All posts in Theology

  • May 8, 2013

    The Divine Conspirator: My Dallas Willard Story

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    Dallas Willard
    (September 4, 1935 — May 8, 2013)

    In another lifetime, before I became the man I am today, I was searching…searching for I didn’t quite know what. I was utterly weary of a paper-thin Christianity propped up by cheap certitude recycling tired clichés. I was yearning for something deeper, richer, fuller. Yes, I was searching, but I hardly knew where to look. I was embarrassingly ignorant of “the good stuff.” With nowhere else to turn I began reading the Early Church Fathers, philosophy, and classic literature. Maximus the Confessor, Søren Kierkegaard, and Fyodor Dostoevsky were a big help, but I needed something contemporary — I needed a well dug in my own time.

    One afternoon I was in my library. I was deliberately looking for a book that would “give me a breakthrough.” I couldn’t settle on anything. So I prayed: “God, show me what to read.” And I sensed…nothing. I went downstairs feeling a bit agitated and slumped into a chair. Within a minute or two Peri walked into the room, handed me a book and said, “I think you should read this.” She knew nothing of my moments ago prayer, but she had just handed me a book, and told me to read it. This was my Augustine-like “take and read” moment. It sent chills down my spine. The book was Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy. The strange thing was Peri had not read it and had no more idea who Dallas Willard was than I did. Neither of us were sure how the book had even made its way into our house. But, oh my, was it ever an answer to prayer!
    Read more

    4 Comments / Books, Kingdom, Theology /

  • March 28, 2013

    How Did Jesus Understand His Death?

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    How Did Jesus Understand His Own Death?
    Brian Zahnd

    A question for Good Friday:

    How did Jesus understand his own death?
    What meaning did Jesus give to his crucifixion?
    Did Jesus have a “theology of the cross”?

    Jesus repeatedly predicted his own death by crucifixion to his inner-circle of disciples, but did Jesus ever speak about what it meant?

    Yes.

    In Jerusalem a few days before Good Friday Jesus said this in reference to his impending crucifixion:

    Now is the judgment of the world.
    Now will the ruler of the world be cast out.
    And when I am lifted up from the earth—
    I will draw all people to myself.
    –John 12:31, 32

    Jesus says his crucifixion (seen in the light of resurrection) does three things…

    1. Judges the world.
    2. Reorganizes humanity.
    3. Drives out the satan.
    Read more

    6 Comments / Christianity, Death, Jesus, Theology, Violence /

  • February 28, 2013

    Walter Brueggemann | Schooled In Denial

    Hey everybody!

    Walter Brueggemann     will be our guest speaker at Faith & Culture 2013!

    (November 4-6, 2013 | Word of Life Church | St. Joseph, Missouri)

    Here’s a taste of Brueggemann’s inimitable genius…

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    Go HERE for more information and to register for Faith & Culture 2013.

    Do it today!

    BZ

    PS

    Here’s some of the highlights from the Brueggemann video…

    The wounded in our society are everywhere, but we are schooled in denial.

    Art both ministers to people at the point of their pain, but may also be a way of penetrating the denial to have a conversation about it in the first place.

    The pressure for certitude and absolutism is a kind of anxious, frightened response to the reality of pain. We think we cannot bear it, so we protect ourselves from it by imagining that we don’t know about our own pain.

    But what we always discover is that if we can get access to our pain in a community that we trust [the church], our pain is almost always is bearable, because the trustworthiness of our brothers and sisters will hold and is reliable and will not let us fall through.

    What good artistry has to do is help us to see or hear that our certitudes are mainly phony, that life does not conform to our certitudes.

    God in the whirlwind speeches [in Job] is also something of an artist; he moves in big images and questions and invites a fresh think about things.

    The church is historically and instrically an artistic operation.

    If people are caught in dogmatism or in moralism they tend not to notice how incredibly artistic it all is.

    3 Comments / Art, Culture, Theology /

  • February 25, 2013

    How Do We Know Christianity Is True?

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    I was asked this question by a young man.

