Greystone Conversations

To what world do the most thoughtful and effective responses to racism belong? Perhaps it is the world in which attacking the roots of racism can look like picking up a shovel and honoring the Lord’s Day. Racism continues to be a very important and urgent matter being discussed in our population and in our part of the world, but it is also a question which invariably pushes us to consider the bigger questions of who we are, Whose we are, and what we are for. According to the well-known agrarian and novelist Wendell Berry, the root of our racial problem may be in our inordinate desire to be superior—not to a group of people, but to our condition. That is, we wish to rise above the sweat and bother of taking care of anything: of ourselves, of each other, or of our country. We have a problem with care-taking, and this yields many evils.In stark contrast, the Christian faith commends to us all the life-giving, humanity affirming cadence of work and rest, work and festivity, work which does not look down on those God-given labors which sustain his handiwork and serve our neighbors. This is a work followed by rest no longer defined by the absence of labor, but as the fullness in provisional form of the heavenly life to which we have been called and for which we have been redeemed. That life- and neighbor-affirming rhythm and cadence can look like picking up a shovel and honoring the Lord’s Day, pointing to a different way of life for a people which can in its own way be the counter-cultural kingdom and city the Church has been called to be. But this might mean the Church should reconsider its messaging about certain kinds of work.To discuss this and more, Dr. Mark A. Garcia, President and Fellow in Scripture and Theology at Greystone Theological Institute, sits down with Dr. Alan D. Strange. Dr. Strange is Greystone's Fellow in Christian Tradition and Associate Director of the Reformed and Presbyterian Studies program at Greystone. Dr. Strange is also the Professor of Church History and Registrar at Mid-America Reformed Seminary in Dyer, IN. Joining the conversation is the Rev. Jesse Crutchley, pastor at Severn Run Evangelical Presbyterian Church (PCA). Both Dr. Strange and Pastor Crutchley are also members of Greystone’s Presidential Ministerial Council.Dr. Strange’s Greystone course on Advanced Polity will be offered in August 2020 and then made available to the public and to all Greystone Members at Greystone Connect. Become a member today for unlimited access to the growing Greystone Connect library.

What does the doctrine of God’s creating all things ex nihilo have to do with Christian discourse? The church has always confessed that God made everything and that there was nothing that was always alongside God. There is nothing beyond him, and so there is nothing he is every truly forced to do. Because He made all things and therefore needs nothing outside himself in order to be (or become) himself, we can trust that this God is therefore not exploitative. The Christian, then, is uniquely positioned to highlight Who alone is true. It is because of the aseity of God—that he is wholly himself of and within himself, having need of nothing outside of himself to be himself—that he is at the same time for that very reason uniquely trustworthy. As readers and confessors of the Apostles' Creed, we live in a fallen and sinful world of suspicion and of distrust that far too often finds expression in our inability to hear one another in a context of communal or Christian discourse. But the credal expression of God’s being has significant importance for how the Church can continue discourse in a trustworthy and uniquely Christian way.To discuss this and more, Dr. Mark Garcia, President and Fellow in Scripture and Theology at Greystone Theological Institute, sits down once again with Greystone's Associate Fellow in Ethics and Culture, Michael Sacasas. Mr. Sacasas earned his MA in Theological Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary in 2002. Over the years he has taken a special interest in the work of Hannah Arendt and the resources it offers to those seeking to understand the personal and social implications of emerging technologies. He has written about technology and society for a variety of outlets including The New Inquiry, Rhizomes, The American, Mere Orthodoxy, and Second Nature Journal. Since July 2019, Mr. Sacasas is Associate Director at the Christian Studies Center in Gainesville, FL. Mr. Sacasas' Greystone lecture series on Technology, Faith, and Human Flourishing is available to all Greystone Members and on Greystone Connect. Become a member today for unlimited access to the growing Greystone Connect library.

The digital age has brought us face to face with the reminder that communication is invariably personal. There is no such thing as a purely abstracted, objective, informal communication. There is, however, another aspect of communication. According to Scripture, the communicative life we have as God's image-bearers is strategically and providentially ordered to the concerns of God's law. Communication, therefore, is not merely personal, but moral and ethical. The digital age continues to encourage the erosion of the very possibility of what the Bible takes so seriously: not just discourse, but the Christian kind of discourse which requires charity and patience. In light of this erosion, how might the church recovery discernment and prudence in communal environments in a way that upholds the Christian gospel and the church's identity?To discuss this and more, Dr. Mark Garcia, the President and a Fellow in Scripture and Theology at Greystone Theological Institute, sits down with Greystone's Associate Fellow in Ethics and Culture, Michael Sacasas. Mr. Sacasas earned his MA in Theological Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary in 2002. Over the years he has taken a special interest in the work of Hannah Arendt and the resources it offers to those seeking to understand the personal and social implications of emerging technologies. He has written about technology and society for a variety of outlets including The New Inquiry, Rhizomes, The American, Mere Orthodoxy, and Second Nature Journal. Since July 2019, Mr. Sacasas is Associate Director at the Christian Studies Center in Gainesville, FL. Mr. Sacasas' Greystone lecture series on Technology, Faith, and Human Flourishing is available to all Greystone Members and on Greystone Connect.