Pacesetters Bible School Newsletter

Welcome to the third Christian Reconciliation Blog Carnival, which aims to bring the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18-19) to the blogosphere.

I’m particularly happy to host this edition of the carnival on our Pacesetters Bible School blog, because we have just completed Consider Christianity Week, a week dedicated to emphasizing the essentials of the faith, learning how to defend our faith, and building unity amongst Christians. I had hoped to have an entry from the host blog related to that event, but we haven’t gotten there. Perhaps I’ll be able to submit one to carnival #4.

Speaking of which, we need your submissions for the carnival. Christian unity is a good cause, a divinely ordained cause. Jesus himself prayed for it. A blog carnival is also a good place to publicize your blog and share. Sharing is extremely valuable in Bible study or theology, because it allows us to test our ideas with people who come from a different background or perspective. There’s no down side to entering the conversation. (We also need hosts. I’ll say more about that at the end.)

General Interest

General interest posts are related to Christian unity and/or Christian conversation but don’t fall into one of the previously defined categories. By definition, I would expect more of these than any other sort of posts.

This month we have quite an interesting crop:

Adrian Warnock writes on Multi-Colored Preaching, which is a good follow-up to our topic of the month from last time’s entry. There have been a number of good posts in Adrian’s series on preaching recently.

Joe Carter, on the evangelical outpost writes What Evangelicals Owe Catholics: An Appreciation, which suggests to me a good exercise. Why not think about a group with which you or your denomination are not normally on good terms, and write an appreciation for the positive contributions of that group? It’s a good exercise, and you may be amazed at how much you agree on!

You can learn to fight fairly through this post from TheCrockery.

Last month’s host points us to this wonderful article from a Jesuit writer, discussing the nature of heresy and the divide between Catholics and protestants. Dr. Platypus is also continuing a good series on Nicene Christianty (an extended guest book review), which should be of interest to all of us to look toward Christian unity.

On Monastic Mumblings we read about going back into our Jewish heritage to find new meaning in our own ritual, especially the Eucharist. Could it be that by going deeper into our roots we can find more unity for the branches?

Questions

Last month someone submitted the following question:

For anyone Eastern Orthodox, could you please give the brief explanation of the distinction between God’s essence and God’s energy, and why it matters? I’m asking because I wish to improve my own understanding, and it seems to be a useful distinction that should be more generally known, but is little developed in western Christianity.

There was only one effort to answer it, bravely tackled by Mark Olson of Pseudo-Polymath in an entry titled Essence and Energy from the East. I appreciate his providing this answer, and I found it educational. I knew nothing of this theological distinction before it came up as a question here. Are there any more posts on this topic out there?

There were no new questions submitted this month, but I think we could do worse than spend a little more time on that same topic. Let me ask my own question: How does this energy/essence distinction resonate with heirs of the western church now that we have read it?

Topic of the Month

Mark Olson of Pseudo-Polymath presents Making and Declaring War But in a Non-Violent Even (!) Loving Manner, which is an excellent start on the topic of the month. Mark summarizes: “When considering the notion of adiaphora and the ecumenical movement, I say … this means War! But in a good way.” I am commonly asked just how does one deal with differences, especially when one feels that a brother or sister is in grave error. You could do much worse than to start from Mark’s suggestion. I would suggest that Christian reconciliation cannot mean abandoning truth, and thus the work that Mark suggests is essential.

Weekend Fisher, from Heart, Mind, and Soul, and coincidentally founder of this blog carnival, weighs in with Christian Unity: Defining the Essentials, and I couldn’t agree with her more, especially during Holy Week:

There is no reason for being Christians except for Christ. There is no point in unity for its own sake; it must be for Christ’s sake. Neither could we ever rouse ourselves to the necessary levels of humility, kindness, patience, and compassion without Christ. We are, first and foremost, his people. It is in him that the whole building is joined together, in him we are the Temple in which God Lives.

Her entry dovetails nicely with Mark’s.

I’m going to add two older posts of my own, bending the rules just a bit, because I have only a few submissions on this topic. These are nearly a year old, but I think they are relevant. The first is Unity, Diversity, and Confusion, in which I discuss the problem of failing to define what is essential so that your doctrine kind of drifts without an anchor. The second is Christian Essentials: Incarnation at the Center. This is a slightly more confused way of stating what Weekend Fisher stated quite eloquently.

Discussions and Debates

The discussion of continuationism vs cessationism continues, but it has become much less congenial, so I’m going to refrain from linking to it any more. I’ll probably write more on it myself at some point, and hopefully we can get some posts that follow the guidelines of this section so that we can post more on the topic. It certainly is not one that is going to simply go away.

Call for Hosts

We need hosts for this blog carnival. It only takes a couple of hours to put together the entry. It will grow and take more time soon, but right now it’s a fairly light burden. You can find guidelines here, but essentially if you can take a few hours pulling together posts and making an entry like this one, or hopefully a bit better, and if you agree with the essential goal of the carnival, then you can be a host.

We also need submissions. You can send in your own, or nominate other submissions you find. A good deal of the reading this month came from suggestions that others made either through e-mail or by linking to good material from their blogs.

Please feel free to send me comments or corrections. If you give me a correction via a comment I will be glad to move the relevant information into the main post.

Blessings to all!