Round Table

Round Table discussions offer insights into important issues from numerous Conciliar Post authors. Authors focus on a specific question or topic and respond with concise and precise summaries of their perspective, allowing readers to engage multiple viewpoints within the scope of one article.

Recent posts

04 Nov 2015

The Danger of Light and Joy

When reading of Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings, there is one section that catches me almost every time: Gimli’s thoughts on leaving Lothlorian. Tell me, Legolas, why did I come on this Quest? Little did I know where the chief peril lay! Truly Elrond spoke, saying that we could not foresee what we might meet upon our road. Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me

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03 Nov 2015

Will It Pray?

I feel some kind of spirit move me, There’s something I have got to say. Could be complaint or comedy; I’ll blurt it out either way. I’ll make sure the kids don’t hear me, Wait until the prudes go away- Then inspiration strikes me And I ask, Will it pray? Can I take these silly sentences, Can I make them talk to God? Do I think he’d laugh along with me And give me a

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31 Oct 2015

Weekly Reads {OCTOBER 31}

This week, Conciliar Post was buzzing with activity! We are so thankful to the members of our community, and to our visitors, for making our commemoration of the Reformation an occasion for informed and fruitful dialog. Here is a selection of articles, from Conciliar Post and beyond, that are worth your “weekend reading” time: Conciliar Post: Alyssa Hall: Sola Scriptura’s Relevance for the Modern Church Chris Casberg: The Divisive Fruit of the Reformation Joseph Green: An

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30 Oct 2015

Round Table: Martin Luther

498 years ago tomorrow, a young Augustinian monk who taught at the University of Wittenberg nailed ninety-five theses on “The Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Though seemingly innocuous as the time, this event has since been hailed as the start of the Protestant Reformation, a theological shake up in the Western Church that has changed the face of Christianity and Western civilization. In response to the

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29 Oct 2015

On Lutheranism as “Reformational Catholicism”

On Lutheranism as Leithart’s “Reformational Catholicism” As a theologically conservative Lutheran who acknowledges the debt my faith owes to generations past, my celebration of the Reformation is bittersweet. What began as a pushback against corruptive authoritarianism and the exploitation of the weak eventually became an insurmountable, blood-soaked divide within Western Christianity. In this venue and others, I have argued in defense of the rigor and merit of Catholic thought, and in so doing critiqued the

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28 Oct 2015

An Ex-Calvinist’s Tiptoe Through TULIP – Total Depravity

While Tiny Tim’s song may be quite catchy, the following tiptoe through TULIP series is no light-hearted matter since, depending on how Christians respond to this Calvinist framework, our understanding of who God is and how we are saved can end up in radical opposition.  I was a five-point Calvinist from high school until my time at an Evangelical seminary, but subsequently, one-by-one I began to drop letters of the TULIP complex from my theology

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27 Oct 2015

The Divisive Fruit of the Reformation

This Saturday is October 31st, the day of annual celebration in which children array themselves in strange and wonderful costumes, visiting their neighbors under the cover of night to nail a list of ninety-five grievances to their front door. I am, of course, speaking of Reformation Day, the commemoration of Martin Luther’s famous protest against the excesses and errors of the Roman Catholic Church. Timothy George over at First Things wrote of the holiday, “It

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26 Oct 2015

Sola Scriptura’s Relevance for the Modern Church

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there arose a group of men and women that had become disillusioned by the excesses and misappropriations of the Roman Catholic church and, in a reactive movement, spawned the Reformation, and consequently, the Five Solas: sola gratia, sola fide, sola scriptura, sola Christus, and soli Deo gloria. While these five principles were never clearly grouped and articulated together by any one Reformer during that period of time, they have

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23 Oct 2015

A Christian Defense of Dark Films

As a filmgoer whose personal tastes run toward the eccentric and the macabre (Guillermo del Toro and Darren Aronofsky are two of my favorite directors), I’ve seen plenty of films that fall into the “horror” or “dark thriller” category. It saddens me that this genre is often written off by persons of faith as crude and crassly exploitative, and I’ve written elsewhere about the fascinating theological implications that lie beneath its grim exterior. Thus, inspired

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