Posts tagged "Gerhard Forde"
Tiger Woods: Theologian of Glory
Celebrity / Sports / Theology

Tiger Woods: Theologian of Glory

by Nick Lannon on Apr 3, 2013 • No Comments

Tiger Woods’ new ad campaign (or, more accurately, Nike’s new ad campaign featuring Tiger Woods) is making the rounds. Featuring Woods staring down a put, the tagline is “Winning Takes Care of Everything,” a quote attributed to “Tiger Woods, World #1.” There has been much debate about the taste level of this ad, seeing as how Tiger Woods remains a divorcee with less than full custody of his children. Has “everything” really been taken care of? Is this an appropriate message to be sending to children?

The great Gerhard Forde (via the greater Martin Luther) talked about…

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Grace in Addiction: Stanley Runs Into Barbed Wire
Addiction / Theology

Grace in Addiction: Stanley Runs Into Barbed Wire

by Mockingbird on Mar 20, 2013 • No Comments

Continuing with our series of previews of our recent publication Grace in Addiction: The Good News of Alcoholics Anonymous for Everybody, here’s a section from the chapter having to do with Step 7, i.e. “Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.”

An important part of parenting comes when the parent makes a mistake. Perhaps tempers flare in a regrettable way. Or maybe a crucial decision turns out to have been a misstep. Maybe the parents move their child into a new school that proves to be a poor match, and the child has to switch back later. God’s grace is…

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The Mighty Breakup: Conditional Calculations, Unconditional Promises and the Beginning of New Life
Forgiveness / Law / Religion / Theology

The Mighty Breakup: Conditional Calculations, Unconditional Promises and the Beginning of New Life

by David Zahl on Jan 31, 2013 • No Comments

Alrighty kids, time for another dynamite portion of Gerhard Forde’s dynamite essay in Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification. I assure you that the 35th anniversary of Rumours this week is purely coincidental: 

Justification by faith alone, without the deeds of the law, is a mighty breakup of the ordinary schemes of morality and religions; a mighty attack, we should say, on the theology of the old being. The fact that we are justified before God–the eternal Judge, Creator and Preserver of all life–unconditionally for Jesus’ sake and by faith alone, simply shatters the old being’s entire system of values and…

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Lance Armstrong Redeems…Lance Armstrong?
Celebrity / Forgiveness / Sports / Theology

Lance Armstrong Redeems…Lance Armstrong?

by Nick Lannon on Jan 16, 2013 • 2 Comments

As I write this (Wednesday, January 16), Oprah Winfrey has confirmed that, in an exclusive interview taped on Monday to air on Thursday, Lance Armstrong has admitted to the use of performance enhancing drugs. At this point, this is a total snore. With the baseball writers’ recent decision to not vote a single player into the Hall of Fame (some simply for the possession of bacne), PED accusations and confessions are like Beanie Babies: when everyone’s got one, no one cares.

The Wall Street Journal (online) has a piece in the January 15 issue called “Behind Lance Armstrong’s Decision to Talk”…

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The Top Theology Books of 2012
Books / Religion / Theology / Year In Review

The Top Theology Books of 2012

by Todd Brewer on Dec 31, 2012 • 1 Comment

The following is a list of my top Mockingbird theology books of 2012 (in no particular order).

- Glorious Ruin by Tullian Tchividjian

Tchividjian does it again. Thoughtful, provocative, and deeply encouraging, “Glorious Ruin” places suffering at the heart of the Christian life and what we understand about God, but probably the biggest virtue of this book is its personal and accessible tone. Suffering is never spoken of in cold abstraction from its down-to-earth reality. It’s no wonder this book has gotten so much attention on this site.

- Justification Is for Preaching edited by Virgil Thompson

A much needed book for preachers and…

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The Art of Getting Used to Justification
Theology

The Art of Getting Used to Justification

by David Zahl on Nov 29, 2012 • 5 Comments

Perusing our archives the other day, I was surprised to discover that we’ve never quoted from Gerhard Forde’s crystal clear, absolute must-read essay on sanctification from the somewhat lazily titled Five Views of Sanctification. Well, today is the day we rectify that oversight:

Sanctification, if it is to spoken of as something other than justification, is perhaps best defined as the art of getting used to the unconditional justification wrought by the grace of God for Jesus’ sake. It is what happens when we are grasped by the fact that God alone justifies. Is is being made holy, and as such,…

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Forde Friday: On the Death of Self
Death / Sermons / Theology

Forde Friday: On the Death of Self

by Matt Johnson on Aug 24, 2012 • 2 Comments

I was thinking this week about how Christians tend to think about “dying to self”. Certainly there’s something to be said for the mortification of the flesh, fighting sin and all that. But what if Jesus’ call to lose your life in order to gain it was less of a call to selling all your possessions in an everything-must-go yard sale and more of a passive…dying. As in, the death is not something we achieve, but something we receive? Ladies and gentlemen, the unsurpassed, late-great Dr. Gerhard Forde (from his “Sermon on the Death of Self”):

“Can you see that this…

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Forde Friday: The Prison of Free-Lunch-Think Versus The Gospel
Forgiveness / Theology

Forde Friday: The Prison of Free-Lunch-Think Versus The Gospel

by Matt Johnson on May 25, 2012 • 1 Comment

Gerhard Forde, Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life, pg. 24

The gospel of justification by faith is such a shocker, such an explosion, because it is an absolutely unconditional promise. It is not an “if-then” kind of statement, but “because-therefore” pronouncement: because Jesus died and rose, your sins are forgiven and you are righteous in the sight of God! It bursts in upon our little world all shut up and barricaded behind our accustomed conditional thinking as some strange comet from goodness-knows-where, something we can’t really seem to wrap our minds around, the logic of which appears closed…

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Awake, 50/50 Hypocrisy, and Christian Progress
Identity / Law / Theology / TV

Awake, 50/50 Hypocrisy, and Christian Progress

by Mockingbird on May 25, 2012 • 4 Comments

This piece comes from Mockingbird friend Jason Redcay.

