, the eschatological one comes solely and absolutely by God’s power alone means that the only real task for men is to repent, […]
On war and peace: Luther & Niebuhr say the same thing
“There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.” Reinhold Niebuhr, Christianity and Crisis, 1941. “What men write about war, saying that it is a great plague, is all true. But they should also consider how […]