Blog - Page 174 of 318 - John H Armstrong

The Heart of a Friend

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:41-05:00November 5th, 2009|Categories: Personal|

Some years ago I prayerfully looked for a Web designer who would work with me on ACT 3 site. I interviewed several talented people. I made a choice to hire Sean McCallum, who lived only three doors down from the house I lived in for nineteen years in Carol Stream. I had never met Sean until the day I interviewed him over a Mexican lunch in Wheaton. I did not realize that a number of my friends were also his friends or that a number of people I knew had known a lot about Sean's life since he was a young teen. The interview I had that day led to Sean designing our home page and managing some of our Web work over the years since. It led, more importantly, to a very deep friendship. I have come to love Sean and came to appreciate him as a brother in only a matter of a few months. He is the age of my daughter so at […]

Goodbye Solo: A Stunning Film

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:41-05:00November 4th, 2009|Categories: Film|

Goodbye Solo is a work of deep feeling and human inspiration. Two men meet. One is a refugee from Sudan who drives a cab in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The other is an older white man who is despairing of life and has plotted out the day of his own death by suicide. Their crossroads is in a Deep South context where race is transcended by hope and love.

One man, the African named Solo, is filled with hope. He sees a better future and studies hard to make that come about. The other, William, is angry, defeated and hopeless. The problem is that Solo loves William and begins to do everything that he can to stop him from ending his life. (I will not give away the ending so you will have to search elsewhere, or better yet see the film, to find out!) This odd couple embarks on a journey, over the course of about three weeks, that will change them […]

Is the Economic Recovery Real?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:41-05:00November 2nd, 2009|Categories: Economy/Economics|

The reports of the last economic quarter are now in. Evidence exists that we have experienced a recovery for the first time in four quarters. Anyone in their right mind ought to celebrate this fact. I suppose most Americans do take some comfort in this report, unless of course they so despise this president that they want to see an economic collapse on his watch. I find such people uninteresting and terribly angry, qualities that repel me personally. While I do not agree with a good number of the president's economic policies I pray for him, and us, that he succeeds. The country has always found a way to move back to the center regardless of who the president is at the time. I expect this will happen again over the course of time but the radicals on both sides need to be ignored on the whole.

The new reports says that the economy rose by 3.5% in the third quarter. That is […]

The Nobel Peace Prize Debate

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:42-05:00November 1st, 2009|Categories: Politics|

It seems like everyone had a field day a few weeks ago about the granting of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. I admit I was stunned when I first heard the news. After reflecting on the prize, and who the committee has given it to over recent years, I was not so surprised. The whole flap did cause me to do a little research into the past winners of the prize and why they were apparently chosen. There have been some interesting winners in the history of this award, to say the least. The most interesting past recipient, at least to me, could be the least well-known of all the winners. I refer to the Christian leader John R. Mott. Mott, who directed the YMCA for some years, was the "father of the ecumenical movement" in the early twentieth century and a Christian of the greatest sort. Mott is featured in my forthcoming book, Your Church Is Too Small, because of his role in […]

Liberating the Church

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:42-05:00October 31st, 2009|Categories: Renewal|

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther performed a relatively minor act. He posted ninety-five theses (in Latin) on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. His desire seems to have been rather simple–start a serious conversation about some of the ministerial abuses inside the church. His act was the equivalent of posting a few items for dialogue on the Internet, a kind of blog post for academic debate. Historians, always looking for key dates, now see this as the spark that lit the fire that led to the Protestant Reformation. Luther himself was not so sure but this fact is clear: the events that followed October 31 1517, created a great turmoil in the Western church.

