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d596d13
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Countering this view, confessing Christians seek to maintain the unity of the church through discipline, not through division. The confessing movement is strongly committed to staying WITHIN. It is better for churches to learn to respect their own legislative processes and discipline themselves accordingly than to face the even greater problems of separation, division of property, and the anguish of divorce. Confessing Christians seek to re..
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church-discipline
schism
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Thomas C. Oden |
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ab42666
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God is the uncreated source and end of all things; one; incomparably alive; insurmountable in presence, knowledge, and power; personal, eternal spirit, who in holy love freely creates, sustains, and governs all things.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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ef1e07a
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One need not disavow the gifts of intellect in giving thought to their Giver
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Thomas C. Oden |
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6304360
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Christ is the singular embodiment of truth, infinitely plural in meaning. Christ is the sum and hidden interior meaning of all other genuine revelations of God
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Thomas C. Oden |
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8ee61e7
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Christianity does not limit revelation to Christ, but through Christ sees God's revelation as occurring elsewhere and finally, echoing everywhere.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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9713a2d
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Christ is the unparalleled and unrepeatable Revealer through whom other revelations are best understood
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Thomas C. Oden |
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b76294f
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Humanity is God's constant preoccupation throughout the Bible. The Christian study of God cannot neglect God's own prevailing interest--the redemption of humanity. No Christian theology can speak only of God and never of human beings.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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45abef2
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Revelation is for human salvation, the mending of human brokenness (Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word 3).
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Thomas C. Oden |
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355efe4
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Human reasoning is created by God with a capacity for reaching toward God by thinking, choosing, and speaking.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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ccecb28
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Human freedom is created by God with a capacity for responsiveness to God.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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24fe3d4
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Human personality is created with the restless yearning for communion with the unseen but present personal God (Augustine, Conf. 1.1).
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Thomas C. Oden |
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5253d71
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Human love is created with some capacity, however distorted, to love God and to love creatures through God.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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25570ae
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Here is the essential movement. The reality of the church emerges out of the saving action of God in Christ through the Spirit; the church is the providential means and sphere through which persons are enabled to participate in eternal life. The birth of the church of Jesus Christ is engendered by the regenerating power of the Spirit. The nurture of the church occurs by grace through Word and Sacraments. The present church shares in the com..
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Thomas C. Oden |
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e31fd18
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The most urgent and demanding question for Christian believers is not whether "a supreme being of some kind" exists, but rather whether this incomparably good and powerful and compassionate source and end of all things truly is as revealed in Scripture"
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Thomas C. Oden |
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f988585
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Yet to decide that this One exists is not quite like deciding that anything else exists. For this decision assumes a wider implication that the decider shall order his or her life around the existence of this One, if this One exists at all. It is not merely a casual or theoretical decision that makes no necessary difference to the way one lives the rest of one's life
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Thomas C. Oden |
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2a1f8c1
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Rightly understood, it is an all-embracing, intrusive question, and for this reason many prefer to dodge it or to proceed as if it were an abstract, theoretical question.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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b4778ff
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The worshiping community confesses and intercedes on the basis of, not the theory of God's existence, but the experience of a multigenerational community of witnesses.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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032aa78
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A critical, probing faith is a necessary and useful stage toward an assured and confirmed faith (Job 3:1-26; Clement of Alex., Stromata 8.9; Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel).
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Thomas C. Oden |
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422fcdc
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The incarnation is God's own act of identification with the broken, the poor, with sinful humanity.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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d449e71
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Faith's premises are felt to be so valuable that they deserve the best intellectual reflection possible to confirm argumentatively what faith already knows inwardly
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Thomas C. Oden |
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5f9ad77
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Just as God stepped out of his nature to become a partaker of our humanity, so we are called to step out of our nature to become partakers of his divinity" (Hilary of Arles, Intro. Comm. on 2 Pet. 1.4)."
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Thomas C. Oden |
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96b4884
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Protestants at one time were confident that their free form of confession was a vast improvement upon Catholic private confession to a priest because it is voluntary, demystified, and not routinized. But amid the acids of modernity it has volunteered itself right out of existence. Demystification has dwindled into desacralization. The escape from routinization has become a convenient cover for the demise of repentance. The postmodern pastor..
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confession
ministry
pastoral-care
church
sin
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Thomas C. Oden |
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0aba6be
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Sins of ignorance or infirmity are to be admonished in a different way than intentional sins of malice of intention. The assurance of forgiveness is not to be offered carelessly by those whose conscience is seared, but to penitents who come contritely to the table of the Lord.
