The Answer: The Church...Christian Community as a Counter Force?

Throughout this season we have arrived at the idea that the Church is not in itself the Reign of God, but the Reign of God is both its starting point and its goal. So that leads us to the question, how does the Church (as God’s idea) address the ‘crackedness’ of the cosmos (the problem of evil we explored at the beginning of the season)?  How does it ‘dramatize’ and manifest grace, love, justice, and the dream of God? 

Join us this week in our final content episode of the season (paired with a Bar-Talk episode) as we examine the call of the Christian Community as a Counter Force and an active participant through actionable grace in the narrative of The Pathetic God.

• Hendrik Berkhof, Christ and the Powers. Translated by John Howard Yoder, Harrisonburg, Virginia: Herald Press, 1977 (ISBN: 978-0-8361-1820-9).
• David P. Gushee & Glenn H. Stassen, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. Second Edition, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2016 (ISBN: 978-0-8028-7421-4).
• Stephen Charles Mott, Biblical Ethics and Social Change. Second Edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011 (ISBN: 978-0199739370).

Readings: 

• ‘The Church and the Powers’, Berkhof, Chapter 5
• ‘Salt, Light, Deeds’ and ‘Thy Kingdom Come’, Gushee & Stassen, Chapters 10 & 17
• 'The Church as Counter-Community', Mott, Chapter 7

**Also Check out our BONUS EPISODE! BAR Talk: The conversation after class and on-tap. Reflecting on the season... and what comes next!**

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