NT Wright’s new book, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, is due out this upcoming March. I was able to send Prof. Wright a few questions about this forthcoming book for the blog and he graciously agreed to answer them for The Two Cities. My questions are highlighted in bold: 1) Where does your new book, How God Became King, fit within your previous works? In one sense it simply fills in some...
Ask a Calvinist when he was saved and he might take you back—waaaay back—to “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). Nice one! Five points for being profound. But we Calvinists need not always rewind so far. Truth is, there was a time when we were not Christians. When we were dead in our sins, under Satan’s sway and God’s wrath, unwilling and unable to love the Lord (Ephesians 2:1-3). It’s OK to acknowledge...
I can recall growing up being told that I should avoid ‘looking like the World.’ The idea was more assumed than ever really explained. Consistently though I was told I was out of line in regards to music. At the Christian school I attended in Jr. High and High School we were told that electrical instruments were evil; the most vile of all being the drums. The problem was that I was a budding electric...
Before my title causes you to misunderstand my position, I want to say a few things. I like guns. I really do. It is part of the reason that I have a concealed weapons permit. More then that, I believe in self-defense. If someone enters my home to harm either myself or my soon to be wife, I will dispense the appropriate deadly force. Yet my belief in the use of force in one area...
Dear Bryan, You’re probably at the piano, writing songs about things you know nothing about, like love and loss. Or doing vocal warm-ups so you can audition for that blasted show choir. (Don’t bother. You won’t make it until your senior year, and when you do, you’ll become a bigger nerd than you already are.) I do hope you’ll find time for this letter. I’m writing from the future, of course, to warn you about...
During April 2009, Presbyterian pastor Tullian Tchividjian released a book entitled Unfashionable. The book was met with strong acclaim from a number of prominent Christians including J.I. Packer, Don Carson, Ravi Zacharias and surprisingly, Michael Horton. Perhaps the books greatest endorsement came from the pen of Tim Keller who wrote the book’s forward. Yet somewhere in the blogosphere, a wise man by the name of Tim Challies had a different take. At one point Tchividijian’s...
We have all heard the mantra by now. Week after week, in pulpit after pulpit, Christians are being called to renew the world that they live in. Called to “renew” or “redeem” everything from governmental structures to the very way we play sports. Leaving aside the fact that this call is often times very confusing from a purely pragmatic standpoint, we ought to consider how massive the theological presuppositions are behind such statements. Yes, this...
What does Christmas joy look like? And if so, how do we obtain it? This month, I’ve noticed that a lot of my Christmas reflections have sought to explore the emotional and spiritual dissonance that the soul can fall prey to during Christmastide. Personally, I do believe that nostalgia is not all evil, and that the warmth it provides is a phenomena that God has wired us to experience. But, when we contemplate Christmas JOY,...
Everyone knows how the Christmas story goes. As Stanley Hudson vehemently asserted in the most recent episode of The Office (8.10 Christmas Wishes) regarding the sensitivity to celebrate everything but Christmas during the Holidays: I want Christmas! Just give me plain-baby-Jesus-lying-in-a-manger Christmas! When our culture boils down the Christmas event it looks like this: baby Jesus in a manger. We’ve seen live nativity scenes and some of us have small-scale versions of it around our...
Today (Dec 13) I am flying home after my first term at St Andrews. It feels like time has sped up ever since I arrived. An hour seems a bit shorter than I remembered in the States. Whole weeks have felt like insignificant blocks of time that pass by all too quickly. Why does time seem so relative? For others I’m sure time might appear to creep along slowly. As is often said, “time flies...
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