God’s promise to Abraham was not that he would be the progenitor of a parochial people, but that his family would be the family through which the whole earth would be blessed. Read more…
The Economy of the Kingdom (Matthew 20:1-16)
But the Kingdom Jesus embodied, announced and inaugurated was not quite what His countrymen had expected…or wanted. Read more…
Jesus: Lord & Servant (Matthew 8:1-17)
Who was Jesus? Indeed, who is Jesus? Read more…
Vocatio Christ: The Contours of Our Callings Part 2 (Scholar’s Compass)
It seemed like the whole world was on fire when C.S. Lewis stepped into the pulpit of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in Oxford in the autumn of 1939. Only a few weeks earlier Germany had invaded Poland, provoking declarations of war from Great Britain and France, igniting the great conflagration that would be the Second World War. Across the United Kingdom out of a sense of duty and urgency young men were enlisting in the armed services and citizens were preparing for the war effort. And Lewis, the great Oxford don, had been tasked with addressing a room full of anxious young men beginning their autumn term at Oxford University.Read more…
Vocatio Christi: The Contours of Our Callings (Scholar’s Compass)
“Follow me.” With these two simple words Jesus turned the worlds of Peter, Andrew, James and John upside down. Jesus called them away from the life that they knew in order to be apprenticed into a new Way, a new Truth, a new Life. He extended this call to Matthew the tax collector, to a rich young ruler, and to many, many more. Some followed. Some didn’t.Read more…
Missio Dei: The Context of Our Callings (Scholar’s Compass)
What, if anything, does my spiritual life have to do with my work life? Better yet, what does my spiritual life have to do with my life’s work? Is my specific vocation incidental or irrelevant to my spiritual formation? Or do these aspects of my life converge somehow? Similarly, are evangelical witness and the integration of faith and scholarship mutually exclusive concerns, one activity being suited to dynamic extroverts and the other to bookish introverts? Or is there a way in which these go together?Read more…
A Spirituality of Graduate School: Mission and Formation (Scholar’s Compass)
Greg Thompson once said in my hearing, “Mission without spiritual formation and virtue is impossible. But spiritual formation without mission is solipsistic.” Read more…
C.S. Lewis on Scripture. God’s Word in Human Words. Part 2 of 2
In my last post I highlighted C.S. Lewis’s take on what it means to approach the Bible humbly: namely, we should first ask honestly and with an open mind, What sort of book has God actually given us and how has He given it?Read more…
C.S. Lewis on Scripture. God’s Word in Human Words. Part 1 of 2
I am always thankful that the first theology book I ever read was C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. I stumbled upon it in the B. Dalton Bookseller at the local mall early in the summer before my senior year in high school,Read more…
Why You Must Be Dying to be a Christian Scholar (Wrap Up)
Following his move to The Big Apple to serve with InterVasity’s Graduate & Faculty Ministry at NYU this fall, David is back to wrap up his series on Why You Must Be Dying to be a Christian Scholar. For earlier postsRead more…
Why You Must Be Dying to be a Christian Scholar (2/2)
Last week I began to introduce myself and my understanding of the Christian scholar’s vocation by briefly outlining the controversy which marked my time as a student at Westminster Theological Seminary. (You can read last week’s post here.) This weekRead more…
Why You Must Be Dying to be a Christian Scholar: David Williams Intro (1/2)
What am I, a nice campus minister, doing on a blog like this? I am neither a scholar nor the son of a scholar. I occupy no endowed chairs. I will be presented with no festschriften upon my retirement. Why,Read more…
In God We Trust: A July 4th Conversation on the Historian’s Vocation & the Church
So, Wen, given the prevalence of the whole “Christian America” ideology in American churches today, what has been your experience in the church as a historian of American religion? How do you navigate conversations about America’s history in church? Read more…
The Found (Luke 19:1-10)
This is the piece the third of a four part series in which David Williams shares some historical and theological observations on the Bible passages studied in the Urbana12 business track. The other posts of the series are The Call (Luke 5:1-11), TheRead more…
The Lost (Luke 15:1-10)
This is third post of a four part series in which David Williams shares some historical and theological observations on the Bible passages studied in the Urbana12 business track. The earlier posts of the series are The Call (Luke 5:1-11) and The KingdomRead more…
The Kingdom (Luke 10:1-24)
Though the Seventy-Two’s moment is not our moment, nevertheless, their Lord is our Lord, and as we modern-day disciples faithfully embody and articulate the good news of God’s reign in Christ, we still present our friends, families, communities, workplaces, and world with a difficult but necessary choice. Let us do so with grace, earnestness and the solid assurance that “all things” are in Christ’s hands.Read more…
The Call (Luke 5:1-11)
This is the first post of a four part series of posts in which David Williams shares some historical and theological observations on the Bible passages studied in the Urbana12 business track. The second post of the series is The KingdomRead more…