Blog - Page 38 of 318 - John H Armstrong

Alta Gracia – A Business Venture in the Developing World That Provides a Living Wage

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:37-05:00April 24th, 2014|Categories: Business, Culture, Current Affairs, Economy/Economics, Poverty|

Every Sunday I record a program on PBS called “Religion & Ethics Weekly.” It is one of the finest programs I know on the major stories of the week in world religions. Several months ago I saw a broadcast that featured the story of Alta Gracia, an American company owned by a Catholic businessman in the U.S. Alta Gracia manufactures clothing. The owner is willing to make a smaller corporate profit in order to provide livable wages for his workers. He defines a livable wage as including the following:

Adequate money to provide for life’s essentials for an entire family:

3 Healthy Meals a Day
A Safe Home
Transportation
Healthcare
Education

The Workers’ Rights Consortium verifies that all workers at Alta Gracia receive a Living Wage, ensure that the workplace is safe and that workers’ rights are respected. Alta Gracia claims to be the only clothing factory in the developing world that pays the people who make clothing a LIVING WAGE – more than 3X the minimum wage.

Many of us have heard about the “name brands” and how they […]

Salvation and the Christian Life – Doing Theology in the Era of Global Ecumenism, Part 4

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:38-05:00April 23rd, 2014|Categories: Biblical Theology, Faith, Missional-Ecumenism, Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, The Church, Theology|

Sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers stressed that we are justified while still in our sins. I believe they were right. We are, as they put it, simultaneously justified and still sinful. The Reformers, including the Augustinian Martin Luther, were zealous for the sovereignty of God. Many of their modern heirs remain zealous for this great truth. I see this zeal as inherently good. Yet this Reformation emphasis on God and free grace can very easily create a new imbalance, one which I think has been emphasized by Reformed and Lutheran scholasticism and its profound impact upon modern conservatives. It is a fact that post-Reformational orthodoxy tended to ignore the devotional life, or at least downplayed it considerably. (Again, John Calvin is a wonderful exception!) This over-emphasis on grace – especially the emphasis on right doctrinal concepts – led to a sterile and dead orthodoxy in some contexts.

Servile and dead orthodoxy became the deep concern of three groups of Protestants who had a great impact upon the eighteenth-century awakenings; e.g. the Puritans, the Pietists and the Evangelicals who […]

“Our Love Is Too Small” Video

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:38-05:00April 22nd, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, Love, Missional Church, The Church|

Most of you who frequent my blog spot are aware that I wrote a book titled Your Church Is Too Small in March 2010. This book has redefined my life and ministry. I am now writing a sequel, or you could say it is a prequel, to Your Church Is Too Small. The working title of my new book is Our Love Is Too Small. I have written about a third of this book over the last two-plus months. Some days the writing flows and other days I feel like I will never finish this project. This is sheer hard work, but it is life-changing hard work. At times I feel like I’ve opened a vein and I simply bleed as I write. My soul is being poured out in trying to find the most authentic voice that I have for what I believe needs to be said about God’s love and our response to his great love which will be shown in loving others.

Several weeks ago I completed a two-year process of consulting the ministry of University Bible Fellowship (UBF). The international headquarters of UBF is located in […]

Salvation and the Christian Life – Doing Theology in the Era of Global Ecumenism, Part 3

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:38-05:00April 21st, 2014|Categories: Discipleship, Faith, Gospel/Good News, Lordship of Christ, Reformed Christianity, Roman Catholicism, The Church, Theology|

When Catholics and Protestants engage in the polemics of theological polarities they quite often misrepresent one another. In the process they miss the deeper fruit of real ecumenism in doing confessing Christian theology. Non-theologians often do this more poorly because they adopt the views they have been taught by their favorite teachers and then treat them as the gold standard.

One of the central issues between Protestants and Catholics has always revolved around the subject of God’s grace and our(human) response to divine grace. We can very easily get the wrong end of the stick in this debate. On one side we separate the life of the Spirit from the salvation of God. This can be seen in a number of Protestant and evangelical responses to grace and works. Donald Bloesch noted: “To separate the life of the Christian from the salvation of God is to divorce ethics from religion. It was precisely this non-ethical religion or religiosity that was attacked by the Old Testament prophets and by many saints and reformers through the ages” (The Christian Life […]

The Seven Last Words of Christ by Franz Joseph Haydn

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:38-05:00April 18th, 2014|Categories: Christ/Christology, Death, Music, Personal|

Readers who did not grow up in a liturgical tradition are not as likely to have experienced the seven last words of Christ in a Holy Week context. I had preached at Good Friday services but my experience Tuesday evening at Dominican University, where I heard a string quartet play Franz Joseph Haydn’s “The Seven Last Words of Christ” was a complete immersion experience in the richness of a Holy Week celebration. It is in this spirit that I encourage you to listen to the broadcast of this event tonight, at 8 p.m., on WFMT in Chicago. You can access the broadcast on the web at: https://www.wfmt.com.

