Marginal Christianity

  Theological Journal – April 10   "Standing near the cross of Jesus was his mother..." Martin Luther writes of this remarkable scene: "What agony Mary endured as she watched his suffering none can comprehend. In all history there is no other account of a woman who followed her son when he must suffer so frightfully. She saw him crowned with thorns, spat upon, and hanged. Truly the sword of  Simeon must have gone through her heart. A mother can scarcely stand it if her child falls from a bench or bleeds from the ear. Where shall we find a mother who could see such things as Mary? She could not speak but must watch all the tortures and hear all the revilings as they gave him vinegar to drink and diced for his clothing. To be sure, the Holy Spirit gave her comfort, but other mothers would have fainted. And for Christ, to see his mother suffer was one of the greatest parts of his pain, that nothing should be lacking in his suffering."

December 17, 2012 by Roger E. Olson The Almost Completely Unknown Difference that Makes All the Difference (between Christians and Culture and between Christians and Christians) We talk endlessly about differences among Christians: Catholic versus Protestant, Calvinist versus Arminian, liberal versus conservative, neo-fundamentalist versus postconservative, premillennial versus amillennial, pedobaptist versus credobaptist—to name just a few of our favorite divisions. But over the past few years I have become convinced there’s one deeper difference that is largely unrecognized and runs deeper than all those others. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, among Protestants, at least, it is rarely spoken about. We certainly don’t divide over it. Yet it does divide us without our knowing it. We don’t know it because it’s so seemingly subtle, it sounds esoteric. Whenever I bring it up eyes glaze over and people act as if it’s a drug that immediately causes mental confusion. Yet, it’s...

Ch.7: The “Christian Life” is Way Harder than It Should Be We’ve Misunderstood Forgiveness There are two primary reasons why our experience of living as a Christian seems way harder than it should be. Three, actually, but we’ll focus on only the first one here and the others in the next post in this series. One is what we talked a bit about last time: we continue to think of ourselves primarily as “redeemed sinners.” I want to reflect some more on that here. And the second is that we’re living in the wrong story.           Okay. We keep on thinking of ourselves as redeemed sinners. Though this seems humble and pious in truth it is a heinous disregard for what God has actually done in forgiving us. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:19 that “ in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” Did you hear that: “not counting their tresp...

Luther's dictum "at the same time justified and a sinner" can only be true in dynamic and not a static sense.  If taken statically, as a tensed equilibrium between righteousness and sin, pictured like this, Righteousness ------------------------- Sin it can lead to a resignation to the inevitability of sin in our lives and debilitating thoughts like, upon sinning, "Well, I'm only human after all." But such a perspective makes despite of the work and resurrection of Christ, the presence of the Spirit in and among us, and the call of the church to be "salt" and "light" in the world.  Instead, in the light of these realities, the relation should be pictured thus,                                                                                       ...