For the love of Christ
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 Posted in Theology | 15 Comments »My friend and recovering Reformer Trent sends me this clip from John Piper, displaying once again a terribly muddled sense of the Trinity: "God is very dangerous apart from Jesus. He's angry apart from Jesus." Whenever I hear people contrast God with ...
Pentecost
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 Posted in Theology | No Comments »"For they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, 'Whatever could this mean?' . . . Then Peter said to them, 'Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission ...
On Christian sentimentality
Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 Posted in The Literate Life, Theology | No Comments »"Disentangling beauty from sentimentality is unlikely to be accomplished until it is recognized that evil (as with God's saving grace) cannot be accommodated within systems that seek to 'make sense' of all things within closed cosmological and metaphysical systems... In a ...
On the excommunication of a child
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 Posted in The Art of Parenting, Theology | 23 Comments »I remember, the day they told us our three year-old daughter would die, sitting on her hospital bed, Celeste and I together, holding her and weeping. We never really knew despair, I don’t think, until that day. We held Caroline ...
The missing third
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life, Theology | No Comments »Inevitably, in secularized society, after some particularly heinous butchery there is the news article that might be titled: "Searching for Answers." In this article the reporter speculates on what might have gone wrong in those two-thirds of the murderer -- ...
On the facilitation of murder
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life, Theology | 6 Comments »Reading Bruce Falconer's article in last month's Atlantic, about Swiss suicide facilitator Ludwig Manelli, I was struck by a husband's repeated employment of animal metaphors to justify his wife's poisoning. "You wouldn't leave your dog on the kitchen floor when it can't ...
Blood and mystery
Monday, April 26th, 2010 Posted in Faith and Life, Theology | 7 Comments »One of G.K. Chesterton's arguments in Everlasting Man is that the ancient pagans never really revered their petty gods and spirits and magical tree stumps nearly as much as the modern humanist, overflowing with tolerance and reverence for any belief ...
For those who think the club is small
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 Posted in Theology | 5 Comments »Touchstone has a thoughtful response to the scribes and pharisees across Christian sects who refused to sign the Manhattan Declaration out of an exaggerated sense of their own Christian exclusivity.
The risen King is love
Sunday, April 4th, 2010 Posted in Theology | 4 Comments »Leave it to John Piper to devise an Easter message without using the word love. It's from 1983, and to his credit by 2009 he comes up with an Easter sermon that does use the word, though not applied to ...
Deeper than we know
Sunday, March 21st, 2010 Posted in Theology | 5 Comments »"The Father turns His face away. . .", goes the song. How comforting, then, to read in the 21st Psalm (22nd in the Protestant Bible): Nor has He turned away His face from me; And when I cried out to Him, He ...
What’s all the fuss about?
Saturday, March 20th, 2010 Posted in Theology | 2 Comments »Easter. You know, when a holy bunny was reborn from a chocolate egg so that we all might have everlasting gobstoppers. Or something like that.
Following
Friday, March 12th, 2010 Posted in Theology | 3 Comments »Christian Radio Pirate derives the new Christianity from a sampling of seeker-friendly churches: "Christ Follower: Someone who has made the decision to be an emotionally well adjusted self-actualized risk taking leader who knows his purpose, lives a 'no regrets' life of ...
Barring the doors
Thursday, March 11th, 2010 Posted in The Art of Parenting, Theology | 11 Comments »In Colorado, a Catholic school has refused readmission to the children of two lesbian parents. "Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment," ...
The weeping Christ
Thursday, March 4th, 2010 Posted in Theology | 2 Comments »From David Bentley Hart's First Things article, "Tsunami and Theodicy," rightly called once again to our attention, in light of recent disasters, by Civitate: "I do not believe we Christians are obliged -- or even allowed -- to look upon the ...
Because the Church has a history between Acts and 1536
Thursday, February 25th, 2010 Posted in Theology | 8 Comments »“But what proof is there that we have a right belief in God, that we have a trustworthy and devout understanding of Him? It is that we confess the same faith as our God-bearing Fathers." (St. Gregory Palamas, Homily On Faith- Delivered ...
