Greystone Conversations

Is there a Christian reading of Proverbs, and of Proverbs 31 in particular, that is both determined by Christ and also materially relevant, even constitutive, for personal, familial, communal, and ecclesial wisdom? Is that reading coherent with Scripture as a whole in such a way as to be prompted by it? The Book of Proverbs has notoriously suffered at the hands of moralists who reduce its message...

What do Reformed Christians mean today when they refer to limited atonement or particular redemption? Is it the same idea that has prevailed in the Reformed tradition historically and confessionally? Are there different Reformed ways of understanding and affirming the truth that God in Christ saves his people by his obedience and sacrifice? It is always difficult to discover that what we first lea...

A perhaps surprising amount of Holy Scripture is presented in terms of a dialogue where the identification of the different speakers is important to proper interpretation. And yet, biblical text does not provide us the modern printing conventions we are used to for dialogues, such as naming the speaker before the speech and clearly breaking up the speeches so we know where one ends and the next be...

Scripture regularly deploys the imagery of agriculture and farming to describe the nature and dynamics of human faithfulness--or the lack thereof. While many might be inclined to explain away the agrarian assumptions of biblical teaching on vocation and human meaning as mere metaphors, others might be equally tempted to confuse the biblical direction of argument with a clear warrant for farming as...

If the God confessed by the Church is real, then it is not merely ill advised but an act of rebellion against that God to attempt to approach Holy Scripture in order to demonstrate that He is and has revealed himself, rather than because He is and because he has revealed himself. In other words, as Christians approaching Holy Scripture, we do not merely end with the triune God of the Christian fai...

Does God sometimes unravel the ordinary recognizable form of the Church in times of great suffering, weakness, or judgment in order to re-weave her strands into a new form? Is this because the Church derives her form from the Lord Jesus Christ--the Christ of history, that is, of suffering to glory, humiliation to exaltation, obedience to life? What would we do if we believed this? What should we d...

Alongside the important place of training, encouragement, and counsel or advice, is there also a need, not only for pastors but for all thoughtful Christians, for being pastored intellectually and theologically? Much is said in our day of the great need for church planting and for evangelism, and rightly so. We do need more faithful churches throughout the world, near and far. Understandably, this...

Last time, we suggested that to recover our humanity in an increasingly inhuman world, we must recover what Ivan Illich called the tools of conviviality. But this requires, at least in part, that we recognize the difference between cultural tools and modes of life which deskill and those which, increasingly, simply cultivate greater dependence . The difference just noted between cultural tools and...

To recover our humanity in an increasingly inhuman world, we must recover tools of conviviality. So what makes a tool convivial. For Ivan Illich, tools foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used by anybody as often or as seldom as desired for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user. That is, convivial technologies are accessible, flexible, and most importantly no...

Is there an order to reality and does Holy Scripture commend that reality to us to believe now or does it only record the way the ancients saw things?  From time to time in Greystone Conversations, we feature selections from full-course modules , micro-courses, and other events that we run in the Greystone context. Today we are pleased to make available to you the opening lecture in one of the mos...

Is the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son of God evidence of the Church's departure from the simplicity and straight-forwardness of the Scriptures? Does it confirm a penchant for arid, confusing, and unhelpful metaphysical and speculative argument? Can we speak of the doctrine of eternal generation as truly biblical and, even if we may, does it matter much to the Church's fait...

If the Church is facing a multifaceted and complex challenge in theology, hermeneutics, and liturgy, what does this challenge look like on the ground in the context of actual and continuing Church ministry?  Not long ago Greystone Conversations hosted a series of conversations with Drs Mark Garcia, Garry Williams, and Robert Letham about the concerning state of theology and of distinctly Christian...

I am who I am largely because of my biography, that is, the way people, places, and things have shaped me. I am not an idea but a storied creature with flesh and blood and history. But who am I if I lose my memory of others--and even myself--as a consequence of dementia? Can I still be who I am at all if I do? If so, how? For today’s episode of Greystone Conversations, we pause over a small portio...

