The Heart of the Evangelical Crisis by Mark Galli
Contemporary evangelicalism is in serious trouble. Actually, its crisis is the same one that afflicts all Christianity in America. At the risk of hubris, and the risk of merely adding one more item to the seemingly endless list of crises, I believe that the crisis lies at the heart of what ails large swaths of the American church. Alexander Solzhenitsyn named it in his speech upon receiving the Templeton Prize in Religion in 1968. He was talking about Western culture when he used it. I apply it to the American church, evangelical and not:
We have forgotten God.
Meet the Cappadocian Fathers by Matthew Emerson
In the midst of such ecclesial and political turmoil, the Cappadocians produced the most rhetorically articulate, biblically rooted, and philosophically informed arguments for pro-Nicene understandings of the Trinity. They did so both by drawing on and expanding Athanasius’ arguments for the full divinity of the Son and also by extending those same arguments to defend the full divinity of the Holy Spirit.
Impassibility in the Church Fathers by Gerald Bray
The Church Fathers balanced the need to recognize the supremacy of God the Creator over his creation, and at the same time accommodate the gospel affirmation that he loved the world so much that he sent his only Son to die for us. By asserting that the impassible God suffered for us in the Son’s assumed human nature, they reconciled the paradox that lies at the heart of the biblical revelation and established a pattern of thinking that has established itself in mainstream Christian thinking ever since.
An Open Letter to the Pastor Doubting His Calling by Jeff Robinson
I can assure you that you’re not the first pastor to wrestle with the question of whether you’re really called to pastoral ministry. It’s an issue that haunted me throughout virtually the entire span of my first full-time pastorate. I spent countless hours in prayer and conversation with fellow pastors over the matter. Let me tell you a bit about those circumstances so we can ground the issue in real-world ministry, then I’ll tell you what drove me to press on.
