Dear Friends and Family, We’re just over half-way through Lent and I’ve realised I didn’t do a post about it. There is a lot I could tell you about the history of Lent; how it started as a forty-hour fast before Easter to symbolise the time Christ spent in the tomb and then evolved into forty days of limited fasting to connect better with the Israelites in the desert and Christ in the wilderness. Instead, however, I just want to... Read more
Dear Friends and Family, This term, I have been sitting on a class taught by Alison Milbank called Religion and Fantasy. It has been an excellent class and an opportunity for me to re-read some of my old favourites and discuss their theological implications with others. One the texts we read for this course was C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. This is a story about a man who finds himself in a bus queue in Hell and makes a journey to... Read more
Dear Friends and Family, C. S. Lewis is probably one of the main reasons I now study theology. He opened to me the doors of deeper and more intellectual study of the Christian faith. I will not say that Lewis is perfect, nor that his theology is always spot on, but his dedication to explaining the faith through story. Below I have included two audio files of C. S. Lewis. During WWII Lewis was asked by the British Government to... Read more
The Art of Manliness and Reading Fiction The Art of Manliness recently put out an article on why men ought to read more fiction. The article centred around the idea that reading fiction improves one’s theory of mind. As I understand it, theory of mind is what allows to understand and contemplate other minds (i.e. Using theory of mind, I can discern what another individual is thinking in a given situation). I suppose we might call this a person’s ability... Read more
The New Green Hornet Last night my wife and I watched the new Green Hornet with Seth Rogen. While I knew better than to expect something that remained true to the original Green Hornet, I was, nevertheless, severely disappointed. Not only did Rogen’s adaptation fail to deliver the essence of the Green Hornet as the purposely misunderstood hero who’s alter ego is the intelligent newspaperman, but he also failed to understand the purpose of heroes in society. What Makes Rogen’s Hornet the... Read more
Dear Friends and Family, If you have time, I recommend you watch the video above before reading my post, which will primarily be a response to it. When I came to faith in Jesus Christ nearly thirteen years ago now, it was through, in part, the ministrations of the Jacksonville Church of Christ. At the time, I knew nothing about the history of the Restoration Movement to which most churches of Christ belong. All I knew was that this church... Read more
Rob Bell, Heretic? Well, amidst what I am sure will be the general deluge of reviews on Rob Bells most recent book, Love Wins, I thought I would add my own. What the biggest question most Christians have about Bell’s book is, is he a heretic? The simplest answer I can give to that question is no. What Bell presents in Love Wins is not some kind of Unitarian Universalism where all roads lead to a proverbial Rome, that is,... Read more
Since leaving Lincoln Christian University (in fact, while I was still a student there), I have noticed that some of my friends and classmates have made some drastic decisions. Some have left the faith altogether. Others have left the Restoration Movement (a nineteenth century American church movement dedicated to non-denominationalism, the unity of all believers, and the Bible as the source of Christ’s authority, through the Spirit, on Earth). Others still spend a lot of time complaining, either about their... Read more
Dear Friends and Family, As some of you may know, I used to have a blog over on blogger. I switched not too long ago to WordPress liking the format better. There are, however, some posts from my old blog that I still like. So, over the course of this week, I will be reposting some of them here. I hope you enjoy them. My thoughts may often appear less mature or at least differently attuned, but I think this... Read more
Dear Friends and Family, Last week I was asked to give a presentation in Dr Karen Kilby’s class on Christology (the study of Christ) on deification. Deification is a topic that comes up often when you study the early Church. I thought it might be helpful for me to post my presentation here. Please let me know what you think of it and if you have any questions. I will also post a short bibliography I made for the students... Read more
Letters from the Edge of Elfland
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