Luther argued that the church in his day had been taken captive by an inadequate gospel message. Luther's pamphlet, The Pagan Servitude of the Church, likened the church's situation in 16th century Europe to Israel in Babylon. The people of God were prisoners of a false gospel, a false worldview, a false […]

A Friendship That Teaches Me a Great Deal About Christ, Part 5

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:42-05:00October 30th, 2009|Categories: Unity of the Church|

My friend Nick Morgan, whose letter to me at the end of 2008, and whose influence in my life as a friend led me to this five-part series of posts, is a godly man. He loves Christ and he loves the church. He also reads theology seriously. He did this while he was an evangelical and he still does it as a Roman Catholic. He reads theologians from both sides, as you can readily see. He often recommends good ideas to me by email and responds to the blog posts I write with genuine interest and charity. He also sends me private correspondence that gets forwarded to him. Lately he has sent me a number of conservative political pieces and asked for my input. I have cautioned him against allowing his soul to become preoccupied with the fiercest forms of criticism that poison the culture, from the left and the right. I have urged him to stay close to Christ, to fill his mind and heart with the glory of Christ and to stay faithful to the church by frequent communion and regular worship […]

A Friendship That Teaches Me a Great Deal About Christ, Part 4

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:42-05:00October 29th, 2009|Categories: Unity of the Church|

My theology of missional-ecumenism says that we should all go back to the ancient standards of faith confessed by all Christians in the undivided church of the first five centuries. I believe in what has been called, by theologian Thomas Oden, paleo-orthodoxy. In these standards of faith we can find a place where all true Christians can stand together and contend for the historic Christian faith side-by-side, even while we continue to work on our remaining differences, which are considerable. To say we agree on a great deal, while we still work on our differences in a spirit of Christian love, is not compromise by any serious definition.

This kind of response, most common among very conservative evangelicals, and very conservative Catholics, is hard to explain but most know what it is when they see it. I am tempted to call it “fundamentalism” but this is neither entirely accurate nor seriously helpful. Whatever it is it amounts to reductionistic thinking. It often leads people to several fallacies in thought and practice.

One such fallacy is the dicto […]

A Friendship That Teaches Me a Great Deal About Christ, Part 3

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:42-05:00October 28th, 2009|Categories: Unity of the Church|

In my correspondence with my friend Nick Morgan, in the aforementioned letter that I cited yesterday, he added the following:

I had a recent discussion with two different men from the evangelical church that my wife belongs too. I had been forwarding the "ACT 3 Weekly" to them both. One of them, a former elder, is an extremely gracious and Godly man and seems to appreciate what you are saying, even though he doesn't agree with all of it. He is a former Lutheran and really struggles with a truly sacramental view of baptism and the Eucharist. However, he is encouraged by leaders like Pope Benedict XVI and about hearing the Pope's very evangelical sounding teaching regarding justification.

The other man is a former Roman Catholic. He has a very negative attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church and any pope, including Benedict XVI. He's definitely of the mindset that no Catholic who's "truly saved" should remain in the Roman Catholic Church. His impression of your articles was that you are basically saying "let's all just follow Jesus and […]

World Series 2009

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:42-05:00October 27th, 2009|Categories: Baseball|

The New York Yankees are the definition of the greatest franchise in all of professional sports. They just won their fortieth American League championship of all time. If you are a historian of the game you know how truly amazing this number is. No one else is remotely close. This year the Yankees dispensed with the Twins and the Angels with relative ease. Now they face the best team they have played so far, the reigning World Series Champion Philadelphia Phils. If I had to pick a winner this evening it would have to be the Yankees. The Phils are tested and strong, especially when it comes to team chemistry and hitting. But after Cliff Lee they are not as solid as N.Y. in starting pitching and their bullpen does not compare.

These have to be the best two starting lineups in baseball. Both can mash the ball and manufacture runs both. And both are always able […]

A Friendship That Teaches Me a Great Deal About Christ, Part 2

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:42-05:00October 27th, 2009|Categories: Unity of the Church|

People sometimes ask me, “Do you still agree with what you wrote in the two books that you did on Roman Catholicism in the 1990s?” I think this is an excellent, yet provocative, question. I answer that I do believe almost all of what I wrote then, at least in all the major ways. I would write these two books very differently today but the essential content, at least in terms of where I differ with Catholic theology, would remain the same. I hope the way I would say it would be more mature and better stated in ways that are more irenic and helpful to unity

I am a Reformed Church in America minister. I embrace the major confessional tradition of the magisterial Reformers. Some accuse me of lying when I write such things but my accusers did not examine me before my Classis. They have never taken the proper measure of my beliefs in a sympathetic and helpfully critical way.I will say more about this later when I write about fallacies used in debate and argumentation.

What does […]