-
THE INFANTILIZATION OF THE HUMAN RACE
-
SACRAMENTAL COMMUNITY ONE MORE TIME
A Note on Retrieving Church Just a note. In my last post, on sacramental community (“Retrieving Church”), I missed what might be the most important point. In the somewhat wonky center section of the essay (the part I suggested you can skip), I described a shift in medieval thinking about the body of Christ. In…
-
RETRIEVING CHURCH
Congregations For years I stayed put. As I like to tell the story, River Terrace Church, the congregation I served for 31 years, gave me an office—a great corner office facing the campus of Michigan State University—and I didn’t want leave. All I needed was that office. A salary in addition was more than anyone…
-
THE SHEPHERD SEASON
Christmas 2025 Merry Christmas in these unmerry times. Last night, Christmas eve, we once again sang Christina Rosetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter,” set to that gorgeous Gustav Holst tune. It begins, as you probably know, with snow, a sort of “White Christmas” from a different time and a different place: In the bleak midwinterfrosty wind…
-
TAKING EVIL SERIOUSLY
RETRIEVING A BIBLICAL VIEW OF EVIL We who grew Reformed pride ourselves in taking evil seriously. Total depravity, and all that. The doctrine of total depravity does make us wary of anyone who claims too much righteousness. We were taught that pious talk often serves as a cover for dishonorable motives. We expect people, religious…
-
HOLDING TO OUR HUMANITY IN INHUMAN TIME
“Wake Up Dead Man,” a movie by Rian Johnson and “It Was Only an Accident,” a movie by Jafar Panahi We are just back from the Boston area, where we walked where some of my ancestors walked, explored places we had long heard about but never visited, had thanksgiving dinner with friends, and attended the…
-
Retrieving Worship
Retrieving worship. Mostly when worship comes up in places like this blog, it’s the style of worship that’s on hand: worship wars, as they were once known. Where I lived, in the Christian Reformed Church, the wars were mostly about songs. Should one sing exclusively or, at least, mostly from hymnals? Or should the church…
-
THE ART OF HOLDING TOGETHER WHAT WANTS TO FLY APART: RETRIEVING THEOLOGY, JULIAN OF NORWICH
I’ve called this series of blog posts “Retrieving Theology.” It comes from two convictions. One is that old theologies have in them insights that remain crucial for understanding the truth about ourselves, our world, and God. We throw away these theologies at our peril. The second is that these same theologies are too often presented…
-
OF WIDOWS AND KINGS
Where the lectionary meets the events of the day I have been working on a post about Julian of Norwich, the 14th century theologian, as part of my “Retrieving Theology” series. I’ll post it in a week or so. Julian is a fascinating theologian. As Denys Turner argues, she’s not really a mystic, the category into…
-
OF GOD AND OCTOPUSES
ON GOD AND OCTOPUSES Retrieving God A few posts back I proposed to engage, along with you, my readers, in the work of theological retrieval. The challenge of theological retrieval is to recapture in a new time the excitement and insights of old theology. I tried to do a bit of that with the Reformed…