Back In The Saddle

Ah…a week away on a mission trip and another of vacation and I’m finally back in the office. This week our church is having VBS, but I ended up withdrawing from the class I was planning to take at Northern Seminary. My intent was to audit the class. One, it was much cheaper to audit, and two, there was a lot of weekly work to do, plus I was only taking it because of an interest in the subject, not the grade.

Nevertheless, I got the required reading and have actually finished one of the books - The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, edited by Kevin Vanhoozer. Reading that one got me interested all over again in a book I’ve had on my reading list for a while, but have never gotten around to: Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context, by John Franke and Stanley Grenz, so I’m one chapter into that one now. I suspect what I’ve read so far will generate a few posts over the summer. In addition, I have The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader which is edited by Graham Ward and I’ve gotten through one chapter of Stanley Hauerwas’ book A Better Hope: Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity.

While all of that should provide some food for fodder, I’ll try not to get too technical in the discussion of them. It’s pretty heavy philosophy/theology and while I enjoy that sort of thing, I’m aware that many don’t. Hopefully there will be some practical things that come to the front that can be discussed here without us all feeling like we’re in a college class room.

Here are some things that are on my mind right now, some related to my current reading and some not:

• Why were we given four gospels? Why didn’t God communicate all he intended to in just one?
• I’ve got some more thoughts on the church which I’ll probably add to the series I did recently, but at least one of those thoughts hit me after reflecting a little more on Scot McKnight’s book A Community Called Atonement.
• Some practical thoughts on the Trinity
• Why a non-dispensationalist (non-premillennialist) would preach through Revelation.
• Is all theology eschatology (the study of last things)?
• Thank God for Karl Barth (Say What??)
• Are missions-sending “agencies” Biblically valid?

Ok, so that will last me for a while and hopefully get some conversations going. This place sure needs a good conversation!