David finally found the truth that it was not his seed of kingship but the promise made to Abraham that made him holy. From that, David refused to be moved and wrote this Psalm by the necessity of the Spirit as the assurance of faith. The law never made a man holy, not even one as robust as David; yet faith did this great thing without lifting a finger.
Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.

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We might not appreciate that God chooses to save us by his word alone, but our discomfort doesn’t make the promise any less effective.
If you want to boil Schleiermacher down to some foundation upon which to build up his theology, think feelings.
Our smartphones, tablets, and laptops tempt us to enter into a virtual world without flesh and blood. A world without concrete, real consequences. No real pain or suffering, and no actual death.
We love those who enable us to see our love for ourselves reflected back at us.
Where Erasmus saw fear and collapse, Luther saw the never-ending comfort of Christ and his gospel.
True love isn't a thing. We can't find true love in our souls, soul mates, or safe spaces. We can't marry true love, buy it, or create it from scratch.
Our very lives as parents and children implicitly proclaim this higher and lovely truth: we have no value to God based upon our usefulness.
He will do it because God is the truth, and always deals with and in the truth.
Jesus gave His disciples the Lord’s Prayer as a gift. It’s really our prayer when you think about it.
Terror and even hatred of God are the only things with which divine hiddenness can leave us.
Christ’s indwelling in the Christian must be tied relentlessly to these external and objective events of God’s own action.
Theology is not to simply adopt the positions and presuppositions of philosophy, nor should it reject philosophy.