I hear rattling!
As pastor’s kids (there were three of us—the “pretty” one, the “good” one, and “the one who put up Kiss posters”—I’ll leave you to guess which one I was), we enjoyed a certain amount of both notoriety and adulation, depending on who the observer was. As a little one, I remember weaving in and [...]
My Catholic friends reassure me that I know nothing about guilt. They are experts. The very ritual of confession generates guilt, they say. They remember feeling guilty that they didn’t feel guilty, and making up sins to confess. The darkened confessional, the sliding door, the whispered prayers, the priest’s questions – all operated [...]
Today I read a review of Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood, her account of spending a year trying to “take all of the Bible’s instructions for women as literally as possible.” This has her end up calling her husband “master,” keeping her mouth shut in church, and staying in a pup tent [...]
Tomorrow is Reformation Day, the day on which, 495 years ago Martin Luther posted his Facebook protest. Er, I mean, Wittenberg protest. I remember many years ago hearing a chapel talk that was supposed to be on the glories of the Reformation, but was instead a reflection in the tragedy of the Reformation. That speaker [...]
For the better part of a year, I’ve been working on understanding a book and a doctrine that, shall we admit, are not “bestsellers.” In fact, one of my readers very softly commented: “It was a long and complicated series, and I’m afraid that the truly interested layman ‘in all the details’ might be [...]
We’ve come to Anatolios’ conclusion, a chapter rich with ideas and summaries. I could have drawn this out for several more posts, but I became quite “Julian” in my threeness, wanting the series to have twenty-seven posts, no more, no less. So let’s oh-so-briefly look at the final comments Anatolios makes that might suggest [...]
Last week we addressed Augustine’s “psychological model” of the Trinitarian image: memory, knowledge, and will. Maybe that worked for you; maybe it didn’t. But Augustine had another model that you might find more compelling. It’s called a “social model” of the Trinity, and it begins and spins in love. When [...]
Our friend Augustine, trying to understand the Three-in-One God whom we worship, resorted to Source Code material. May Augustine forgive me for using a modern pap movie to talk about his great theological arguments. You needn’t see the movie—it won’t help you understand the Trinity. But sometimes weird ideas pop up in science fiction that [...]
“We want to see Jesus,” they said (Jn. 12.21). This request, from a group of anonymous Greeks who had come to Jerusalem, triggered Jesus’ awareness that “the hour has come.” Augustine, too, recognizes the essential need to see Jesus. In his exploration of scripture, Augustine finds a steady engagement of God with creation through signs [...]
This picture is a famous depiction of Christ as Pantocrator, i.e., Christ in Majesty, Ruler of All. It is one of the earliest images of Jesus in the Church. The mystery that the Church proclaimed was that the carpenter’s son- itinerant rabbi-controversial leader-healer-miracle worker-prophetic voice-crucified Roman victim was actually Lord Almighty, the King of Kings [...]
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