Status Updates From A Theology for the Church

"Every pastor is called to be a theologian. This may come as a surprise to some pastors who see theology as an academic discipline taken during seminary rather than as an ongoing and central part of the pastoral calling. Nevertheless, the health of the church depends on its pastors functioning as faithful theologians - teaching, preaching, defending and applying the great doctrines of the faith" (723).

"In the beginning God created the heavens &the earth...God does not surrender this good creation to Satan but wins it back through the blood of Christ...God...recreates a world that vindicates his original creation purposes. This means not just a heavenly city of refuge for flown-away souls, but an entire universe of rocks & trees & quasars & waterfalls - everything created in which he takes delight" (712).

"Humans may pretend to be autonomous, but they live and move as subjects in a kingdom - either the kingdom of the god of this age or the kingdom of the Christ of God. The message of Christian eschatology is that the tumult of this present warfare between the people of Christ and the principalities and powers is not eternal. Armageddon has been on the horizon since Eden" (697).

"...Carroll saw the millennium as imminent. 'The world was four thousand years old when Christ came, and it is nearly two thousand years since he came...the devil's time is nearly out; events are moving rapidly, ocean and air are navigated, telegraph wires long rusted with commercial and political lies shall shine with the transmission of messages of mercy and salvation'" (694).

"Covenant theology saw redemptive history in terms of one...covenant of grace - with the various biblical covenants as administrations of the one covenant, 'I will be their God, & they will be my people'...The church 'replaces'...Israel, inheriting her promises of land & rest from enemies as the spiritual blessings of peace, forgiveness of sins, & the indwelling Holy Spirit,









7 eternity in heaven" (689).

"The Gospels apply the covenant fuliflments to Jesus directly, equating him with Israel itself. Indeed Jesus recapitulates the life of Israel. Like Israel under pagan rule, he escapes from a baby-murdering tyrant and is brought out of Egypt...The nations, represented by eastern magi, stream to Jesus and give him gifts of frankincense and myrrh...exactly as Isaiah had promised..." (676).

"Our churches are the proof of the gospel. In the gatherings of the church, the Christian Scriptures are read. In the ordinances of the church, the work of Christ is depicted. In the life of the church, the character of God himself should be evident. A church seriously compromised in character would seem to make the gospel itself irrelevant" (668).

"The most well-known example of church discipline in American history - the scarlet 'A' sewn on Hester Prynne's clothes - was a product of novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne's historical imagination and not an accurate record of either a historical event or of the general practice of church discipline in colonial New England" (653-4).

"As the gospel of justification by faith alone spread, the impossibility of justification without faith quietly challenged the practice of indiscriminately administering baptism & the Lord's Supper to everyone who belonged to a particular political entity, whether city, nation, or parish. Naturally, this meant the millennium-old, Constantinian relationship between church & state was itself being challenged" (645).