Reformed and Ritual? Time: Living with the Grain of Reality

Our world is currently overwhelmed with cries for protests and resistance, and the confessional Reformed church often sits uneasily between a recognition of the place and need for certain cries of this sort and the equally important need to distance herself—for sound, biblical, and theological reasons—from many of them. Even when the world is effective in identifying specific ills, it is incapable and ordinarily counterproductive in commending remedies. This may leave many Reformed Christians with the impression that we are called to a kind of tranquil equilibrium in a distressed world when in fact the Scriptures seem to expect a Church constantly caught up in the most dramatic conflict and conquest of history: the arrival and triumph of the Kingdom of God. What is our “way in” to such things? It may be last on our list of likely candidates for resources for navigating these waters, but the theological and dynamic density of sacred time in Scripture may be just what we are looking for and just what we need. How can the Church’s embrace of time within the biblical ritual world amount to a protest--an act of resistance--to the world as it is, and signal an alternative that comes from the new world of the gospel?

To discuss this and more, Dr. Mark A. Garcia, President and Fellow in Scripture and Theology at Greystone Theological Institute, is joined by the Rev. Jesse Crutchley, pastor at Severn Run Evangelical Presbyterian Church (PCA) and member of Greystone’s Presidential Ministerial Council.

For more on ritual ontology and theology, Dr. Garcia’s course on Theological Anthropology is available this fall for credit, a full course module on Reformed ritual reality is forthcoming, and multiple lectures related to this topic are available now for all Greystone Members. Become a member today for unlimited access to the growing Greystone Connect library.