I needed to hear this..

"Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God"

Karl Barth

This is a great quote for me. I really needed to hear this as I am prone to take life too seriously.

You Can't Mean Everyone?

"In the church of Jesus Christ there should be no non-theologians"

Karl Barth

Very Convicting

"Faith in God's revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo."

Karl Barth

Tradition(ed) Faith

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living"

- Jaroslav Pelikan

Some Definitions (vol. 1; pages 1-10)

Evangelical Christianity is often allergic to tradition.Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and anyone else doing that liturgy thing, we often believe, are merely trading the Bible for the traditions of men. In some instances this may be the case. But it doesn't always have to be.

Some Christians are very proud of the fact that they stick to the Bible and "the Bible alone!". They don't let philosophy, theology, church history or any other tradition get in the way of God's pure Word. Don't get me wrong. I'm evangelical. I understand why most people think this way. We're trying to protect the uniqueness of the Bible.

However, I think Christians are mistaken if they believe they can arrive at a mature and developed doctrine of the Trinity (for example) by merely opening the pages of their New Testament and never consulting the tradition of the church. This is not to say that the doctrine of the Trinity is not in the New Testament. This is to say that many apologists and theologians have fought long and hard, across the centuries, to communicate how God can be fundamentally one yet also three. Whether Christians know it or not, the minute they use the word "Trinity" and talk about God in terms of being and essence they are walking into the halls of tradition, borrowing extra-biblical terminology to describe a profoundly biblical truth.

Not all tradition is the enemy of biblical truth. In fact, I would go as far to say that on one level, you can never separate the two. We never experience biblical truth apart from the communicative channel of tradition.

Reflections on the Christian Tradition

I finally received all five volumes of Jaroslav Pelikan's Christian Tradition. I've already started to read the first volume.

What I plan to do is utilize this blog space to share some of Jaroslav's thoughts on the development of doctrine throughout the history of the church. Each chapter in the book is divided into smaller sub-sections. I hope to give some brief commentary on each sub-section.

Maasai Creed

The Maasai Creed The Maasai Creed is a creed composed in about 1960 by Western Christian missionaries for the Maasai, an indigenous African tribe of semi-nomadic people located primarily in Kenya and northern Tanzania. The creed attempts to express the essentials of the Christian faith within the Maasai culture.

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in the darkness, and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the Bible, that he would save the world and all nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from that grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.
We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love, and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.

Jaroslav Pelikan?

Jaroslav Pelikan. I hadn't really heard of him until a few days ago. Pelikan has been considered the greatest church historian of our century. He learned to read and type when he was two years old. He graduated from seminary and completed his PhD from the University of Chicago before he was 22! He taught over 40 years at Yale. He was raised Lutheran and converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in his very late years before he passed away.

I have recently ordered his magnum opus: a 5 volume set chronicling the doctrine of the Christian church from A.D. 100 to the present. It should be fascinating. I'll try to post my thoughts frequently.

If the Resurrection is true, nothing else matters. If the Resurrection is not true, nothing else matters.

- Jaroslav Pelikan