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sins-of-commission
sins-of-omission
forgiveness
sin
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Thomas C. Oden |
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453e9f2
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Because cultures and languages are constantly changing and because the apostolic testimony must be attested in ever-new circumstances, it is a necessary feature of the apostolic tradition that it both guard the original testimony and make it understandable in new culture settings. Failing either is to default on the apostolic tradition. Far from implying unbending immobility, apostolicity requires constant adaptation of the primitive aposto..
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christianity
evangelism
missions
the-gospel
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Thomas C. Oden |
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dd0a0e9
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Eternal God, the refuge of all your children, in our weakness you are our strength, in our darkness our light, in our sorrow our comfort and peace. May we always live in your presence, and serve you in our daily lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Boniface FURTHER
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Thomas C. Oden |
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1e48009
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God has left a trail of language behind a stormy path of historical activities. That language is primarily the evidence with which theology has to deal--first with Scripture, then with a long history of interpretation of Scripture called church history and tradition, and finally with the special language that emerges out of each one's own personal experience of meeting the living God
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Thomas C. Oden |
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fa1e631
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The theater in which God has chosen to meet rational creatures quietly is the inward realm of conscience, moral reasoning, prayer, and study, especially study of the revealed Word.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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3ab2c8d
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the faithful are called through grace to be partakers of God's holiness (Heb. 12), restored to their primordial capacity to reflect, like a mirror, the radical holiness and purity of God, even though their mirroring is always imprecise (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 5.16).
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Thomas C. Oden |
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2d3f589
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There is no Christian theology without the Bible. There is no Bible without an inspirited community to write, remember, and translate it, to guard it and pass it on, study it, live by it, and invite others to live by it.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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1eb876c
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The confessor can nullify the exquisitely seasonable moment of confession by talking instead of listening. When he sees pedagogy and advice as more important than simple listening, he diverts the stream of confession.
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ministry
pastoral-care
sin
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Thomas C. Oden |
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97fa36a
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The great variety of moral qualities attributed to God by Scripture revolves particularly around two--holiness and love. These may be said in summary form to constitute the moral character of God
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Thomas C. Oden |
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165ef44
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God the Son, by being truly human without ceasing to be truly God, is both equal to the Father and less than the Father--equal by nature and less by volition to service. By this paradox, the usual logic of equality is turned upside down.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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7a52fa8
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Gregory of Nazianzus was amused by any who would insistently hold "God to be a male" which he regarded as a misplaced analogy."
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Thomas C. Oden |
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26c01ef
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You cannot conclude that God, because Father, is therefore male.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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50fe073
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By this paradox, the usual logic of equality is turned upside down.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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5659275
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Nor can you conclude that "Deity is feminine from the gender of the word, and the Spirit neuter," since the designation "has nothing to do with generation."
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Thomas C. Oden |
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aa35507
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In the Godhead all historical inequalities are finally transcended.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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9573f84
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God permits sin to come into human life, but only on behalf of a greater good--namely, freedom--and God overrules sin wherever it appears to threaten God's greater purpose
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Thomas C. Oden |
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cdd381d
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There reigns in the broken human heart a feeling of discord, a lack of congruence between what is and what ought to be (Augustine, Conf. 5).
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Thomas C. Oden |
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014c90c
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God foreknows the use of free will, yet this foreknowledge does not determine events. Rather, what God foreknows is determined by what happens, part of which is affected by free will.
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Thomas C. Oden |
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f5a7603
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God's way of being alive is distinguishable from other forms of life. Plants, animals, and humans enjoy life at different scales of consciousness, movement, and self-determination. But in all plants, animals, and humans, bodily life ends in death. From the moment of conception, the processes of decay and death are at work in our bodies. Not so in God's life. God's life is eternally alive. God's life is not only without end but without begin..
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Thomas C. Oden |
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fb74cc1
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I was able to confess the Apostles' Creed, but only with deep ambiguity. But I stumbled over "he arose from the dead." I had to demythologize it and could say it only symbolically. I could not inwardly confess the resurrection as a factual historical event. I was assigned the task of teaching theology, but when I came to the resurrection, I honestly had to say at that stage that is was not about an actual event of a bodily resurrection but ..
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theological-liberalism
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Thomas C. Oden |
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c004106
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Every experienced pastor knows that what the penitent heart says about itself is much more consequential than well-made truthful sentences that shout from the outside of the inner voice of conscience. No element of confession is more crucial than the discipline of listening. The attentive listener is a chosen agent of divine reconciliation. When the moment for keen listening is offered, take it as an inestimable gift.
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ministry
pastoral-care
listening
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Thomas C. Oden |
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b849f67
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One trains the eye of confession most closely on what is hurting. If sin is present it will be aching. Confession begins where the raw anguish of conscience is rubbing against the primordial awareness of God's holiness.
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ministry
pastoral-care
repentance
sin
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Thomas C. Oden |