Blog - Page 164 of 318 - John H Armstrong

The Great Political Snooze

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:14-05:00February 7th, 2010|Categories: Politics|

We had a primary election in Illinois this last Tuesday. It was the first of the 2010 season. There was an interesting race for governor and for the U. S. Senate seat once held, for only four years, by President Barack Obama. Illinois is a heavily Democratic state. This was not always the case but it is now. It has been blue for some years now and the Republican Party has again and again made huge mistakes in selecting candidates. Of 29 Illinois members of the Congress (House and Senate) only seven are Republicans. With the exception of a few congressional seats outside of Chicago these seven congressional members come from downstate as we call the rest of Illinois.

This state is in almost as bad of shape (economically and otherwise) as California. Yet we hear about tax increases, spending more money on social services, etc. almost every day. Our state government is a mess and people on both sides tend to agree. Chicago is noted for machine politics and corruption of power and has […]

The Disturbing Ministry of Jesus

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:15-05:00February 6th, 2010|Categories: Christ/Christology, Lordship of Christ, Missional Church|

Viktor Frankl, the famous psychotherapist who endured the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, maintained that to love you must encounter. I agree with Anthony J. Gittins, a priest in the order of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (CSSp), who says that Jesus' ministry could best be described as loving encounter. He moved beyond familiar reference points, broke through boundaries and reached out without discrimination to all people. He also disturbed the status quo and routinely challenged the complacent. He repudiated the notion that some people are more worthy than others and seems to have regularly called those that society deemed the most unlikely into his kingdom. His essential message was inclusion, unification and reconciliation. This does not mean everyone will come but everyone is invited without distinction.

The gentle Jesus meek and mild, of so much popular Christian imagination, is quickly shattered by any careful reading of the Gospels. Gittins says, "Jesus was undoubtedly a disturbing figure." This is why we need a sanctified imagination to adequately grasp how this boundary-breaking, healing servant of […]

Prayers for Epiphany

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:15-05:00February 5th, 2010|Categories: Prayer|

In the Greek the word epiphany means "apparition." In comparative religion it refers to the sudden appearance of deity. But the Scriptural conception, and the reason the church celebrates this time of the church year, is very different. Epiphany refers to the historically tangible invasion of our world by the personal God of incarnation. Theology rightly distinguishes between theophanies, Christophanies (Christ's baptism, the transfiguration, his walking on the sea, etc.) and angelophanies. But apparitions, in the sense of purely private revelations intended for private use, seem to me to be unknown in Scripture. All epiphanies include a message for the whole community of God, underscoring the nature of Christian faith as personal and communal but never private and gnostic.

This season of the year is called epiphany because during this time in the church calendar we recall those events in the life of Jesus wherein the Son of God manifested the divine in the paradoxical acts of veiling and unveiling. The Divine Hours, a marvelous resource I use for daily prayer appoints […]

What Is Vision and Why Does It Matter?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:15-05:00February 4th, 2010|Categories: Biblical Theology|

The writer of Proverbs (29:19) says, "Where there is no vision the people perish." Another translation (TNIV) renders the verse this way: "Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed are those who heed wisdom's instruction." The NASB says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." The NIV ends this text with "blessed is he who keeps the law." And the NRSV says, "Where there is no prophecy, the people cast off restraint." Israel received revelation through the prophets. The idea here seems to be that vision, or revelation, came from the Law, the Prophets and the Testimony, or the whole of Scripture.

Most of my life I have heard pastors, church leaders and businessmen quote this verse and apply it to "human vision." They tell us that the number one function of a leader is to cast a clear vision for the people to follow. It is argued that vision is like the hub of a wheel from which everything else grows or develops. While […]

N.T. Wright on Hell

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:15-05:00February 3rd, 2010|Categories: Biblical Theology, The Future|

I am very often asked how I understand the doctrine of hell. I usually begin by saying two things: (1) Our common understanding of the subject is generally messed up. (2) Tough I wish universalism was true I cannot accept it as such.