Franz Joseph Haydn considered “The Seven Last Words of Christ” to be one of his greatest works. Haydn’s profound religious convictions informed this music deeply. Without a deep understanding of what Haydn actually did in this music it is hard to appreciate just how well he accomplished his purpose. Haydn wrote: “Each sonata or movement, is expressed by purely instrumental music in such a way that even the most uninitiated listener will […]

The Seven Last Words of Christ – The Franz Joseph Haydn Symphony

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:40-05:00April 17th, 2014|Categories: Christ/Christology, Death, Music, Personal|

Millions of Christians around the world will hear the “Seven Last Words of Christ” over the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours. I heard them this week and understood them in a wholly different way.

While I have participated in a number of contexts in which these words of Christ have been read, sung and even preached, this week I experienced them in word and music in one of the most moving presentations of the seven words that I’ve ever heard. The occasion was the performance on Tuesday evening of the Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) symphony, “Opus 51– The Seven Last Words of Christ.” Haydn’s work was originally composed in 1786 and first presented on Good Friday in 1787. The original setting was the austere underground grotto of Santa Cueva (Spain) which was completely dark but for the wick of a single lamp, hung from the ceiling. Following the moving Introduction the bishop recited the first of the seven words, moved to the altar and there knelt quietly during the sonata. The bishops words served as a spoken meditation […]

Salvation and the Christian Life – Doing Theology in the Era of Global Ecumenism, Part 2

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:40-05:00April 16th, 2014|Categories: Biblical Theology, Discipleship, Faith, Missional-Ecumenism, Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, The Church, The Future, Theology|

When the Holy Spirit revealed to me the truth of John 17:21 I felt I had no choice but to commit the rest of my days to humbly learning from other Christian traditions and teachers. Both my theology and practice necessitated a more humble epistemology and a deeper personal tone anchored in love. I did not jettison what I believed. I opened my mind and heart afresh to “seeing” truth in a far different way, a way that led me to listen more carefully and respectfully to the global catholic church. I realized that over the centuries the faith has been debated and understood and far too much of our history has been about pursuing truth without grace. But I am reminded that the Word was himself “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). If I was to faithfully follow Jesus my life should more nearly be one where grace and truth were both present in abundant measure.

I soon discovered that the present ecumenical era gave me a compelling opportunity to reexamine the role the Christian life […]

Salvation and the Christian Life – Doing Theology in the Era of Global Ecumenism, Part 1

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:42-05:00April 14th, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, Discipleship, Missional-Ecumenism, The Church, The Future, Theology|

We live in the era of global ecumenism. The word ecumenism is actually derived from the Greek oikoumene, which literally means “the whole inhabited world.” It was originally used with reference to the whole of the Roman Empire. In the ancient Christian Church the word was first used in contexts such as an “Ecumenical council” or the “Ecumenical patriarch.” Here the meaning pertained to the totality of the larger Church (e.g. the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church) rather than to one of its constituent churches or dioceses. Used in this original sense, the term was expanded in the last century or more to refer to the re-uniting of the historically separated Christian denominations. I use it in both senses – for the reality of the global church and the work of reuniting historic churches, though I take it that this work will likely follow patterns yet to be seen in the Spirit’s creativity and timing.

Ecumenism has plainly become a definite movement within visible Christianity. To varying degrees Christian leaders and theologians now recognize this reality. Sadly, […]

The Climate Change Debate: Wrestling With the Creation Narrative

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:42-05:00April 11th, 2014|Categories: Current Affairs, Personal, Science, The Future|

A massive report on the impact of global warming is being completed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This report explains to the world what the representatives of approximately 100 governments concluded at their meeting in Japan in late March. AP reported: “The key message from leaked drafts and interviews with the authors and other scientists: The big risks and overall effects of global warming are far more immediate and local than scientists once thought. It’s not just about melting ice, threatened animals and plants. It’s about the human problems of hunger, disease, drought, flooding, refugees and war, worsening.”

I am always amazed at how people respond to these reports. Many are skeptical and some are fanatical. But both extremes are neither good science nor good public policy. The key, it seems to me, is to marry the two in some effective way. I hope this happens but I am not holding my breath about it. The effects of global warming, which are being accepted by a growing number of us, are still not seen as immediate […]

An Orthodox Journey – Searching for a Place to Stand

By John Armstrong|2015-01-23T16:23:59-06:00April 9th, 2014|Categories: Uncategorized|