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The Lord’s Prayer: Desiring God’s Will

9th September, 2016

Matthew 6:10

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Luke 11:2

Your kingdom come.

There are many different wills in the world that we can desire. First and foremost, we can desire our own wills; I can decide that what I want is what is best for me to do. I can decide to follow the advice of those wiser than me, which is not always a bad idea. I can do what people around me do. Or I can desire that God’s will be done in the world and in my life. Why should we do that, beyond the simple answer of “because he’s God?”

Grappling With Grief: A Review of “What Does the Bible Say About Suffering?”

Joe Johnson

7th September, 2016

Theology

The problem of pain and suffering is one of the more vexing – and universally experienced – mysteries in the Christian life. It’s an important subject that should always be approached with gentleness and respect. Thankfully, Brian Han Gregg, who teaches biblical studies at the University of Sioux Falls, manages to faithfully embody both of these traits in his new book, What Does the Bible Say About Suffering?. Gregg thinks that believers trying to make sense of suffering should do so in deep conversation with Scripture. After all, he writes, “Christians are people of the Word. We are convinced that God has disclosed important truths to us through the Scripture.”¹pp.13-14.

Therefore, it only makes sense that followers of Jesus should turn to the poems, narratives, and letters of Scripture to help understand the world’s brokenness and brutality. Despite wholeheartedly agreeing that Christians should seek out the Bible for its wisdom, he differs with those who think that Scripture contains a single, straightforward explanation to the problem of suffering. For Gregg, “The Bible includes a number of different approaches [to suffering]… and we do ourselves and the Bible a great disservice by adopting a one-size-fits-all approach.”²p.14.

References [ + ]

1.	↑	pp.13-14.
2.	↑	p.14.

From the Archive: Hamlet and the Myth of Redemptive Violence

David Marshall

5th September, 2016

Culture

Revenge is a beautiful yet shallow temptation; something not foreign to contemporary media. Luke Skywalker spends the entirety of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi attempting to avenge his parents, only to find out that his own father was his enemy all along, leading to grief, confusion, and anger. In Out of the Furnace, Christian Bale’s character successfully avenges his brothers’ death, yet instead of finding comfort with the pull of the trigger, he remains as empty as before. Shakespeare also picks up on this theme with plays such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. With these examples in mind, the question needs to be asked: if revenge never satisfies, why do we feel the need to try time and time again? The answer is that until a proper view of justice is developed, a justice defined by restoration and healing rather than retribution, pain and suffering will inevitably increase, allowing the myth of redemptive violence to continue its destructive work within society, and this is most eloquently demonstrated by looking at Jesus Christ.

The Lord’s Prayer: Honoring the Father

Adam Thrash

2nd September, 2016

Theology

Recorded in both Matthew and Luke, the Lord’s Prayer is the prayer given to the disciples by Jesus. In Matthew, the prayer is given as part of a larger teaching; in Luke, it is given in response to the disciples’ request that Jesus teach them how to pray. This prayer still unites Jesus’s disciples today. Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians all use it as part of their service. Every time they meet together, they pray the Lord’s Prayer together, as it was meant to be prayed. Notice that the Lord’s Prayer is not, “My Father” but “Our Father” – it’s meant to be prayed in community with other disciples of Christ.

My particular interest in the Lord’s Prayer comes from a saying of the Church – lex orandi, lex credendi, or as it is sometimes seen, lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. The first phrase roughly means “As we pray, so we believe.” The second phrase takes it one step further to say, “As we pray, so we believe; as we believe, so we live.” The Church has always understood prayer to have a formative effect upon the person who prays. That’s why there are prayers that are meant to be said again and again and again, like the Rosary. Repetition of prayers molds our minds, so that we can train our souls to pray. Much like we train our bodies and form our muscle memory, so do we teach our souls how to pray, even when we don’t feel like it.

From the Archives: Why I Pray the Lord’s Prayer

Arni Zachariassen

29th August, 2016

Theology

I don’t think I ever prayed the Lord’s Prayer until I was in my twenties.

I grew up in a church environment that wasn’t only non-liturgical, but was so self-consciously and deliberately. I won’t bore you too much with the details, but to a notable degree the Plymouth Brethren free church I grew up in developed and maintained its identity in more or less conscious opposition to the established Lutheran church across the road. What they did, we didn’t do.

