Dr Paul Allen

Christology is by nature bound up with the doctrine of _________ ? This sentence comes from lectures given by Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the University of Berlin in 1932. After that year, the Nazis would rise to power in Germany. Bonhoeffer would lose his license to teach and eventually become the director of one of five underground seminaries to serve the Confessing Church —a church that rose up against the German Lutheran Church , which had embraced and endorsed the Nazi party . Now back to the quiz. Here's Bonhoeffer's answer: "Christology is by nature bound up with the doctrine of justification." This sentence comes from his lectures on twentieth-century systematic theology. He began the last lecture, which he entitled, "Preaching," with a simple but urgent and ultimate question, "What should we preach?" We must preach Christ , he declares. Preaching Christ means nothing other than preaching the gospel. Preaching the gospel means, and only can ...

Image via Wikipedia Oh the cruel trick fate played on Nietzsche . Christians aren’t apt to afford compassion to the man who coined the phrase “ God is dead .” Nevertheless my heart goes out to him. The man who some say is the father of Nazism , existentialism, and modern relativism is the victim of one of the cruel ironies of history. The core of Nietzsche’s ethic was what he called the “ will to power ”. He bemoaned the baleful influence of Christianity which he claimed promoted a “herd morality .” The “will to power” was a rejection of herd morality, a bald affirmation of individual autonomy so radical as to be indifferent to the autonomy of others. It was an ethical Darwinism , survival of, indeed conquest by, the fittest. The good news is that this “will to power,” the elevation of self, has caught on like wildfire. The bad news is that this bold, defiant ethic has spread so wide, infecting even the church, that it has become the morality of choice among the herd. Just as rock ...