seeing in a mirror dimly

Mark Thompson has just posted up a bunch of short summaries of the papers given at the Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference.  Very interesting bunch of speakers: Henri Blocher, Mike Horton, Bruce McCormack, John Franke and Mark Thompson himself.  Here’s s little snippet from Mark’s summary of his paper:

“Perhaps the most controversial part of my paper was the suggestion that the relationship between preaching and the sacraments can help us to clarify what preaching is about. In other words, preaching can be displaced by sacramental maximalism and it can also be distorted by sacramental minimalism. The sacraments remind us that the Christ of preaching is ‘Christ crucified’ not some abstract theological principle; they insist on the proper posture of the Christian as one who receivessalvation rather than effecting it; and they will not allow us to reduce preaching and the Christian life in general to the purely rationalist apprehension of eternal truths.

Some rather insistent voices suggest that the problem with some of our preaching at least is that it contains too much theology, making the sermon too complicated or too remote from the concrete realities of Christian living. I suggest what we need is more theology, not less and, in particular, careful thinking about the place preaching has in our doctrine of the church.”

Go, and check out the rest! Here.

After a really fruitful chat with Andrew Katay about preaching method, and how to preach the Gospel and help people change – this is a timely link! Mark Thompson has linked through to some talks given at OakHill College by Tim Keller on preaching.  I haven’t yet listened to them (but I can commend these talks which I’ve purchased), but if Mark’s recommending them, I’m sure they are excellent!  Over here.

Also, I’d be keen to hear your thoughts once you’ve had a listen to them!

Two interesting links, from two interesting guys!

Mark Thompson from Moore College discusses the location of the Trinity with respect to John Webster’s writings, on his blog here.

Tim Chester of Total Church fame discusses the “one-anothering” of New Testament ecclesiology which forms part of our church community on his blog here.

Here’s a taster of Mark Thompson’s post:

“… is it the doctrine of the Trinity which stands at the very centre? Is every other Christian doctrine ultimately an exposition of this doctrine? Or might we speak more accurately of the triune God at the centre? God is the ground of everything that exists. All truth is ultimately traceable to him. But do we put the doctrine under unreasonable strain by suggesting that it ‘comprehends within itself all further teaching about creatures, their nature and ends’?”

And a taster of Tim Chester’s post:

“All the New Testament writers refer often to what we are to do to or for ‘one another’ (or ‘each other’ – the Greek is the same). This concept of ‘one anothering’ is a central feature of New Testament ecclesiology, albeit one which receives little attention in contemporary academic discussions.”

They’re both good reads – check them out!