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Heal Our Wounds

Six months after he was elected to the Chair of Peter, Pope Francis made one of the most provocative statements of his five-year pontificate. Asked by the Italian Jesuit Antonio Spadaro what the church (small c) most needs at this point in her history, he replied that he sees the church as a field . . . . Continue Reading »

Ecumenical Incorrectness

Roman but Not Catholic: What Remains at Stake 500 Years after the Reformationby kenneth j. collins and jerry l. wallsbaker, 464 pages, $34.99 Controversial theology—so popular during the Reformation—has long been out of vogue in the academy. Ecumenical correctness and norms of scholarly . . . . Continue Reading »

Reformed Ressourcement

Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholicedited by michael allen and scott r. swainbaker, 416 pages, $36.99Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretationby michael allen and scott r. swainbaker, 176 pages, $21In his Essay on the . . . . Continue Reading »

Shūsaku Endō's Silence and Faithfulness

Readers of First Thoughts will know by now that Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Silence by Shūsaku Endō was released in select theaters on December 23. The novel warrants the attention it is getting. Set in the 1640s at the end of Japan's “Christian Century” (1549-1639), Silence is a haunting journey through one priest’s struggles to remain faithful in the most challenging of circumstances. Continue Reading »

Where We Stand

The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church by peter j. leithart baker, 240 pages, $21.99 Peter Leithart’s latest book, The End of Protestantism, began as a set of short but controversial essays for First Things magazine and progressed through a roundtable discussion at Biola . . . . Continue Reading »

The Need for Epiphanic Evangelicalism

The second challenge I see facing American churches today (I discuss the first one here) is how the Church engages postmodernism in American culture. By “postmodern” I do not simply mean the period succeeding modernity, however one wants to date that. Rather, I mean the subjectivist thrust of . . . . Continue Reading »

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