Bonhoeffer On the Christian Life: A Review

I recently found out about (and read) Stephen Nichols’ book on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and theology called Bonhoeffer on the Christian Life: From the Cross, for the World (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013).  At just over 200 pages, it is quite a bit shorter and more accessible than Metaxas’ similar book.  In fact, there is a lot …

Bonhoeffer and Barth

 Sections like this in Bonhoeffer’s writings always make me wonder how much Barth influenced him; they also make me hesitate to think of and speak of Bonhoeffer as an evangelical in the present day sense of the term.  Here’s the section found on pages 194 & 197 of his Ethics: “The Christian ethic speaks in …

Barth’s High Altitude Bombing Runs

I've finished I.1 of Barth's Church Dogmatics and I'm well into I.2.  So far, my favorite parts have been when Barth aims his guns at the modernists and theological liberals.  It sort of reminds me of the high altitude bombing runs in WWII.  Barth goes over the modernist positions and drops a salvo; some pages …

Models of the Church

Since one of my reading hobbies is ecclesiology I recently picked up and read the newest edition of Avery Dulles' Models of the Church (New York: Doubleday, 2002).  In this book, Dulles summarizes and explains what he thinks are the five major models of ecclesiology in contemporary Christianity: Church as institution, church as mystical communion, church as sacrament, …

Chatty Theology (or Linguistic Idolatry)

A week ago, I ran across a sentence in Eugene Peterson's Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.  I can't stop thinking about it.  Here it is. "We cannot be too careful about the words we use; we start out using them and then they end up using us." Concerning words and theology, it is easy for us …