Tony Woodlief | Author

Theology

On miracles

“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

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 is the battleground of the soul, and it runs, as Solzhenitsyn said, through the heart …

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Faith no more

I couldn’t believe, when I first read it, that Harvard’s chaplain is an atheist. Then I felt stupid for being surprised. That die was likely cast when Harvard’s overseers struck Christo et Ecclesiae from its place surrounding Veritas on the university’s seal. What need Christ and Church, after all, when we can have unadulterated truth? Somewhere in …

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Not a Calvin fan

Anthony Sacramone’s take on Calvin, inspired by the Times Driscoll piece mentioned below: “God Hates You and Your Little Dog Too“: “But I ended my sojourn among the Calvinists because their view of justification is not so much ‘by faith alone’ as it is ‘by luck alone.’” Hat tip: Trent

Thou shalt not ask questions

“They are sinning through questioning.” This from the trendy-yet-authoritarian Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll, according to The New York Times, after two elders challenged his consolidation of church power. What’s that verse about something going before a fall?

The light burden

This past Sunday I took a couple of my sons to St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral in Wichita. If you’re not familiar with the Orthodox services, a good portion of them are conducted while the congregation stands. After a particularly long stretch of standing, Caleb leans in to me and whispers, “Dad, do we stand …

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Eloquence vs Utilitarianism

After reading John Wilson’s delightful review of Denis Donoghue’s On Eloquence, I made a note to eventually read the book. Listening to John Piper’s recent muddle-headed misinterpretation of Wilson makes me wish I had time to read the book right away. In a nutshell, whereas Wilson celebrates the beauty of words (and newborns, and well-made churches, …

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Knowing God

From Arthur McGill’s Suffering: “In the Christian world today almost no one talks about God himself. Christians are preoccupied instead either with God’s acts — with the things that he gives us and the moral demands he makes on us, with Jesus whom he sent and the church that he created — or with the …

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