Why Conservatives Shouldn’t Make Manifestos
Today saw the release of the “Manhattan Declaration,” a sort of ecumenical conservative manifesto with 148 signatories from Roman, Eastern, and Evangelical denominations. Its a consolidated statement of the usual stuff super conservative Christians care about — abortion, gay marriage, and well, I guess the freedom to not perform abortions and gay marriages, they call this religious freedom. On the one hand there’s really nothing that needs to be said about this. After all there is nothing really said here that hasn’t been utterly clear f

The Church’s Unrest
Jürgen Moltmann’s The Church in the Power of the Spirit continues to be one of the most impressive books I’ve yet encountered from him. In fact, I’ve found Moltmann’s work here quite helpful in light of the recent discussions about the viability of Hauerwas’s ecclesiology that have emerged from Nate Kerr’s book, Christ, History and Apocalyptic. Hauerwas certainly has a strong tendency to see the task of the church in light of the challenges of modernity.

Does Mission Make the Church?
According to the early church’s own self-narration in the book of Acts it would seem so. In Acts 2 clearly it is the pentecostal coming of the Holy Spirit which initiates the new messianic reality through the apostles. But, the logic of the Spirit’s movement is not Pentecost-Church-Mission, but Pentecost-Mission-Church. The Spirit descends upon the apostles (2:2-4) who then proceed to proclaim the gospel (2:14ff). Only after the proclamation, the enactment in the Spirit of their missional vocation, do the apostles baptize those who are caught up into the gospel’s truth. Only after the missional proclamation of the truth about Jesus does the rudiments of a common mission

Tradition and Messianic Liberation
Jürgen Moltmann, in The Church in the Power of the Spirit argues that appeals to the church’s tradition as a source of stable, timeless permanence are misguided on the basis of the very nature of tradition itself: The tradition to which the church appeals, and which it proclaims whenever it calls itself Christ’s church and speaks in Christ’s name, is the tradition of the messianic liberation and eschatological renewal of the world. It is impossible to rest on this tradition. It is a tradition that changes men and from which they are born again. It is like the following wind that drives us to new shores. Anyone who enters into this messianic

Summarizing Jenson on God and Time
Peter Leithart has perhaps the best post-length summary of Robert Jenson’s controversial and oft-misunderstood theology of God and time: Is God eternally and infinitely the eternal and infinite God that He is? Of course. He’s God. Is God dependent on creation for His fulfillment? Of course not. He’s God. The biblical God uniquely does not try to escape time. All other gods do; that’s what makes them gods. The world is what it is. History is what it is. No use worrying what might have been. God promises to show mercy, and give Himself to His people. These pr