The 1976 edition of the Breviary translates Mt 5:6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice; they shall be satisfied.”i That word “justice” has regularly stuck in my craw over the years. It sounds like a particular 1970s political agenda is being inappropriately pushed by means of alternative translation. The Greek word in …
I focused on 1 John 3:4-10 in a separate essay so we could understand the implications of that series of present active participles that stretch across two paragraphs, but that group of verses includes parts of two paragraphs, and thus, two separate thoughts. The paragraph break is between vv 6 & 7 (in the middle …
Continue reading False Teaching, Persecution, Truth, and Action
Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive …
Reading St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain (also known as Nicodemos the Hagiorite, if you go looking for him), I was struck by the almost opposite manner that Nicodemos (d. 1809) and John Calvin (d. 1564) define righteousness. In a word, for Calvin, God’s righteousness is revealed in what he does. For Nicodemos, it is …
Too often a dispute has unintended consequences. In theology nearly all disputes are not between right and wrong, but rather an over- or under-emphasis that leads to error. Heresy (broadly understood) is not a matter of being wrong, it is a matter of being only almost right. But when sides are taken and battle lines …
Over the next few weeks I would like to revisit some of the big words that relate to our salvation. Many of them are hard and even frightening words, so we have a tendency to ignore them, or in the case of a word like “wrath,” leave them to the very conservative Christians who seem …
Just Another Jim 