What do we mean--or what should we mean--by the term "biblical theology"? Is it the same as the New Testament use of the Old Testament? Is it more biblical than systematic theology? And is there a reading of Holy Scripture that is demanded by and provoked by its very nature as Scripture rather than just a book of books? In our last two episodes, Drs. Garcia, Williams, and Letham reflecte...

In our last Greystone Conversations episode, we asked the question of how long can the Christian Faith survive in recognizable form in a Church context where the work of theology is held in suspicion and the priority of divine authorship of Holy Scripture plays little to no role in biblical interpretation? We asked if there is not a true sense in which the frontlines of the Church's spiritual...

How long can the Christian Faith survive in recognizable form in a Church context where the work of theology is held in suspicion and the priority of divine authorship of Holy Scripture plays little to no role in biblical interpretation? Is there not a true sense in which the frontlines of the Church's spiritual warfare today is in the library?  The heart of the challenge facing the church in...

The Church's faith is held, confessed, and lived invariably in a friction-full relationship to the world. What then can we learn about Christian identity and faithfulness now by considering such faithfulness in an older era?  We may find it difficult to name many figures or events in the Church of the third century. This is understandable as this is a period bracketed on one side by the close...

Do the particular truths of the Christian faith generate options for the faithful exercise of the Church's mission to the world, and at the same time rule out some missionary efforts, models, and approaches as not in keeping with the Christian faith? Twenty years ago, in his book The Gagging of God, D.A. Carson titled one of his chapters “on drawing lines when drawing lines is rude.” The Chur...

Why have professional historians of the Reformation and post-Reformation era of Reformed theology and confessionalization argued that "Calvinism" is not only a misleading term but--somewhat provocatively, perhaps--practically useless? And how do distinctions help us not only to separate truth from error, but also enrich our grasp of the truth and aid us in Christian love? Calvinism is po...

What do the Westminster Catechisms mean by speaking of our chief end as glorifying God and enjoying him forever? What difference does it make if we read the word "enjoy" here against the background, not of modern notions of happiness or enjoyment, but of Augustine's famous and deeply influential distinction between "enjoy" and "use"? A distinction established eve...

What do we mean by the conscience, and how have our assumptions about the conscience changed as our perspective of the person and the moral life have changed? Today's episode is the opening material of a full class module called Reformed Casuistry and Moral Theology . Casuistry is a very old word but continues to be a very popular way the Bible is used--focused as it is on case studies. Casui...

Do Reformed Christians believe in baptismal regeneration? How do Reformed Christians classically relate baptism to the Church and to faith, and is faith required for baptism? Today's Greystone Conversations episode is the last study in a series featured at Greystone Connect called We Distinguish: Scholastic Distinctions in Reformed Theology and Ministry . This is a series led by Dr. Mark Jone...

Why should  the first steps of a Reformed Mariology begin with the Scriptures rather than tradition?  Today's episode of Greystone Conversations is the second study in a series delivered in London called " Rescuing Mary from Rome: The Virgin in Scripture, Theology, and the Church ." It is that time of year when many evangelicals and Protestants have Mary very much on the mind, and s...

How should we understand the relationship of the Septuagint to what we traditionally mean by Holy Scripture? What difference does it make to biblical interpretation and the vocabulary of theology if we work with the Septuagint alongside our Hebrew and Greek Testaments? And what does the field of Septuagint studies look like now, and where is it going? Today's Greystone Conversations episode i...

What difference might it make to our relationship to the Septuagint if we saw it not only as a translation of the Hebrew OT into Greek and as a translation often used in the NT, but also as the first true commentary on the Hebrew Old Testament? How might this approach to the Septuagint illuminate our understanding of biblical hermeneutics and the nature of Holy Scripture? In the exilic or early po...