Orthodoxy test

I passed, I think.

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan, You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God’s grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists. Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 89% Emergent/Postmodern 75% Charismatic/Pentecostal 68% Classical Liberal 64% Modern Liberal 61% Neo orthodox 61% Reformed Evangelical 54% Roman Catholic 43% Fundamentalist 25% What’s your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

On the message board where I found this, several people who also scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan expressed some reservation or objection to the description that “you believe that you yourself are totally depraved.” I kept quiet about that but do understand the objection, based on the notion of the universality of what we Wesleyan types like to call “prevenient grace.” It’s probably a matter of definition:

Was The Devil Ever In Heaven?

Was The Devil Ever In Heaven?

Just a peek at a conservative biblical teaching which debunks certain key parts of the wildly popular speculative religious mythology which has overtaken much of what calls itself Christianity in America today. While I can’t endorse all the interpretive details set forth, there should at least be some challenge to the presumption that only the (erroneously) so-called literalists associated with the profitable “Left Behind” books have anything to say on these matters. An intriguing quote from C. E. Orr concludes this particular piece:

“Sin is a principle. Righteousness is a principle. We hold that no holy being could create or generate a sin principle any more than an unholy being could create a righteous principle. For holy angels to sin, a sin principle must have existed and they received it in their nature by faith or in some manner. The devil and angels did not create sin, for God created all that has been created. God did not create sin. He did not create goodness. Goodness is an uncreated and eternal principle. We hold that sin is an uncreated and eternal principle. If it be a created principle, then God created it, for He alone is Creator. A holy being could not create sin and retain his holiness; therefore God did not create sin. Devils could not create it; therefore sin is uncreated. God saw that His creation was good, but we do not understand that sin was His creation.

“Jesus taught His disciples to say when praying, ‘Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.’ Now, if angels in heaven sinned, then God’s will was not done in heaven and Christ’s words would not mean much to us. If holy angels in heaven sinned one time, how can we know that they have not sinned many times? Why could they not sin some future time, and if they can sin, why could not we after we got to heaven? To our mind the only logical conclusion is that sin never entered heaven and never will. No holy being in heaven ever sinned or ever will. Why would God redeem sinning man at such a great cost, and not redeem sinning angels?”

This idea of sin as an uncreated principle reminds me ever so slightly of some of the more obscure teachings of Jacob Boehme.

The Church’s Place

The Church’s Place

Notes for the Sunday morning message at the Marbury Church of God delivered on May 13, 2007. A vision of the New Jerusalem, the Bride of Christ, Heaven, the Church of God, the realized Kingdom of God: all the same.

The Church’s Promise

The Church’s Promise  was the topic for the May 6 sermon at the Marbury Church of God.  A brief excerpt:

The first thing we see in our passage is that heaven, and indeed when God is done with it, earth, is something new.  There are those who look for God to come and set up an earthly kingdom of some kind, modeled after the kingdoms of this world.  Peter says in his second epistle, We look for a new heaven and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

The second thing we see is that the church of God, designated here as the new Jerusalem, the bride of Christ, is in heaven already, and is not going to heaven.  You went to heaven, in a certain way, the day you became a Christian and thus became a member of this Bride, this Body, this holy temple.  In John’s vision the church is holy and complete, already belonging to God, every stone and precious pearl in place.

 

Marbury Church of God » Blog Archive » The Church’s Purpose

Marbury Church of God » Blog Archive » The Church’s Purpose

The church’s purpose: to tend his lambs, to feed his sheep, to care for Christ’s beloved in the name of Jesus, though it cost us our comfort and our familiar ways.

[of comforts, friends, and the pleasures of doing one's own work:]

These things are worth loving, but he asks: “do you love me more than these?”

Marbury Church of God » Blog Archive » The Church’s Power

Marbury Church of God » Blog Archive » The Church’s Power

Link to the first in a series.

We are talking today about the church’s power. In this passage we see that the infant church, consisting on that first Easter evening of a group of frightened disciples, began to be empowered by the risen Christ. This empowerment involved a process begun that night and continuing over many days. 

 

A Christmas reminder

From the note included with a Christmas card from retired missionaries:

“As you celebrate Jesus in this Christmas season, please remember to pray for our terrorist enemies and for our troops.”

Amen.  Well-put.

My Theology Of The Church

(Not backdated: I believe I wrote this in my final year at seminary, as a part of the work required for graduation (1987). Looking it over, I don’t find much to argue with myself over, after all this time.)

MY THEOLOGY OF THE CHURCH

by Robert C. Buehler

This paper will present what may best be described as a suggestive summary of some themes in my understanding of the church; its nature, origin, purpose, function, task and hope. To say that one is going to present a theology of the church presupposes that the subject-matter at hand has something to do with God; to say my theology (of anything) presupposes that I am going to talk about how this subject-matter relates to my own experience and/or understanding of God. For someone in the Christian tradition to speak of a theology of the church, therefore, necessitates speaking of God as such, and involves the whole range of theological issues. there are thus many different ways this topic could be approached, only a few of which may be touched on here. the primary focus of this paper will be the church as the community of faith. to further explicate this focus, the church will also be discussed as a divine-human organism, and as the herald of the reign of God. As a statement of one who comes from a tradition which has emphasised personal experience of faith as constitutive not only for personal salvation but for the life of the church as such, and who wants to contribute to the continual renewal of that emphasis, this discussion must find its beginning-point in terms of personal experience; but as that experience, both for this writer and for church members throughout Christian history, becomes understandable first of all in light of the stories of Jesus (already a curious enough observation), it is with the Jesus of those stories that we will begin. Ecclesiology is impossible without Christology.

A. Christological Foundation

The church, the community of faith, finds its origin both historically and existentially in Jesus, the man of faith. It is Jesus who came preaching repentance and teaching about the kingdom of God.

The Fellowship of the Unashamed

I am a member of the Fellowship of the Unashamed. I have Holy Spirit power. The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I will not look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ.

My past is redeemed, my present is exciting, and my future is secure. I will no longer abide low living, sight-walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tame visions, dwarfed goals, & cheap grace.

I no longer need pre-eminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I do not have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live in Him, lean on Him, love through Him, and labor with Him.

Come Out From Among Them

[Journal, August 25, 2006]: Writing today while sitting in the Nashville airport, waiting to return home from the strategic planning conference for the church of God, just ended today. Themes that have emerged from this conference will emphasize a flexible ministry future that is characterized by multi-directional communications, connectivity that uses all available technologies, etc., etc. There is a sense that the upshot of this meeting might help kick-start the “movement” out of its two-decades-long sense of being in the doldrums.

There is of course a desire to keep emphasizing the twin doctrines of holiness and unity, which gave birth to our movement. But this morning one participant made an observation which got my attention. In its early years, this movement’s message was a church-oriented message (“come ye out from among them and touch not the unclean thing” etc., thus holiness, along with a sense that those who had thus “come out” would “see the church” and thus begin to experience the spiritual unity that comes from belonging, not to any denomination or sect, but to Christ alone). It was also a message whose target audience was church people, just as the core message had to do with the nature of a person’s relationship to the church.

Today, the target audience is no longer church people, but the unchurched, and if we are calling folk to come out from anything, it is from the confusing babel of voices that bombard them in the world. We still call people to an experience and intimacy with Christ, but we no longer have the luxury of assuming that where they are coming from is somehow even a pseudo-Christian loyalty. Our scope is no longer the church, in other words, but the world.