I have wrestled with this biblical doctrine for my entire life. I wish that I did not believe in hell but I do. I also do not believe a great deal of what I hear people saying about hell in the Christian circles I grew up in and sometimes still find myself in day-to-day. Trying to explain this, cogently and simply, is never easy. Rarely have I seen anyone deal with this subject better than N. T. Wright does in this first rate video. If Wright is right then we need to have a much greater conversation in most of our Christian circles about this doctrine, both what it means and what it doesn't mean and […]

The Word of God Incarnate and the Written Word

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:15-05:00February 3rd, 2010|Categories: Biblical Theology, Christ/Christology, The Church|

Some years ago I was working on a theme for one of our quarterly journals. As some of you know we published a quarterly journal of 200-plus pages for nearly fifteen years. In some ways this was how my present ministry began. While still a pastor I began this journal, which was itself the overflow of my work over the course of a decade among pastors in the west suburban area of metro Chicago. That fellowship, called the Whitefield Ministerial Fellowship, attracted pastors and lay leaders from many churches and over time this led to my being commissioned to serve the church at large, here in Chicago and as far as the Lord would (and did) take me. I thus left the active pastorate in May of 1992.

When I was working on the theme "The Word of God" I realized how my own thinking had been so impacted by a kind of evangelicalism that was very unbalanced, even unhealthy. When I laid out the articles and authors for this theme I soon realized that […]

What Is a Missional Church?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:15-05:00February 2nd, 2010|Categories: Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism|

Perhaps no term that I regularly use is more easily misused, and quite frankly misunderstood, than the word missional. Some have argued that this is reason enough to not use the word at all. I disagree. Though the term clearly carries a certain amount of potential for misunderstanding so did most new words that made their way into theological vocabulary in church history.

The term missional is rooted in the concept of the missio dei, a Latin phrase which means
"the mission of God." This term came into prominence in the early twentieth century as a way to ground missionary theory and practice in the missionary nature and activity of the triune God. The idea behind the concept of the mission dei was that all three persons of the Godhead were involved in "the sending" of the Son into the world. On this basis the church is now "sent" by the Triune God into the world because the sending God is reaching out to the whole world in Christ.

Mission is the carrying of the message and […]

A German Human Rights Story Misreported

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:15-05:00February 1st, 2010|Categories: Current Affairs, Separation of Church & State|

Over the past seven days I have tracked a story about a Christian family from Germany who were been granted political asylum in the U.S. after facing the threat of prison for home schooling their children. This is the kind of story that makes American conservatives excited and then tends to stoke Internet chatter pretty significantly. A number of U. S. newspapers and blogs picked up this story and a great deal is already being written about it. It appears the source being used is called the Christian Institute in England. Colin Hart (photo at left), director of the Christian Institute, writes on their Website that the Christian Institute exists for "the furtherance and promotion of the Christian religion in the United Kingdom" and "the advancement of education." Here is how the home school story was reported on Thursday of last week:

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, who are evangelical Christians, were forced to flee Germany as they wished to educate their five children at home. The news source wrote of the story: "Home schooling […]

Gluttony: The Most Common Deadly Sin?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:16-05:00January 31st, 2010|Categories: Personal, Spirituality|

Gregory the Great, a sixth century pope whose piety and teaching on spiritual formation have had an enduring legacy in the church, seems to have been the first Christian teacher to create the taxonomy of the "seven deadly sins." One thing is certain. Following Gregory these seven sins stood out as prominent in Christian theology. The seven were: pride, anger, envy, impunity, gluttony, slothfulness and avarice. I doubt many Protestants could name these if their life depended on it.

But what is gluttony? And is gluttony simply synonymous with being overweight? And if it synonymous with being overweight who determines what constitutes being overweight? If it is the infamous insurance tables then the standard has shifted quite a bit in the last decade. If it is the physicians and researchers then the standard is shifting even as I write these words. The most recent medical evidence suggests that excess weight is harmful to your well-being but there are many other factors that contribute to health and longevity of life than weight. In reality, some of […]

Pam Chose Life: The Tim Tebow Pro-Life Story

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:16-05:00January 30th, 2010|Categories: Abortion|

The following letter appeared in my box this week. I think it implores those who value unborn life to respond. I did. I hope you will too.

Dear Friends,

Once again our values are under intense attack from radical liberal feminists. Only this time they are venturing where they never should have gone.

Football. And not just any football game. The Super Bowl.

This week, the liberal feminist organization, National Organization for Women (NOW), launched an all-out effort attacking a pro-life ad that will be in the Super Bowl commercial line-up. The ad, produced by our good friends at Focus on the Family, tells the story of Pam Tebow's decision to continue with her pregnancy against her doctor's advice and give birth to the Heisman trophy winning Florida Gator Quarterback, Tim Tebow.

NOW's call to take this advertisement off the air is their attempt at shutting down […]