Liturgy was one of the things we didn’t do. Liturgy, and the Lord’s Prayer. Thinking back over my almost 30 years in that church, I can only remember hearing the Lord’s Prayer recited once. And that guy was rebuked immediately after the service.

The Lord’s prayer was not something to recite; it was a pattern to be emulated and creatively employed. Every prayer should touch all the bases laid out in the Lord’s prayer: Praise, supplication, confession, and so on. Actually reciting it would go against what Jesus intended by teaching us the prayer. Recitation was empty words. Being Spirit-led meant being spontaneous and authentic. And unlike those Lutherans, we were Spirit-led.

Getting to Know Gregory of Nazianzus

Joe Johnson

26th August, 2016

Church

The history of Christianity is filled with important turning points. One of most far-reaching of these was the Arian controversy, which culminated in the councils of Nicaea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD). In the introduction to his exceptional book on the development of trinitarian theology during and after this period, Khaled Anatolios encourages contemporary Christians to look not only at the specific creedal formulations produced by these councils, but also at “how such formulations were interpreted in the immediate aftermath” of them.¹Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 1.

Among the various church fathers involved in the development of Nicene Christianity, many people know about Athanasius, the Alexandrian bishop who went into exile five times and probably did more than anyone else to ensure that orthodox Christian thought successfully resisted the Arian heresy.²John Behr, The Nicene Faith: Formation of Christian Theology, Volume 2 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 163,167. However, Athanasius was not alone. Fewer people are probably familiar with the group of theologians known collectively as the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus). Nevertheless, they also played an important role in interpreting and defending Nicene orthodoxy.³Bryan M. Litfin, Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction. 2nd Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 155. Today, we’re going to spend some time getting to know one of them.

References [ + ]

1.	↑	Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 1.
2.	↑	John Behr, The Nicene Faith: Formation of Christian Theology, Volume 2 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 163,167.
3.	↑	Bryan M. Litfin, Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction. 2nd Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 155.

Love and Trinity (Or, How Seminary is Helping Me Learn to Love My Wife Better)

David Marshall

24th August, 2016

Culture

Truth be told, whenever I see an article come along on my newsfeed dealing with marriage or families, I typically tune out. It’s not that I hate my family—far from it. I just know if I go to this article, even if everything is reasonable and thought out, there is a large chance that the comments section will be gehenna on earth. Plus, no matter what anyone says, it’s nearly impossible not to read the comments. It’s a black hole that continually sucks you in…. There is truly no escape.

So it is with the greatest irony that I write an article about marriage and my family. Now, to be fair, I’m not a famous mommy/Patheos blogger, which means one of two things:

This post is not going to go viral.
Because this post is not going going to go viral, the comments section will be either a) nonexistent or b) incredibly tame.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way. . .

Being married for two years and being a dad for nearly a year has been eye-opening in more ways than one. When I met my wife, I didn’t have a whole lot going for my life. I had just moved home from college (transferred to the online program), broken up with my long-distance girlfriend, and was struggling to find a job. Most of my time was spent playing Playstation 3 and reading N.T. Wright (AKA best use of my time ever). All of this means: when I met her, I realized I had a lot to change.

From the Archives: A Phrase More Christians Need to Say

Zach Perkins

22nd August, 2016

Theology

Remembering it’s OK to embrace mystery in our faith

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.¹Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica.

Being a Christian is a philosophical tightrope. Most apologists know this. It’s knowing and perceiving the world from a certain point, but also being able to take the natural world as it is. While some Christians refuse to take the standard human understanding of nature, others are comfortable working with it while still holding on to their faith. I know friends and have read scholars who can put it more eloquently than this… but being a Christian is a paradox. This isn’t surprising as our entire religion is based on paradox, but what I mean is in an intellectual sense, we have two worlds in our head smashed together. This sounds like cognitive dissonance, but I believe it’s a lot more nuanced than that.

The two worlds I’m speaking of would be the metaphysical, unseen world and the natural world. Now, when I speak of the metaphysical realm, we mean the foundational order behind which we have no way of measuring. As Christians, we believe there is an “uncaused cause,” a foundational principle, which we call God. God is not just a force, like when the wind knocks a plastic cup off the table—God is the sustainer of everything. He is in everything, but separate. We’re not pantheists. We’re panentheists (Eph. 1:23). As C.S. Lewis beautifully put it in his book, Miracles:

References [ + ]

↑

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica.