We westerners (western Europe and North America) love our bad news. Steven Pinker, for instance, has been trying to convince us for years that the world is getting better, but few of us believe him. Global warming, a new, more virulent strain of the pandemic, the reality that the new Matrix movie is even worse …
Joshua gives the people of Israel an interesting bit of advice before they cross the Jordan in order to take over the Promised Land: follow God, but not too close. The advice is from Joshua 2:4, “ Follow [the ark of the covenant], so that you may know the way you should go, for you …
On this Feast of Theophany, a description by Karl Barth of just what happened in the incarnation, and thus just what was revealed. He did not cease to be the eternal Word of the eternal Father, Himself the one true God. But as this one true God He became flesh without reservation or diminution. He …
I’ll continue quoting Barth in a second post. (See previous post for context.) Calvin isn’t named, and I suspect Barth is still critiquing the Lutherans of his day, but this bit gets to the heart of one of Calvin’s grave errors (that is, an abstract ideal of divine immutability) that led him inexorably to affirm …
Ooh la la: Ice storm! Stayed home from work!! Reading Barth!!! Doesn’t get much better than that. Here’s today’s goody from the Church Dogmatics (IV:1, p. 186. 1956 ed., to be specific). Barth is critiquing the idea that the incarnation is “God against God,” an idea that was evidently quite popular among the German Lutherans …
Continue reading Because Our Concept of God is Too Narrow … Far too Narrow
The three lessons for the 4th Sunday of Advent are each about the nature of the Messiah: his humanity his sinlessness, and his deity. Isaiah 7:10-16 deals with it in a prophetic/poetic voice. Paul comes closest to what we might call a theological statement on the subject with his utterance of praise in Rom 1:1-7. …
In the previous essay I talked about the incarnation being the pattern of all God's activity in the world. God works in creation by working through the stuff of creation. Preeminently, God works through the Church. This reminds me of a saying about the monks. But in order to appreciate the saying, one must realize …
Here's an exercise in presuppositions. I have been reading the book, What Is the Mission of the Church?, by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert. On the chapter about the Kingdom of God, they ask whether there is a human role in God's work of establishing the Kingdom. Of course no one argues that we Christians …
Continue reading Our Role (and lack of it) in the Kingdom of God
September 1 is the start of the ecclesiastical year in the Orthodox Church. The liturgical event is Sep 8 (this coming Tuesday), the celebration of the birth of Mary, Jesus' mother. Even though I've been Orthodox for many years, I still approach the Orthodox liturgical year with wonder at the logic of how it works …
"In other words, away with the manger!" (See below): The Christian west calls today (Jan 6) Epiphany while the Christian east prefers to call it Theophany. As alluded to in my previous post, the west tends to focus on the revelation of Jesus Christ to the world through "the three mysteries" of which the coming …
Just Another Jim 