In highlighting the legacy of the Particular Baptist pastor theologian Andrew Fuller, Paul Sanchez points the reader towards Fuller’s view of love as the essential virtue for pastoral ministry, arguing that the training of pastors should give more attention to the formation of love as a virtue.
Joshua Philpot examines the Old Testament background of the Greatest Commandment to assert that “the injunction of love for God and neighbor is the guiding principle” around which a healthy church is built, helpfully reminding us that “love is a principle of action.”
Paul J. Morrison continues the discussion around issues of racial injustice and conflict, arguing that a transformation of the heart through the employment of virtue is the best answer for “lasting societal reformation.”
Focusing on the struggles pastors face shepherding their flocks in “the Age of Anger,” Joel D. Lawrence asserts that helping congregations reshape their common objects of love will in turn reshape their communities to be more effective witnesses to peace.
Moving to issues of racial conflict, Robert S. Kinney explores historical conceptions of love to conclude that a “biblical understanding of friendship, expressed in the Christian virtue of love, is essential to improving discussions of race and ethnicity in this complex moment of our history.”
Recognizing the frequent dichotomy set up between the heart and the mind in the context of those services, Gerald Hiestand urges pastors to incorporate a balance between liturgy, cognition, and “spiritual/romantic experience” in order to facilitate the fullness of Christian growth in their congregations.
Owen Strachan expounds a theology of womanhood that pays close attention to the meaning of the female body.
Matthew Mason examines what Theology of the Body might have to say on issues of same-sex sexuality and contemporary gender confusion.
Christopher Bechtel explores the metaphor of church as body to consider how John Paul’s spousal anthropology might inform our ecclesiology.
Writing from the perspective of historical theology, Matthew Ward (CPT Second Fellowship) considers how historical Anabaptist texts could inform (one type of ) consistent Free Church economics.
Gary Schultz (CPT Second Fellowship) exegetes Philippians 4:10- 13 and 1 Timothy 6:6-10, finding in Paul’s call to contentment a powerful theological antidote to the contemporary malaise of “affluenza.”
Michael LeFebvre (CPT Second Fellowship) offers a rich exploration of the biblical Year of Jubilee, in the hope of encouraging and contributing to deeper reflection on how the Mosaic Law might be used to inform contemporary economic theory. LeFebvre persuasively argues that Moses has much to say here, and pushes back against the near exclusive Greco-Roman focus of contemporary economic theorists and historians.
Joel Lawrence (CPT First Fellowship) offers a corrective to the current popularity of “radical” Christianity that calls on Christians to abandon attachments to the world. These “radical” voices often cite Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous call to costly discipleship. Lawrence, himself a Bonhoeffer scholar, situates Bonhoeffer’s call within the wider context of Bonhoeffer’s theological anthropology. Lawrence shows how Bonhoeffer affirms the material constitution of humanity and the goodness of creation, and so the consequent goodness of “having stuff.”
Scott Hafemann (Theological Mentor, First CPT Fellowship) challenges the idea that work is part of the original creation mandate. He argues instead that work—defined by Hafemann as the need to provide for one’s own sustenance—is a result of the fall, and that Christ’s redemptive work secures rest for us. This redemptive rest ultimately brings about the end of human work.
Matthew Ward (Second Fellowship) brings Smith into conversation with Robert Webber and calls for Christians in free church traditions not to follow Webber on the road to Canterbury, but rather to use the resources of traditional free church theology to develop a robust free church form of worship.
Joseph Sherrard (Second Fellowship) engages one of Smith’s interlocutors, Charles Taylor, challenging the criticisms of John Calvin in Taylor’s account of the secular turn. Sherrard expounds Calvin’s Eucharistic theology, connected as it is to his Christology and his theology of worship, to argue that Calvin offers a thorough and nuanced account of materiality, albeit one that challenges “sacramental” understandings of reality by fixing attention on God’s covenant promises. These promises are mediated through material reality, but find their locus in the ascended Christ.
In a highly personal article, Joel Willitts (First Fellowship) traces the embodied patterns by which suffering Christians follow the Man of Sorrows, as we learn to lament in ways that connect us to God, and to others, as God connects to us in our griefs.
Ryan Jackson (First Fellowship) engages the Corinthian correspondence to explore how Paul sought to form disciples in first century Corinth by challenging the reigning cultural imaginaries with an alternative Christian imaginary focused on Christ-like living.
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