We have in Christ what we have lost in Adam. - John Calvin Baptism is one of the most remarkable and profound rituals of church life. It emerges in scripture as part of the nexus of sin, salvation, and the new humanity birthed in the second Adam. Properly understood, its themes maneuver like tendrils through the Old Testament narrative, full
“Autonomy and independence involve taking care of yourself—not doing things that diminish you.” - David Schnarch In the previous article, I introduced a simple approach to the doctrine of Christian unity as the one doctrine among all the others which—while often ignored in an academic or apologetic sense—happens to be the one Jesus declared would g
In the previous article, I introduced three concepts that have helped me reformulate my approach to remnant theology without settling for the historic sectarian approach nor our modern reactionary “just get rid of the whole thing” trend. Those three ideas I referred to as the, Axiomatic Permanence and Ethereal Essence of Ideas Necessary Cohe
A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death. — John F. Kennedy In the previous article, we closed off by moving from the concept of church to the concept of the remnant. During that transition, I took for granted the acceptability of a theological construct like the remnant. However, the
The reason most people don't go to church is because they've already been. – Mark Twain Before moving on from the concept and practice of church, there is one more angle I must encroach upon which would be imprudent to ignore. The angle that I speak of is the contemporary overarching motion of the church which, while transcending Adventism itself,
We must cultivate our garden. – Voltaire For decades, church leaders have been attempting to unravel the complex reasons why young people leave church. In recent years, the task to understand why the church fails to retain millennials or reach emerging, post-church culture has also amplified. And now, new reports are indicating that unlike o
Teach me, O God… to breathe deeply in faith.—Soren Kierkegaard Imagine a scenario with me. You are an allied lieutenant during World War II. Your platoon is part of an assault on France aimed at liberating the country from its German occupiers. As the raid begins, you find yourself with a small company of stranded paratroopers. Radio checks indicat
It’s unbearable to be able to look through that door and glimpse all the people you could have been and know that out of all of them, this is the one you became.—Reichmarshal John Smith The Web of Insanity We Created In the Amazon alternate history web series The Man in the High Castle, a parallel universe is depicted in which the Axis powers (Ital
I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.–Viktor E. Frankl I recently purchased the Audible version of the classic work “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl. In the first part of th
We can and should eradicate ageing as a cause of death… use technology to augment our bodies and our minds… [and] merge with machines, remaking ourselves, finally, in the image of our own higher ideals.–Mark O’Connell In the previous article, we saw how traditional frameworks for explaining the gospel are no longer effective in our emerging post-Ch
