A Dysfunctional Social Order (Ecclesiastes 4:1-16)
CrossWay Community Church
November 17th, 2019
Economics
Notes on Jordan Ballor and Stephen Long on Theology and Economics
Last night I went to a lecture and responding lecture hosted by the Carl F.H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. The lecture, presented by Jordan Ballor, was entitled “Theology and Economics: A Match from Heaven?” The response came from Stephen Long.
Read more about this lecture here.
View video of the lectures here.
The following are some thoughts and notes I wrote down during this discussion.
Jordan Ballor // Thesis – That economics and theology are fundamentally compatible and mutually dependent. A continued separation or divorce between economics and theology would be harmful. We need economically informed theologians and theologically informed economists.
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“Carl Henry Was Right” by Richard Mouw
Carl F H. Henry proposed 5 principles to guide the church on social issues:
- The Bible is critically relevant to the whole of modern life and culture—the social-political arena included.
- The institutional church has no mandate, jurisdiction, or competence to endorse political legislation or military tactics or economic specifics in the name of Christ.
- The institutional church is divinely obliged to proclaim God’s entire revelation, including the standards or commandments by which men and nations are to be finally judged, and by which they ought now to live and maintain social stability.
- The political achievement of a better society is the task of all citizens, and individual Christians ought to be politically engaged to the limit of their competence and opportunity.
- The Bible limits the proper activity of both government and church for divinely stipulated objectives—the former, for the preservation of justice and order, and the latter, for the moral-spiritual task of evangelizing the earth.
From Richard Mouw, “Carl Henry Was Right.”
Thoughts on Some Thoughts on Trinity International University
See this article entitled, The 15 Best Colleges for Studying the Bible.
Two statements about my school, Trinity International University, that I found interesting:
(1) “The student body and professoriate are intentionally diverse, allowing for an international flavor, and a heightened sense of ‘global missions.'”
— Absolutely true. And I love this!
(2) “Some students will find the political leanings of the school to be too liberal, with notable tones of ‘social justice’ and ‘globalism.'”
— That some would find TIU too political liberal is probably somewhat true as well. And I tend to think this reality relates to the first statement (directly above). However, this perception isn’t the same thing as TIU actual being politically liberal. That’d be a tough case to make given our incredible diversity. Nonetheless, I believe our diversity and international composition resists a narrow-minded approach to politics, whatever that approach might be. And I appreciate this about Trinity as well.
Just a shameless plug for my school.
America’s Foundation, Political Science, and the Christian Worldview
There are several areas of theology about which I find myself thinking on a consistent basis. One of those topics is the integration and relationship between the Christian worldview and political-economic science. (This probably isn’t terribly surprising given the fact that I entered college as a social studies major.) Lately, I have found myself thinking about these issues again… and on a frequent basis as well. This has much to do with some recent studying I’ve been doing on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His views on government and the Christian’s relationship to government has sparked this internal conversation ablaze within me once again. …Well, some of these thoughts will now be spilling out in this post.
Kirk E. Miller 