All posts tagged Martin Luther

  • April 20, 2018

    How Christians Should Speak About Creation

    Pierre-Auguste_Renoir_-_Coucher_de_soleil_a?_Douarnenez_(c.1883)

    How Christians Should Speak About Creation
    Brian Zahnd

    This year Earth Day falls on a Sunday, so I thought I’d say a few words about how Christians should speak about Creation.

    First, Christians should never say…

    This world is not my home.

    This world is our home! And it’s the locus of God’s saving work. The blessed hope is not “we’re going,” but “Christ is coming.” Our eschatological hope is resurrection, not evacuation. The risen Christ is not a ghost, he has flesh and bones; he eats fish and honeycomb.

    It’s all going to burn.

    What a horrible, ghastly thing for a Christian to say! Especially when it’s given as an excuse for justifying environmental exploitation. In Christ we have a hopeful eschatology that says, “It’s all going to be renewed.” (And if you want to work from 2 Peter 3:10, say, “It’s all going to be refined.”)

    Environmentalism is idolatry.

    Never say that. Instead say, “This is my Father’s world.” In giving humanity “dominion,” God made us park rangers of Planet Earth. Environmentalism isn’t idolatry — it’s the original vocation given to humanity. Environmentalism isn’t idolatry — but greed is! In Revelation we’re told that God will judge “those who destroy the earth.”

    Instead of saying un-Christian things like, “This world is not my home,” “It’s all going to burn,” and “Environmentalism is idolatry,” listen to how wise Christians have always spoken about Creation.
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  • October 27, 2017

    Beyond the Wittenberg Door

    Luther95theses

    Beyond the Wittenberg Door
    Brian Zahnd

    Five-hundred years ago on All Hallows Eve (the day before All Saints Day) Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Professor Luther was proposing a theological debate, what he got was a revolution. What Luther unwittingly launched that day in Wittenberg was one of the most momentous movements in church history: The Protestant Reformation. Among the many consequences of the Reformation was that the Western Church separated into Catholic and Protestant churches. One way of describing the Reformation would be, “there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other.” (Acts 15:39)

    So here we are now, five-hundred years down the road — five-hundred years beyond the Wittenberg Door. And finding ourselves half a millennium beyond the Wittenberg Door, how should we think about the Protestant Reformation? I have a few thoughts.
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    No Comments / Christianity, Church, Uncategorized /

  • October 27, 2008

    Reformation


    Every few centuries Christianity must undergo a new reformation. By which I mean it must re-form itself. Re-formation is necessary to live in the tension of biblical authenticity and contemporary particularity. Re-formation is required if we are to embrace a synthesis of rootedness and relevance. Every few centuries Christianity must undergo a kind of reformational metamorphosis to regain its counterculture character.This is not something that happens often. I’m not referring to the periodic infusions of spiritual vigor or the cultural adaptations that are common to every generation. I’m speaking of something rare and seismic.

    But I will dare to state that we live in such a time. I’m emphatic about this. We are living in a time of real reformation. It will do you little good to think of it as a throwback to some historic revival from the past three hundred years. That is rejuvenation and that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a real reformation. A radical rethinking of the nature of salvation and what it means to be a Christian. A radical reassessment of assumed paradigms leading to a re-formation of Christianity as we have known it.
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