On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus (Lk. 24:1-3). It’s a familiar tale that Christians like us insist is true on the most literal sense. But what’s the big deal? Would the bottom fall out of Christianity if the tomb actually contained the body of Jesus? The answer that Scripture gives is “Yes!” Everything about Christianity would fall apart if the tomb had not been empty.

I've been laid up with the flu the last few days, but I have tuned into the Barack Obama - Jeremiah Wright controversy, and have caught some of the internet banter commenting on it.  Mainly, three thoughts have occurred to me, dealing with Wright's anti-Americanism, Wright's racism, and Wright's use of the pulpit.

Why has it become almost taboo in reformed circles to have a conferences on eschatology? Cannot recall one in recent years. Is this in reaction to the bizarre?  The Greenville Eschatology conference mp3s and CDs are available, information can be found here. Kudos to GPTS for setting the agenda again.

Church visioning is a powerful tool that can help make leaders much more effective.  But since it necessarily focuses on things man can achieve, it has a dangerous tendency to secularize the church.  Therefore, in my opinion, church visioning is probably a good idea only for churches that are strongly established with an ordinary means of grace emphasis, but who need to pay more attention to their missional context. Also, I would suggest that a visioning process should be conducted only periodically so as to set some longer term trajectories for ministry aspirations. The document should be kept ready so as to offer its analysis to future decision-making (hiring decisions, budget priorities, etc.), and then the church should continue to focus on its God-given mission of serving the Kingdom of Christ through the God-given strategy of Word, sacrament, and prayer, with biblically-defined elders and pastors serving a biblically-shaped church. (See 2 Cor. 10:3-4, and 1 Cor. 1:21-2:2).

Having read the article to which Ligon links, regarding Pope Benedict and Martin Luther, it seems that the Luther they want to restore is really Erasmus.  The latter ranted against the moral and spiritual abuses of the Roman Catholic Church just as much as Luther did.  But Luther himself insisted that it was not merely the practice of the Church that he assailed -- it was, most specifically, its salvation doctrine. 

Thus continues the recent Roman Catholic--Evangelical dialogue.  At each step, it is the evangelicals who end up changing, never the papists (after which the evangelicals celebrate their "achievement").  At least when it comes to Luther, this Erasmian remaking is being imposed upon him, five hundred years after his valiant life for the gospel.  Luther knew that we must stand fast on God's Word and on the gospel proclamation of sola fide.  Our dialogue with Roman Catholics today can certainly improve on the tone of previous generations of evangelicals, but we cannot improve on our forefathers' commitment to the biblical gospel.  The reason we have evangelical churches today is that those before us refused to be moved from the gospel.  The question now is whether or not our grandchildren will have a true evangelical church, and it depends on our willingness to stand with and like Luther on sola fide.

Maybe so.