Freedom for the Gospel, Freedom from Worldly Ideologies: The Barmen
Forty years ago, in 1984‒85, I had the remarkable experience of spending a year at a Protestant seminary in East Berlin. Those were still the days of communism. The regime was no longer sending Christians to prison camps, but it had pushed them to the margins of society, hoping that someday the church would just…
A Firm Foundation
There has been and continues to be a considerable amount of talk about churches dying. And this has spawned work aimed at helping church’s die well, as well as work focused on breathing new life into declining churches.
For the Next Generation
Presbyterians know that whatever our doubts and fears about the Presbyterian Church (USA), we belong to God. The human institution that is the PCUSA may someday pass away, but God will never allow the church of Jesus Christ to die.
The Confession that the PCUSA Needs
The writing of a new confession of faith is not undertaken lightly, for “any proposed change to the Book of Confessions should enhance the church’s understanding and declaration of who and what it is, what it believes, and what it resolves to do (Book of Order, F-2.01).”[i] As a teaching elder who exercises his ministry…
What All Christians Should Know
Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) is widely known as the author of the Second Helvetic Confession (1566). But his series of fifty sermons entitled Decades (1549–1551) was as well-known and has been often compared to Calvin's Institutes as an early, comprehensive, and similarly influential statement of Reformed theology. Timothy Slemmons offers to us here for the first…
Struggling to “Live Not by Lies”
Earlier this summer, I met with a couple of my seminary classmates and their wives to tell boring stories of glory days. When we turned to the present situation, the transgender phenomenon came up. Since one of the wives was a psychiatrist, I asked her how it was affecting her profession and her faith. She…
The Significance of Ernst Lohmeyer for Christian Witness
A Chance Encounter I had never heard of Ernst Lohmeyer until I was in my late twenties. I came across his name in the same way I came across many names at the time, as another scholar whom I needed to consult in doctoral research. In the mid-1970s I was writing my doctoral dissertation on…
A Provocative Confession: Jesus as the Truth
The fact is confessing Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life [John 14:6] has always been provocative. It’s always been contested. It’s always been eventually opposed. Sooner or later in every culture it has always caused conflict. And nowhere has it been confessed for long without a price.Dr. Richard Burnett - Theology…
