Part two of a series. Eschatological continuity emphasizes excellence in our work, setting the standard for which we strive. Eschatological discontinuity emphasizes comfort and hope when our work is painful and frustrating. In C.S. Lewis’ allegorical novel The Pilgrim’s Regress, Mr. Savage sneers at the inhabitants of Claptrap (who represent respectable, bourgeois Enlightenment society) because they spend their whole lives working and building, even…
Part one of a series. A chance word from a friend has got me wanting to bicker about eschatology again. This has been a sore spot for our movement. But I wonder if we’re coming to the point where it’s time to start having this conversation again. The movement’s increasing maturity should be positioning us for mutual learning and edification…
Part six of a series. On my list of four things we can learn from the sacraments about vocation, the fourth is: My daily work participates in the ongoing drama of the world’s redemption. In the very delicate theological tap dance that constituted my last post, the key problem was relating creation and redemption. Sacraments, I proposed, are the legacy…
Part five of a series. On my list of four things we can learn from the sacraments about vocation, the third is: My daily work is a means of grace. “Means of grace” is a phrase used differently by different traditions. The goal in this series is to avoid getting too bogged down in differences over the sacraments, but here…
Part four of a series. On my list of four things we can learn from the sacraments about vocation, the second is: My daily work uses material objects and actions as signs of spiritual realities. We began to look at the significance of this intersection last time, when we saw how the sacraments involve God having entered into time-space history to…
Part three of a series. On my list of four things we can learn from the sacraments about vocation, the first is: My daily work is Christocentric, and this fact is ecclesially proclaimed and historically enacted. When I do my daily work, I am to do it with Christ at the center of my cosmology. It is in Christ that all…
Part two of a series. If Jesus knew what he was doing when he created the sacraments, we would expect them to have much to teach us about our calling in daily life. On the list of questions that I identified in the initial post of this series as needing to be distinguished before we could relate the sacraments to…
Part one of a series. Jenn Woodruff Tait is right that one of the biggest theological lacunae in the movement is our inattention to the sacraments. Having already written a post for this blog entitled “Let’s Bicker about Eschatology!“, naturally if Jenn invites me to bicker about the sacraments my only response is: “Challenge Accepted!” So here’s a blog series…
This week I was on a conference call with a bunch of fellow faith-and-workers, and one person said that a certain theologian has done a lot of work on vocation “because he’s a Calvinist.” I commented that it would be better to say he’s done a lot of work on vocation in spite of the fact that he’s a Calvinist,…
By Greg Forster; part four of a series. In this final post on MLK’s profound speech at Barratt Junior High, I want to focus on how his famous faith-and-work “street sweeper” image draws together the elements we’ve seen so far in the speech, but also adds something more. So far he has looked back to describe our origins (creation design)…
The Green Room 