    Hello Pastor Zahnd. I have a question; I hope you can give me some input. I recently became friends with people of the Muslim practice. We exchanged what our beliefs were and how they differ. (In a friendly way.) But this thought has ached at me for months now. How do we know, as Christians, we are correct? How do we know our religion, our denomination, our practice is correct?

    S.

    Here is my answer
    Read more

    No Comments / Apologetics, Christianity, Jesus, Skepticism, Theology /

  • June 28, 2012

    From Word of Faith to the Church Fathers

    EngagingOrthodoxyFrom Word of Faith to the Church Fathers

    Trevin Wax is the managing editor of The Gospel Project and an influential blogger through his regular posts at Kingdom People. He’s a reader, a thinker, a writer, and a lover of Jesus.

    I first became aware of Trevin Wax when he did a review of my book Beauty Will Save the World. (You can read his review here.)

    Trevin recently interviewed me regarding my theological journey. I thought you might find the conversation interesting so I’m sharing it with you. (The Kingdom People post can be found here.)

    I like the title Trevin gave his post. I’m glad he didn’t entitle it, “Has Brian Zahnd Lost His Mind or What?”

    BZ

     

    From Word-Faith to the Church Fathers: A Conversation with Brian Zahnd

     

    A few weeks ago, I reviewed a book by Brian Zahnd – Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity. Some pastor friends quickly connected me to Brian, and in our subsequent conversations, I discovered how interesting his theological pilgrimage has been. One friend said Brian used to preach like Joel Osteen but now sounds more like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I invited Brian to the blog to talk about his journey and how it has affected his congregation.

     

    Trevin Wax: Brian, you’ve had an interesting theological journey in ministry – from Word of Faith type teaching to a celebration of Christianity’s core teachings throughout history. First, tell us about your ministry at the outset – what you were about as a preacher of God’s Word and the vision you had for your local congregation.

    Brian Zahnd: I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the -60s and -70s but was most influenced by the Jesus Movement. I experienced a rather dramatic conversion when I was 15, and within a couple of years I was leading a coffeehouse ministry; it was primarily a Christian music venue with an emphasis on evangelism. By the time I was 22 the coffeehouse ministry had become a full-fledged church (Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri).

    From my earliest days as a teenage Christian leader my passion was to call people into a life of following Jesus. That passion has remained consistent over the years. Because the Jesus Movement was closely associated with the charismatic movement our church took on many of the aspects of charismatic Christianity.

    By the late -90s our church had grown to several thousand, and my primary emphasis in preaching could be described as “faith and victory.” Though I think I can honestly say I eschewed the more egregious forms of “prosperity teaching,” I was certainly identified with the Word of Faith movement. The common thread from the Jesus Movement to the Word of Faith movement (whether I was being influenced by Keith Green or Lester Sumrall) was a deep desire to bring people into a vibrant and authentic Christian experience.

    Trevin Wax: What initiated your movement away from Word of Faith teaching to something more in line with historic Christian orthodoxy? 

    Read more

    6 Comments / Books, Christianity, Kingdom, Theology /

  • October 3, 2011

    The Moral Theology of the Devil

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    Tonight I watched part two of the Ken Burn’ film “Prohibition” on PBS—a brilliant documentary on America’s fourteen year ill-fated war on alcohol. It’s a classic study in good intentions gone wrong. It’s a penetrating look at the fallacy of thinking, “If we can just pass this or that legislation, we can produce a righteous society.” Anyway, it’s a well-done documentary about a strange time in American history.

    After the documentary I decided to read a random chapter from Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation. I chose a chapter entitled “The Moral Theology of the Devil.” It turned out to be entirely apropos for my state of mind. Here are some selections from the chapter.

    The Moral Theology of the Devil
    by Thomas Merton

    The devil has a whole system of theology and philosophy, which will explain, to anyone who will listen, that created things are evil, that men are evil, that God created evil and that He directly wills that men should suffer evil. God has willed and planned it that way.

    As a matter of fact, in creating the world God had clearly in mind that man would inevitably sin and it was almost as if the world was created in order that man might sin, so that God would have an opportunity to manifest His justice.

