Brady Bowman

Rory Groves:

The fact is, our perceptions about trades and the people who work in them are mostly false. Uncomfortable as it may be, there is more money, intelligence, creativity and flexibility involved in trades than in most white-collar jobs. Many trades are more conducive to family life than demanding, high-powered corporate jobs. Most tradesmen do not need to travel far to find work; there is plenty of demand locally. And trades…are not as likely to become displaced by the next autonomous robot or software upgrade. They have stood the test of time and, in all likelihood, will continue to do so.

Brad East:

Scripture is…a book for the mission, a portable library of trustworthy samples of gospel speech. Whatever the church in its ongoing encounters with new questions, challenges, and cultures elects to say in its attempt to announce the gospel, such attempts must be tested by the records contained in the New Testament. Moreover, those records are themselves missionary documents: in media res, they offer neither a blank slate upon which to construct the gospel nor a final word definitively closing this or that matter. They are experiments in improvisation on the way from Pentecost to parousia. Gentiles are coming to faith, women are prophesying with heads uncovered, ex-pagans are eating idol meat, traveling teachers are suggesting Jesus didn’t come in the flesh, scoffers are claiming Jesus isn’t coming back, others are saying he’s already returned, Jewish apostles aren’t eating with gentile believers, a church member is sleeping with his stepmother: what to do? These aren’t perennial issues in philosophy, and the apostolic writings are not treatises in systematic theology. They are makeshift answers, sometimes on the fly, to pressing questions of lived faith. That haphazard character may be a thorn in the flesh of theologians, but it is a boon to the church’s life among the nations. For what it offers is not timeless answers but snapshots of the apostles in action, a model for discernment of the Spirit in real time. And when further questions arise—Should we worship Jesus? Is Mary God’s mother? May icons be venerated? Is the Spirit fully God?—the church turns to Scripture not only for divine instruction but for exemplary patterns of sound judgment exercised on the mission field and captured, in the moment, for future generations of believers.

George Macdonald (HT: Alan Jacobs):

Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because He said, Do it, or once abstained because He said, Do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells you.

from the cover of Brad East’s book

Currently reading: The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer 📚

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, providing me with further ammunition in my assault upon bigness and greatness:

Thankfulness works in the Christian community as it usually does in the Christian life. Only those who give thanks for little things receive the great things as well. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts prepared for us because we do not give thanks for daily gifts. We think that we should not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been given to us, and that we must be constantly seeking the great gifts. Then we complain that we lack the deep certainty, the strong faith, and the rich experiences that God has given to other Christians, and we consider these complaints to be pious. We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the small (and yet really not so small!) gifts we receive daily. How can God entrust great things to those who will not gratefully receive the little things from God’s hand? If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian community in which we have been placed, even when there are no great experiences, no noticeable riches, but much weakness, difficulty, and little faith—and if, on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so miserable and so insignificant and does not at all live up to our expectations—then we hinder God from letting our community grow according to the measure and riches that are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

Currently reading: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works: Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible by Dietrich Bonhoeffer 📚

Brad East:

The church’s liturgy is the native habitat, the first home, of Holy Scripture. For Scripture is a document of devotion, the means of God’s gathered people hearkening to his voice and responding with thanks and praise. […]

Apart from ecclesial context, then, Scripture is not well understood. The reason is simple: Scripture has no existence apart from ecclesial context. Scripture is what it is within and in light of the church’s tradition. […]

The doctrine of Scripture begins with what we have, with the long-standing practices of using and relating to Scripture that have built up in the church’s life. Just as Tanakh was a given for the apostolic church, so the two-testament Bible is a given for the church after the apostles and church fathers. We rightly approach it in the faith of the church, under the teaching of the church, within the worship of the church, with the whole company of the church—that is to say, the communion of saints, past, present, and future. We open its pages with the words of the Shema and the Nicene Creed on our lips and in our hearts. Doing so will lead us into its depths, not obstruct our path.