Image
Friday, February 19th, 2010 Posted in Theology | 1 Comment »"Conversion is a return to nature, from what is contrary to nature to what is proper to it." (St. John Damascene)
Hospital, not courtroom
Monday, February 15th, 2010 Posted in Theology | 1 Comment »"Did you commit sin? Enter the Church, repent for your sin, for here is the physician, not the judge. Here, one is not investigated; one receives remission of sins." (St. John Chrysostom)
The new I in I AM
Thursday, February 11th, 2010 Posted in Theology | 10 Comments »The culmination of me-and-Jesus theology: "It is my desire that this book will speak faith into your life and awaken the seeds of greatness that God has planted inside you. It's your time to reach higher and achieve your God-given dreams. ...
Old, old, old school
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 Posted in Theology | 1 Comment »"There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books . . . This mistaken preference for the modern ...
Heresy, thy name is Legion
Sunday, January 24th, 2010 Posted in Film, Theology | 3 Comments »Perhaps you've seen commercials for the movie Legion, which appears to be two very different movies, depending on whether you've seen it advertised in the theater or on your television. On television, the premise appears to be that a host ...
Pat Robertson, pagan
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Theology | 17 Comments »Believing, as Pat Robertson does, that the suffering of those you despise is inflicted by a god on your side, and that the suffering of those you pity is the result of a devil's curse, seems to come awfully close ...
The myth of the myth
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 Posted in The Art of Parenting, Theology | 5 Comments »Leslie Fields muddles about in Calvinism and Darwinism before arriving at good advice for every Christian parent, which is to pray your child toward Heaven. I think "the perfect parent myth," however, is itself a myth. None of us envisions ...
Happy sappy Christians
Friday, January 8th, 2010 Posted in Theology, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »The thing is, I despised the happy sappy Jesus talk before I became a Christian, and I still do. You know the lingo: My personal relationship with Jesus will see me through any storm; Jesus is bigger than any of ...
If only that communion bread were really holy…
Thursday, January 7th, 2010 Posted in Theology | No Comments »It's no secret, my belief that, no matter how fetching or emotionally available a vampire is, the only proper response to him is a stake through the heart. Now Father Orthoduck opens a new can of worms, suggesting that one ...
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 Posted in Theology | No Comments »
"A miracle is not the breaking of the laws of the fallen world, it is the re-establishment of the laws of the kingdom of God..." (Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Living Prayer, p. 71-2)
Of God and Baal
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 Posted in The Literate Life, Theology | No Comments »The great division within man is rooted not in ideology or religion or tribe, but in darkness and death, counterposed against light and life, which comes not from man but is placed within him. The line separating dark from light ...
Don’t do as I do, do as I say
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Theology | 1 Comment »This news from the BBC, about a rise in the number of pagan winter solstice celebrants in the UK, is disturbing. How could people raised in the Christian West miss the point that Christmas is about shopping until your debt rivals ...
He didn’t always give presents
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 Posted in Snapshots of Life, Theology | 2 Comments »Stephen Caleb is now our willing accomplice in perpetuating the Santa myth. Some of you might recall my last year's Wall Street Journal piece arguing that there's something to be said for encouraging, for a time, your child's belief in ...
More Bible creepiness
Friday, December 4th, 2009 Posted in Theology | 22 Comments »My friend Jon D. points me to a Bible reconstruction initiative that makes the American Patriot's Bible look feckless in comparison: the Conservative Bible Project, a group of amateur theologians led by Phyllis Schlafly's son, who aim to tease out ...
Christian conscience
Friday, November 20th, 2009 Posted in The Sermons, Theology | 3 Comments »Today 148 Christian leaders -- Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant -- signed the Manhattan Declaration, affirming life, marriage, and religious liberty. It's worth reading. My favorite part, I think: "Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners. ...
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