    So, according to the devil, the first thing created was really hell—as if everything else were, in some sense, for the sake of hell. Therefore the devotional life of those who are “faithful” to this kind of theology consists above all in an obsession with evil. As if there were not already enough evils in the world, they multiply prohibitions [get it!] and make new rules so that man may not escape evil and punishment. Read more

    No Comments / America, Christianity, Theology /

  • October 1, 2011

    Hints and Guesses

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    Hints and Guesses

    My favorite thought is the Incarnation.

    My favorite poet (after Dylan) is T.S. Eliot.

    Here is a snippet of T.S. Eliot poetry that touches on Incarnation.

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    Men’s curiosity searches past and future
    And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
    The point of intersection of the timeless
    With time, is an occupation for the saint—
    No occupation either, but something given
    And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,
    Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
    For most of us, there is only the unattended
    Moment, the moment in and out of time,
    The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
    The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
    Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
    That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
    While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
    Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
    Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
    The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.

    —T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, The Dry Salvages (from stanza V)

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    A little analysis:

    Most of us live in the past and future (memory and imagination); it’s the great saints who have the capacity to live, really live, in the present moment and recognize it for what it is: a slice of infinity. It takes a true contemplative to perceive that mere being brushes against Being (I AM). Heidegger’s Dasein. Moses’ burning bush. But only mystics are fit for that kind of contemplation. Most of us stumble upon this (if at all) through experiences of unanticipated grandeur; a shaft of sunlight, wild thyme, transcendent music. Senses—sight, smell, sound—evoking something deep within. These are but hints and guesses, yet if followed they can lead to the more spiritually formative observances of prayer, thought, discipline, etc. And who knows, maybe it will generate a half-guessed, half-understood encounter with the greatest wonder of all: Incarnation.

    “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

    BZ

    P.S. Analysis turns poetry into prose; it strips it of its magic and makes it, well, prosaic. Analysis reduces a poem to how it spoke in a limited way to the analyst. But it can be helpful for learning how poetry “works.” Oh, and by the way, a lot of the Bible is poetry!

    The artwork is “Blue (Moby Dick)” by Jason Pollock.
    Suggested soundtrack is “Perth” by Bon Iver.

    5 Comments / Poetry, Theology /

  • August 11, 2011

    God Is Like Jesus

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    God is like Jesus.
    God has always been like Jesus.
    There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus.
    We have not always known what God is like—
    But now we do.

    Consider these two foundational truths of Christian theology:

    1. God is immutable. i.e. God does not change and is not subject to change.

    2. God is perfectly revealed in Jesus.     i.e. Jesus does not change God, Jesus reveals God.

    (see John 1:1, 14-18; 5:19-21; 7:28-29; 8:19; 10:28-30; 12:44-46; 14:7-9)

    Understanding that God is immutable and that God like Jesus is essential to our understanding of salvation. We must not think that salvation comes about because Jesus placates God (thus changing God) or that God is obligated to satisfy retributive justice in order to forgive sin (thus making God subordinate to a higher justice). Salvation comes about because Jesus reveals the Father and does the Father’s work. Jesus tells us that the great work of the Father is to give life to the dead (see John 5 and 11). Thus the primary problem the Gospel addresses is not personal guilt (though this is included), but human subjugation to death. If we think judicial guilt is the primary problem of sin, instead of death (and then falsely imagine that God is responsible for killing Jesus instead of sinful humanity!), we greatly misrepresent the nature of salvation and concoct a distorted gospel where Jesus is saving us from God. No! Jesus reveals the Father, does the work of the Father, and saves us from the dominion of sin and death.

    The Apostle Paul tells us that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself…not reconciling himself to the world. The cross doesn’t change God (God is immutable). The cross shames the principalities and powers (exposing their claim to wisdom and justice as a naked bid for power) and changes us!

    To hear my full sermon on this topic, the podcast is available here.

    BZ

    9 Comments / Salvation, Theology /

  • May 13, 2010

    Dweller By A Dark Stream

    I’m a late-comer to the Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, but I’m making up for lost time. I love his work. I’ve been listening to his Dweller By A Dark Stream over and over. It’s a beautiful love song to Jesus that gets so much right. This little song has a ton of good theology on atonement, incarnation and eschatology. Not bad for a song! Check it out. Read more

    No Comments / Music, Salvation, Theology /
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