After I became a Christian, I still thought Christians were hypocrites. Like anyone, our standing before the Law reveals hypocrisies in spades. And yet a Christian is said to be sanctified, made good, holy, righteous… a saint when they are still so obviously, well, not. How can it be, the reality of living in two worlds so distinctly and fully? I watched the new series Awake the other night and began to see some parallels.

In this series police detective Michael Britten is newly returned to work after being in a car crash along…

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Rotting Flowers, Barn Filth and the Grace of Two Little Kids Talking
Forgiveness / Grace in Practice / Music / Radio

Rotting Flowers, Barn Filth and the Grace of Two Little Kids Talking

by jason redcay on May 3, 2012 • 2 Comments

I’ve been enjoying gettin’ a little funky (for a pasty white guy) with NPR’s Snap Judgment Radio Show – “Storytelling with a Beat”. Their recent episode on Absolution absolutely floored me. Host Glynn Washington told an autobiographical story that made for an incredible illustration of grace, of love begetting love. Glynn was born in Detroit but his family moved to the Michigan country side when he was little. The story begins with little Glynn waiting for the bus on the first day of school:

I stepped on the loud bus and it got real quiet. See, we were the only black…

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Forde Friday: In Defense of Daily Personal Drownings
Death / Religion / Theology

Forde Friday: In Defense of Daily Personal Drownings

by Matt Johnson on Apr 20, 2012 • 1 Comment

Being hung up on personal spiritual progress is a problem. Why? Because it’s an indication that somehow, we are holding on to/out for some type of self-salvation project that needs to be drowned in order that we might be raised to new life. Says Forde on page 51 of Justification by Faith–A Matter Of Death And Life:

The “progress” of the Christian therefore, is the progress of one who has constantly to get used to the fact that we are justified totally by faith, constantly has somehow to “recover,” so to speak, from that death blow to pride and presumption–or better,…

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Forde Friday: Spiritual Progress = “Shut Up And Listen”!
Books / Law / Theology

Forde Friday: Spiritual Progress = “Shut Up And Listen”!

by Matt Johnson on Mar 30, 2012 • 6 Comments

Here’s another zinger about our misguided ideas of spiritual progress from our favorite late Lutheran Theologian, Gerhard Forde. For those that tend to get sucked into fruitless spiritual introspection (ahem, that would be me), let this be salve to your soul. This quote is from page 50 of Justification: A Matter of Death and Life.

We see that the law simply cannot bring into being what it commands… The law says, ‘Thou shalt love!’ It is right; it is ‘holy, true, good’. Yet it can’t bring about what it demands. It might impel toward the works of the law, the motions…

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Forde Friday: Glory vs Cross Part II
Theology

Forde Friday: Glory vs Cross Part II

by Matt Johnson on Mar 16, 2012 • No Comments

If you think the cross is only for the salvation of those with skid row type sin, think again. In fact, as we hear below, the cross attacks the very best of our religion! Here are two more stellar, polemical quotes from one of our fave Lutheran theologians, the late Gerhard Forde. Both of these come from his On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518, pages 4 & 9, respectively. Happy Forde Friday!

“The cross is itself in the first instance the attack of God on the old sinner and the sinner’s theology. The cross is…

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Forde Friday: Glory vs. Cross Part I
Religion / Suffering / Theology

Forde Friday: Glory vs. Cross Part I

by Matt Johnson on Mar 9, 2012 • 3 Comments

Superhuman theologies of human achievement and graceless religion are a drag. Then along comes Gerhard Forde and puts a finger on what we already know, but couldn’t quite articulate. Happy Forde Friday!

Glory vs. Cross Part I

Does anyone remember those awful (or at least incredibly cheesy) Christian T-shirts of the 80s and 90s? Budweiser logos re-appropriated to say “This Blood’s For You”? Or how about Jesus, face down in a push-up pose with the cross on his back: “Bench Press This!” Don’t tell anybody, but I may have been guilty of wearing those types of T-shirts in my high school days.…

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Forde Friday: The Law Making Matters Worse
Law / Reformation / Theology

Forde Friday: The Law Making Matters Worse

by David Zahl on Mar 2, 2012 • 6 Comments

Kicking off a new weekly feature highlighting the inspiring work of late Lutheran theologian and Mockinghero Gerhard Forde, here’s a memorable portion from one of our absolute favorite volumes, On Being a Theologian of the Cross. The following excerpt is part of his unpacking of the first thesis of Martin Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation (“The law of God, the most salutary doctrine of life, cannot advance humans on their way to righteousness, but rather hinders them.”). Don’t let the historical context put you off, Forde has an incredible knack for breathing life, excitement and pastoral sensitivity into Reformation texts:

The law ‘Thou…

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