As I have shared a couple of times on the Two Cities, I have been reading Calvin’s Institutes this past school year and I finally finished. While I am no Calvin expert I am a huge fan of his work, so in addition to reading the Institutes this past school year I also frequently referenced Calvin’s commentaries in writing various papers. One of my favorite topics in theology and one that I enjoy tracking in...
As a general rule of thumb I try not to engage in Facebook or Twitter debates, but occasionally and by occasionally I mean often, I can’t help myself. Not all Facebook debates are doomed, I recently engaged in a meaningful back and forth with a friend on gun control that ended on a good note of understanding. However my number one pet peeve in debating others on serious issues is that frequently the topic at...
“Surely the Lord God will do nothing, But he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.”— Amos 3:7 Why do Christians no longer have prophets like Israel did in the Old Testament or why don’t we have apostles like the Church did in the New Testament? In my interaction with Latter Day Saints (LDS) it has been incredibly clear the centrality of the prophet and apostles in Mormonism. The reasoning, as far as I...
As I’ve shared on The Two Cities before I have been incredibly impacted by passages like Psalm 1, “Blessed is the man [who’s]… delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night… In all that he does he prospers.” This passage has incredibly impacted how I do ministry and how I live my life. If I want to be a fruitful Christian I ought to mediate on...
This fall I started rereading Calvin’s Institutes, which may be my favorite book. When I first seriously engaged with Calvin it was the most theologically formative book I had read (that may still be the case). Once while I was in a conversation with a Ladder Day Saint I quoted Calvin and was then asked “WAIT- you guys are Calvinists?” I thought it was kind of a funny question, but regardless of what you believe...
Nothing gets me excited like talking about the Kingdom of God- Porsches come pretty close, but not quite. Growing up I always thought the Kingdom of God was some far away thing that I would never see in this life. The Kingdom of God seemed like such a far distant thing that was promised for the end of time. However the more classes I took and the more books I read I became increasingly convinced...
As one of my good friends says: “’God loves all his children’ is somehow forgotten. But we paraphrase a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago.” Actually, Macklemore said that, and he’s not one of my good friends, but I like to think if he got to know me he would really like me—but I digress. I think, though, if Macklemore and I got frozen yogurt together he would tell me something along the lines of how...
In the first century Jewish believers were awaiting the day when the Messiah would come and defeat Rome, end the exile, establish the kingdom of God, and bring the new covenant. Jesus fulfilled all of those roles of Messiah, but not in the manner in which it was expected.
Sometime after I graduated High School, but before I went to college I was fervently trying to decide what I was going to do with my life. As the fog began to clear and I could see that the LORD was calling me to some type of ministry, I began to devour books and podcasts. Somewhere through piles of books and the mass amounts of podcasts, I came across an interview of Matt Chandler by...
Now that school is out for summer (cue Alice Cooper) I’m back home working for my church as a youth ministry intern. As we began to plan for the summer and what we should teach on I recommended books like Colossians and Philippians. You know, something short and sweet that would be really encouraging. So when my youth pastor called me and told me we were going to be teaching through James this summer, I...
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