Issue 27 - One Year of Christo et Doctrinae
This issue marks the (roughly) one-year anniversary of Christo et Doctrinae. I hope that over the past year this newsletter has helped to increase your understanding of Christianity, strengthen your belief in Christianity, or enhance your awareness of the cultural headwinds particular to our time and place. On the latter point, I recently encountered an excerpt of an essay by 19th-Century Anglican Bishop JC Ryle, which I think does a nice job of articulating my rationale for devoting so much space to assessing the culture from a Christian vantage point, instead of dedicating the newsletter exclusively to theology or apologetics. He notes:
“Men that had understanding of the times.”—1 Chronicles xii. 32….I cannot doubt that this sentence, like every sentence in Scripture, was written for our learning. These men of Issachar are set before us as a pattern to be imitated and an example to be followed; for it is a most important thing to understand the times in which we live, and to know what those times require. The wise men in the court of Ahasuerus "knew the times." (Esther i. 13.) Our Lord Jesus Christ blames the Jews because they "knew not the time of their visitation," and did not "discern the signs of the times." (Matt. xvi. 3; Luke xix. 44.)
Let us take heed lest we fall into the same sin. The man who is content to sit ignorantly by his own fireside, wrapped up in his own private affairs, and has no public eye for what is going on in the Church and the world, is a miserable patriot, and a poor style of Christian. Next to our Bibles and our own hearts, our Lord would have us study our own times….All ages have their own peculiar dangers for professing Christians, and all consequently demand special attention to peculiar duties.” (emphasis mine).
In my small group, we were recently talking about how wisdom entails discerning the appropriate response in every circumstance. The first step in ascertaining the most God-honoring response to a situation is to first understand the situation. Or, as those old GI Joe PSAs used to say, “knowing is half the battle.” While “there is nothing new under the sun,” and while prayer, Bible study, corporate worship, and Christian community are the primary prescriptions for the Christian life under any circumstance, my intention in allocating space to cultural analysis is my way of thinking out loud (and inviting feedback) about how we should live as Christians in the particular time and place into which God has placed us.
I plan to have some more long-form material in the coming issues, but for now, thank you for your attention and engagement over the last year. It’s been a privilege writing for you.