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The self-binding God: The divine covenant and the Christian life

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  One of the characteristics of the overarching narrative of the Bible, both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian New Testament, is a series of covenants. These covenants express the will and purpose of God in creation. To examine the covenants is to come to some understanding of the ways of God, and the place of human beings within those ways. What is a covenant? A covenant is a formal agreement between parties. It can have a purely secular meaning, as an agreement between individuals or groups to do or accomplish something. In this sense, a covenant is something like a contract or a treaty. In a biblical context, a covenant is an agreement between God and a created entity. Covenants in the Hebrew Bible Covenants in the Old Testament have two forms. One is conditional; it has the form of “if.” One such example is found in Exodus 19:5, which forms a kind of prelude to the giving of the law: “Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my … [Read more...]

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10 minutes with Jay Blossom

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The Presbyterian Outlook welcomes Jay Blossom into the role interim publisher/editor! Jay lives in Philadelphia and comes to the Outlook from the In Trust Center for Theological Schools, where he was editor and publisher of In Trust magazine for almost 16 years. What do you want Outlook readers to know about you? For the last 16 years, my passion has been theological education. As publisher of In Trust magazine, my readers were the boards, faculty and administrators of more than 200 theological seminaries in the United States and Canada. Some of those readers were Presbyterians, and we at the In Trust Center were privileged to have both American and Canadian Presbyterians on our board. I cherished their insight, their tough questions and their wisdom. At In Trust, our focus was in some ways broader than the Outlook’s. We served schools of many denominations, including Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox. But our focus was also narrower, since we always homed in on what the leaders … [Read more...]

Covenant community

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New Year’s resolutions come and go, but for Christians – especially Reformed Christians – the notion of covenant is our most enduring symbol, and it’s one worth pondering as we begin a new year. John Wesley encouraged the practice of covenant renewal; to this day our United Methodist friends celebrate a meaningful covenant renewal service on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, publicly reaffirming their commitment to God. Presbyterians would do well to do the same, for the notion of “covenant” is an alien one for most modern folk, who tend to prefer limited commitments rather than deep and binding engagements. The notion of “covenant” summons us to clarify our ultimate allegiance and to put away idolatry, for in biblical perspective, as creatures we are always subject to some lordship (if not to divine lordship, then to other, unworthy lordships) — or other “principalities and powers,” as the Apostle Paul put it. Bob Dylan captured this dynamic succinctly in a classic song: “It may be … [Read more...]

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Living in tension: Polarities in Presbyterian polity — Orthodoxy and forbearance

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  Most of us who have lived through the ordination and sexuality wars of past decades know the phrase “mutual forbearance.” Fewer of us know that it’s actually part of the Book of Order — F-3.0105, to be precise. Fewer still know that it’s the second half of one of the oldest and most important tensions in Presbyterian life, and that tension, we believe, ought to characterize all religious life. In the early decades of the 18th century, colonial Presbyterianism was engaged in a controversy between those in the Scots-Irish tradition who insisted that ministers strictly subscribe to the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and those in New England who believed that individual conscience could not be bound by anything other than Scripture and the Spirit. The Synod of Philadelphia in 1729 struck what it thought was a compromise, called the Adopting Act, which required ministers to subscribe to “the necessary articles” of Westminster, but also granted some freedom of … [Read more...]

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Toward the year 2000: The NCC’s fifth decade (30 years ago)

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30 years ago — January 7, 1991 Meeting in Portland, Ore., the National Council of Churches’ General Board celebrated its 40th anniversary not only with vivid images and reflections on the past; the meeting was part of the mounting evidence that, as one delegate put it, “the council has come alive again!” A new NCC leadership team was presented to the board, Joan Brown Campbell was unanimously elected as NCC general secretary. Campbell, the first woman minister to serve as NCC general secretary, has standing as a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and in the American Baptist Churches. She challenged the board, saying, “What we need in the time ahead is to strengthen the base of ecumenically minded persons across the country so that a corps is built of many, many people who not only tolerate the ecumenical movement, but demand it.” … A sobering eyewitness account of the civil war in Liberia from recent visits by church leaders, as well as addresses by the … [Read more...]

Mentoring and being mentored: What I learned and taught at Sing Sing prison

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Bill Webber was a bigger-than-life mentor and one of the kindest persons I’ve known. He was president of New York Theological Seminary, 1969-1983, and he was the prophetic voice behind the master’s degree in professional studies at Sing Sing prison. He was also among the visionary founders of the East Harlem Protestant Parish. When Rebecca Thompson and I reported for work at parish headquarters as summer interns in 1966, Webber informed us that drug addicts had ripped our assigned apartment to shreds. So he brought us to New York Theological Seminary, where we spent our first night before moving to a railroad flat near the main East Harlem office. Fifty-three years later, in the spring of 2019, Rebecca and I returned to New York Theological, now located at 475 Riverside Drive, where I had the privilege of keynoting the annual Urban Pastors Conference on the subject of mentoring. The day before my keynote address, two NYTS adjunct professors transported me to Ossining, New York, … [Read more...]

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