Follow Jesus Like It's 199 :: Stephen Presley on Christian Witness in the Age of Caesar

The Ridley Institute Podcast

How can Christians stay embedded within our culture while pursuing virtue and rejecting vice, in personal and in public life? Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with Stephen Presley, author of Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World like the Early Church (Eerdman's, 2024), about what the modern church has to learn from Christians of the second and third centuries.

According to Presley (Cultural Sanctification, p.12), "Christians are necessarily embedded within their culture and must seek sanctification (both personal and corporate) in a way that draws upon the forms and features of their environment to transform them by pursuing virtue. This Christian performance of sanctification involves [1] defending the faith, [2] sharing the good news of salvation found in Christ, and [3] visibly embodying all the virtues of the Christian spirituality in ways that persuade others."

Presley contends that a revival of something very like ancient paganism is underway in the modern world. What might the pre-Nicene Church have to teach us, who live on the far side of Christendom?

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