An Ecumenical Ministry in the Parish of St Patrick's Catholic Church In San Diego USA

米国サンディエゴの聖パトリックカトリック教会教区におけるエキュメニカル宣教

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Credo Magazine is here: Idolatry


The new issue of Credo Magazine is here: Idolatry


The great church father Augustine once wrote that one of the most devastating effects of sin is seen in the way we become curved in on ourselves. God is eliminated from our world as we turn inward to worship the creature rather than the Creator. As John Calvin said, man has become an idol-making factory.
The irony of idolatry is that those who worship idols turn into the idols that they worship. As the psalmist observed, “Those who make them [idols] become like them, so do all who trust in them” (135:18). Today, idolatry is an offensive word, a word hardly used because it is considered so dark, so primitive, and so destructive. Yet it’s the perfect description of mankind apart from the Creator. For only when we are sobered by how perversely we have robbed the Creator of his glory and given it to the creature will we understand our desperate need for liberation from the idols we’ve become.


Featured Articles


Exchanging Truth For A Lie: Image, Idolatry, and the People of God

Benjamin L. Gladd, Associate Professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, explores the nature of idolatry and God’s subsequent wrath in Romans 1:18-32, tying it to the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden and the fall of Israel at Sinai.

 

Israel's Golden Calf Idolatry: How Our Culture Perverts Our Understanding of Yahweh and His Ways

James Todd III, Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at College of the Ozarks, explains Israel’s rationale for building the golden calf in light of its narrative and historical context and shows how their idolatry was a direct breach of the covenant they made with Yahweh at Mt. Sinai.

 

The Insanity of Idolatry: Idolatry in Isaiah

Gary Schnittjer, professor of biblical Hebrew and Old Testament at Cairn University, shows how Isaiah’s reoccurring polemic magnifies the holy one of Israel by mocking idolatry not in the abstract but within his presentation of the new exodus.

 

Idolatry and the Imago Dei: How Idolatry Distorts the Image of God

John F. Kilner, Forman Chair of Christian Ethics and Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, writes on what it means to be in God’s image, how idolatry contradicts that image, and how we can be liberated to be who God made us to be.

 

The Sophisticated Idolater: Diagnosing the Four Chambers of the Idolatrous Heart

Bob Kellemen, Pastor of Counseling and Equipping at Bethel Church and Vice of Strategic Planning and Academic Dean at Faith Bible Seminary, develops four portraits of the sin-sick heart of the Prodigal son and the Pharisaical son.

 

Featured Interviews


Have You Become What You Worship?

Matthew Barrett, executive editor of Credo Magazine, talks with Greg Beale, J. Gresham Machen Chair of New Testament and professor of New Testament and biblical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, about the nature of idolatry and why it is so ironic and destructive.


10 Questions with Steven W. Smith

Brandon Smith talks with Steven Smith, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church, about pastoral wisdom on sermon prep, preaching against idolatry, and blunders in the pulpit.


More content including articles, interviews, and book reviews can be found in the new issue of Credo Magazine. Join us!

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