Spiritual Disciplines

Is Christianity really as intellectually driven as some of us seem to think? Sermons are lectures. Bible studies, book groups, and theology discussions take on an outsized role in the life of the church. We have difficulty talking to people who don’t know our jargon. In this episode of White Horse Inn, hosts Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb, and Bob Hiller discuss how we can push back against an overly intellectual approach to the faith and embrace a holistic church ministry and spiritual life.

Many churches preach that your biggest problem is that you’re not living your best life now. Rather than calling people to repentance, they call them to “try harder, do better” so that they can be fulfilled, healthy, and happy. Reformed theology provides a doctrine to help counter this wrong diagnosis of our true problem: total depravity. But sometimes, this doctrine sounds much more like “utter depravity,” leaving nothing good or redeemable about humanity. In this episode of White Horse Inn, hosts Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb, and Bob Hiller consider how we hold total depravity in tension with the goodness of humanity.

Many of us were raised in churches that downplayed the clergy-laity distinction. Every member, we were told, was a minister. Now, we’re in churches that take ordination seriously and that sees the biblical rationale for “office.” Maybe we’re even relieved to find that these churches don’t fill our calendars with a busy week of “ministry activities,” but instead prioritize Sunday worship. But where does that leave the laity? And where is the spiritual formation that happens when we live in community with one another? In this episode of White Horse Inn, hosts Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb, and Bob Hiller consider how the liturgy of our worship pushes back against the liturgies of the world. And they discuss the responsibility of members to exercise their spiritual gifts alongside their freedom to receive and rest on the Lord’s day.

Since the 2007 release of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, the Christian intellectual sphere has reverberated with talk of disenchantment, a historical process that helped create the modern world. According to Taylor, the old enchanted realm was “the world of spirits, demons, moral forces

In the spring of 1768, Voltaire famously remarked in his work the Épître à l’Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him (Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer). Among those so inclined, this line is often quoted as one of the first modern confessions of atheism.

When Dr. Fesko chose the topic of the imagination to introduce to our church his new book, The Cathedral of Theology: Principles of Christian Dogmatics, I immediately knew I wanted to read it.

Suppose someone declares, “Christianity is not credible.” What do they mean and how should we respond to that claim? They probably mean that Christianity isn’t worthy of belief. They know there are lots of Christians, but their point is that there shouldn’t be because Christianity isn’t worthy of belief.